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

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.

    Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) BMW Private Cloud Strategy

    Storage I/O cloud virtual and big data perspectives

    If your organization like StorageIO is a member of the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) you may be aware of the resources they make available about cloud, virtualization, security and more. Unlike so many other industry associates or trade groups dominated by vendors, the ODCA has an IT or customer focus including member developed best practices, strategies and templates.

    A good example is the recently released ODCA member BMW group private cloud strategy document.

    This 24 page document covers BMW groups private cloud strategy that sets stage for phased future hybrid. By being a phased approach, it seems that BMW is leveraging and transitioning for the future while maintaining support for their current environment (including Windows-based) as part of a paradigm shift. This is refreshing and good to see how organizations are looking to use cloud as part of a paradigm or IT service deliver model and not just as a new technology or platform focus.

    Topics covered include IaaS along with PaaS for DB, Web, SAP and CSaaS or Corporate Software as a Service based on the NIST cloud model. Also included are roles and integration of CMDB, ITSM, ITIL, orchestration in a business vs. technology driven model. Being business driven, that means there is a mission statement for the BMW cloud strategy, with objectives aligned to support organization enablement vs. using different tools, technologies or trends along with design criteria.

    What I like about the BMW strategy is that it is aligned to support the business as opposed to finding ways to use technology to support the business, or justify why a cloud is needed. In other words, something different from those needing for a technology, tool, product, standard or service to be adopted.

    Thus while having been a vendor, the ODCA customer focused angle appeals to me from when I was on that side of the table working in IT organizations. Otoh, for some of you reading through the BMW document might result in DejaVu from experiences of web-based, client-server, information utilities and other IT service delivery models or paradigms.

    Learn more at the ODCA newsroom

    If you have not done, check out and join the ODCA.

    Ok nuff said

    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

    Where has the FCoE hype and FUD gone? (with poll)

    Storage I/O cloud virtual and big data perspectives

    A couple of years ago I did this post about if Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?

    Fast forward to today, has anybody else noticed that there seems to be less hype and fud on Fibre Channel (FC) over Ethernet (FCoE) than a year or two or three ago?

    Does this mean that FCoE as the fud or detractors were predicting is in fact stillborn with no adoption, no deployment and dead on arrival?

    Does this mean that FCoE as its proponents have said is still maturing, quietly finding adoption and deployment where it fits?

    Does this mean that FCoE like its predecessors Fibre Channel and Ethernet are still evolving, expanding from early adopter to a mature technology?

    Does this mean that FCoE is simply forgotten with software defined networking (SDN) having over-shadowed it?

    Does this mean that FCoE has finally lost out and that iSCSI has finally stepped up and living up to what it was hyped to do ten years ago?

    Does this mean that FC itself at either 8GFC or 16GFC is holding its own for now?

    Does this mean that InfiniBand is on the rebound?

    Does this mean that FCoE is simply not fun or interesting, or a shiny new technology with vendors not spending marketing money so thus people not talking, tweeting or blogging?

    Does this mean that those who were either proponents pitching it or detractors despising it have found other things to talk about from SDN to OpenFlow to IOV to Software Defined Storage (what ever, or who ever definition your subscribe to) to cloud, big or little data and the list goes on?

    I continue hear of or talk with customers organizations deploying FCoE in addition to iSCSI, FC, NAS and other means of accessing storage for cloud, virtual and physical environments.

    Likewise I see some vendor discussions occurring not to mention what gets picked up via google alerts.

    However in general, the rhetoric both pro and against, hype and FUD seems to have subsided, or at least for now.

    So what gives, what’s your take on FCoE hype and FUD?

    Cast your vote and see results here.

     

    Ok, nuff said

    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

    Part II: XtremIO, XtremSW and XtremSF EMC flash ssd portfolio redefined

    Part one of this two-part post provided a summary of today’s EMC (@EMCflash) announcement around XtremIO and renaming VFCache to XtremSF and associated software as XtremSW.

    Storage I/O industry trends and perspectives

    Synopsis of announcement

    • Product rollout and selective availability of the new all flash SSD array XtremIO
    • Rename server-side PCIe ssd flash cards from VFCache to XtremSF
    • New XtremSF models including enhanced multi-level cell (eMLC) with larger capacities
    • Rename VFCache caching software to XtremSW (enables cache mode vs. target mode)

    Now lets take a closer look at what was announced along with what it means in terms of Industry Trends and Perspectives.

    XtremIO  has been in customer beta for some time and now those along with some other early customers are able to acquire the product. In addition, EMC is opening up XtremIO to more prospective customers (Directed Availability) who have requirements or needs that line up with the products target market capabilities.

    Storage I/O industry trends and perspectives

    What this means is that XtremIO is not being simply put out into the general product population for broad distribution. Instead, it is being put into a controlled release (Directed Availability) to help customers, partners and EMC sales decide where best to use it and thus risk revenue prevention in other areas. The criteria or target opportunity (at least initially) are little-data applications including OLTP, server virtualization (where aggregation can cause aggravation) along with virtual desktop or VDI. In other words, many of the traditional or legacy IOP focused SSD opportunities.

    In addition to XtremIO EMC has renamed their VFCache PCIe flash SSD cards (Launched February 2012) to XtremSF along with new models with both SLC and MLC nand flash. Also as part of today’s announcement EMC is renaming the cache software for XtremSF (e.g. VFCache) to be known as XtremSW. Now if that did not prompt the question of if you can now buy XtremSF as a target mode only card without the cache software the answer is yes.

    What is XtremIO?

    It is a new all flash SSD storage array. XtremIO is a Cluster, grid or collection of nodes called bricks with linear performance scaling providing block based all flash SSD storage. Data services consists of data footprint reduction (DFR) including inline global (across all nodes or bricks) dedupe on 4Kbyte chunks along with thin provisioning. Global dedupe is done on ingest using a combination of flash buffered meta-data (tables, index or dictionary) of what has been seen before along with multi-threaded software to leverage multi-core processors. Using the global dedupe at ingest; only new unique data is saved based on 4 Kbyte chunks.

    Performance per EMC scales from one single node to more second node or a fourth node. Note: architecturally more nodes can be added with EMC indicating added models will be available in the future.

    In addition to DFR, other data services including writable snapshots, and auto-load balancing when new bricks are added. Note that in a normal running XtremIO, data is automatically spread across the nodes for both performance and resiliency. Data only needs to be moved or load-balanced in the background when new bricks are added. Instant copy snapshots are supported along with writable snapshots. Currently replication is done via external EMC products such as VPLEX or RecoverPoint with statement of directions (SOD) for future enhancements.

    Additional attributes of XtremIO include:

    • Each node or brick (X-Brick) has up to 16 (16 was Gen 1 hardware platform, it is now 25 SSD drives)
    • All bricks are involved in IO and storage processing
    • Positioned by EMC as Software Defined (no proprietary hardware)
    • Four x 8Gb Fibre Channel (8GFC) and four x 10Gb Ethernet (iSCSI) per brick
    • Bricks communicate with each other via a separate interconnect network or fabric
    • Bricks have redundant processors (think of as controllers) with multiple sockets and cores
    • 4KB random read IOP’s scale from 250K (one brick), 500K (two bricks) and 1 Million (four bricks). For 4K random write IOPS, the numbers are 100K, 200K and 400K across one, two and four brick configurations with low latency and all data services running (EMC supplied numbers)

    In addition to 4K being a commonly used or referred to IO size, it is also the same size as the new industry standard Advanced Format (AF). Today the standard storage block, page or sector size is 512 bytes however AF moves that to a larger 4,096 bytes (e.g. 4KB) to closer align with larger IO sizes. Note that many HDD’s and some SSD’s today support AF and provide 512 byte emulation modes for compatibility.

    What is XtremSF?

    VFCache is renamed XtremSF with new models using eMLC as companion to existing SLC PCIe  cards and blade server mezzanine cards. EMC is emphasizing performance metrics that matter including IOPs that are relative to customer workloads such as 4K, 8K or larger with mix of reads and writes with low latency. In addition to IOPs with latency, size along with reads or writes for little data, EMC is also showing bandwidth or throughput numbers for big-data and big-bandwidth.

    Model
    Capacity
    Read Transfer GB/sec
    Write Transfer GB/sec
    Random 4K Read (IOPS)
    Random 4K Write (IOPS)

    Random 4K Mixed ( IOPS)

    Read latency (usec)
    Write latency (usec)
    2200 (eMLC)
    2.2 TB
    2.47
    1.1
    343K
    105K
    206K
    87us
    30us
    700 (SLC)
    700 GB
    2.9
    1.8
    712K
    197K
    411K
    50us
    13us
    550 (eMLC)
    550 GB
    1.36
    512 MB/s
    174K
    49K
    96K
    87us
    37us
    350 (SLC)
    350 GB
    2.9
    756 MB/s
    715K
    95K
    267K
    50us
    13us

    Sampling of SLC and eMLC XtremSF PCIe SSD cards performance characteristics (via EMC) including latency measured in microseconds). Note performance differences due to some cards being based on SLC and others on eMLC.

    Additional attributes, some new and some previously announced include:

    • 8X  PCIe bandwidth lanes for performance
    • No IO impact to applications during garbage collection
    • Supports multi-core processor workloads with parallel design
    • Low CPU overhead by off-loading functions to PCIe card
    • Half-height, half-length PCIe form factor
    • Wear-leveling for nand flash program/erase (P/E) cycle duration
    Other storage, server and systems vendors including Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, NetApp and Oracle offer various PCIe nand flash SSD cards either as target, cache or mixed modes. Manufactures or suppliers of PCIe nand flash SSD cache and target cards include among others FusionIO, Intel, LSI, Micron , OCZ and Virident (who is partnered with Seagate).

    What is XtremSW?

    Server side flash software (not to be confused with FAST) for using XtremSF as a tier 0 (server-side) ssd cache or target. In target mode the XtremSF functions as a high performance persistent local dedicated direct attached storage (DAS) device. Cache mode enables frequently accessed data to be kept close to the applications off-loading underlying storage systems to be more effectively used. The XtremSW complements back-end storage systems for data protection and persistence along with investment protection of those assets.

    Storage I/O industry trends and perspectives

    What this all means

    SSD is in your future, question is where, when and with what.

    Why not just use SSD (DRAM and or nand flash) everywhere?

    Keep in mind that in the data center (traditional, virtual or cloud) everything is not the same. Thus the simple answer is that there is not enough of it available at a low enough price point (think closer to Hard Disk Drives (HDD) costs) to fit into customers budget. Sure SSDs provide better performance and productivity benefits, however while there is no such thing as a data or information recession, there are budget constraints.

    Another reason why SSD cant simply be used everywhere are physical (and logical) constraints such as amount of memory a server can directly access, or current DDR3 DIMMs (this could change with DDR4 according to Micron) can only address and work with DRAM, PCIe bus physical slot space, operating and hypervisor addressing limits among others.

    If SSD (DRAM and or nand flash) were priced were priced low enough (e.g. much closer to HDDs) and available SSD including both DRAM and nand flash (SLC, MLC, eMLC, TLC, etc) along with emerging Phase Change Memory (PCM) are at the convergence of traditional memory and data storage. While some storage (or server) professionals may not agree, storage is an extension of memory and thus part of the traditional server and storage memory hierarchy shown below.

    Storage I/O and cache locality of reference

    This brings up the locality of reference topic also shown in the following figure where the best IO is the one that does not have to be done. The second best is the one that can be done closest to application to a given level of service. Locality of reference which is important for servers and storage systems including caching refers to how close frequently accessed data is to where it is needed. For some applications this means as much DRAM main memory in a server as possible either clustered, with battery backup or other data persistency protection including onboard HDD or SSD (e.g. towards the top of the hierarchy).

    nand flash SSD and storage I/O location options

    There are other applications where localized SSD (DRAM or nand flash) are a benefit to compliment main memory or as a persistent cache and target such as PCIe cards or SAS and SATA drives. Further down the stack and for housing larger amounts of storage with performance (reads or writes, random or sequential) along with data services is where all SSD and hybrid (mix of SSD and HDD) fit. Even further down the stack and for a broader segment is where cloud storage services based on SSD such as those from Rackspace (Cloud Block Storage with SSD) and Amazon (provisioned IOPS for EBS) have a play. Lets not forget about SSD in laptop, tablets and workstations, for example I have a Samsung model 830 in my Lenvo X1.

    Storage I/O industry trends and perspectives

    Some general industry trends include:

    • SSD is like real estate, location can matter, a little can go a long way
    • SSD media options include DRAM and nand flash (SLC, MLC, eMLC, TLC)
    • Portfolios broadening with different products for various needs
    • SSD functionality in servers, appliances, storage systems and cloud services
    • All flash SSD arrays have not killed off all traditional or hybrid storage arrays
    • Focus expanding from Just a Bunch Of SSD (JBOS) to enterprise like functionality
    • Software needs hardware, hardware needs software, the two work better together
    • Comparing meaningful metrics that matter vs. industry marketing metrics

    Related items about nand flash, SSD and metrics related themes:

    Storage I/O industry trends and perspectives

    Some additional thoughts and perspectives

    Does this mean traditional storage arrays are now dead?

    IMHO, no, there will be some cannibalization of existing storage systems by XtremIO within EMC customers or prospects if not managed, as well as via those from others. Keep in mind that recently EMC announced enhancements to their VMAX including entry-level options for service providers. Some new opportunities opened up will be where traditional all SSD (flash or dram) systems have historically had success.

    Traditional SSD and new dedicated SSD systems include Texas Memory Systems (TMS) bought by IBM in 2012, and the recently announced NetApp EF540 (and future FlashRay) along with startups Solidfire, Violin, Whiptail among others. There will be environments where XtremIO may take care of all storage needs for a customer or specific application or piece of it. Then there will be other situations where XtremIO will go-exist with EMC or other vendor’s storage solutions as part of a data infrastructure.

    Storage I/O industry trends and perspectives

    Who will EMC be competing against with XtremIO?

    Certainly the startups or smaller players such as Violin, Whiptail, Purestorage, Solidfire along with IBM/TMS and NetApp EF540 (eventually FlashRay as well) among others.

    There will also be some competition with other hybrid storage array vendors that have a mix of HDD and SSD. XtremIO will also compete in some situations on its own vs. other PCIe flash target and cache cards such as FusionIO, however for the most part those will up against XtremSF and XtremSW.

    Why the slow or “Directed Availability” rollout?

    Why not? By taking a controlled rollout selecting and qualifying customers for XtremIO, EMC gets to manage how the product goes out into production and control how it is used to increase chances of success. Unlike a startup that would be forced to try to put their new technology anywhere, EMC has the luxury of selecting where it goes, not to mention needing to avoid introducing a revenue prevention play for its other products.

    Overall, I give an Atta boy and Atta girl to the EMC crew for a Product Defined Announcement (PDA) extending their flash portfolio to complement their different customers and prospects various environment needs. Now watch EMC, NetApp and others step up their flash dance moves to see who will out flash the others in the eXtreme flash games, not to mention emerging software defined marketing moves (SDMM) ;) .

    Ok, nuff said.

    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

    XtremIO, XtremSW and XtremSF EMC flash ssd portfolio redefined

    EMC (@EMCflash) today announced some new, enhanced, renamed and a rebrand flash solid-state device (SSD) storage portfolio around theme of XtremIO. XtremIO was the startup company with a new all flash SSD storage array that EMC announced they were buying in May 2012. Since that announcement, Project “X” has been used when referring to the product now known as XtremIO (e.g. all flash new storage array).

    Synopsis of announcement

    • Product rollout and selective availability of the new all flash SSD array XtremIO
    • Rename server-side PCIe ssd flash cards from VFCache to XtremSF
    • New XtremSF models including enhanced multi-level cell (eMLC) with larger capacities
    • Rename VFCache caching software to XtremSW (enables cache mode vs. target mode)

    What was previously announced:

    • Buying the company XtremeIO
    • Productizing  the new all flash array as part of Project “X”
    • It would formally announce the new product in 2013 (which is now)
    • VFCache and later enhancements during 2012.

    Storage I/O industry trends and perspectives

    Overall, I give an Atta boy and Atta girl to the EMC crew for a Product Defined Announcement (PDA) extending their flash portfolio to complement their different customers and prospects various environment needs. Now let us sit back and watch EMC, NetApp and others step up their flash dance moves to see who will out flash the others in the eXtreme flash games, including software defined storage, software defined data centers, software defined flash, and software defined cache.

    Related items about nand flash and metrics related themes:

    Read more about XtremIO, XtremSF, XtremSW and flash related items here in part II of this post.

    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)
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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

    February 2013 Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

    StorageIO News Letter Image
    February 2013 News letter

    Welcome to the February 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 February 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)
    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

    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)

    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

    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

    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)

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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

    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)

    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

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

    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)

    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

    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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