Can I ask for your support? Please vote for my blog

No Im not running for any elected office in a political or other organizational capacity, more on the voting stuff in a moment.

Let me start out by saying thank you to all of you who have and continue to read theses posts from where ever that happens to be from.

I also want to thank all of the sites and venues that pickup my blog feeds to make it easier for readers to view the content as well as thanks for all of the great comments and discussions.

Doing some recent end of year clean up and preparation for 2012, I was going back looking at some blog history and realized that StorageIOblog was launched back in late fall of 2006. For those not aware, my full blog feed is https://storageioblog.com/RSSfull.xml and there is also a brief feed at https://storageioblog.com/RSS.xml and the full archives going back to 2006 can be found at https://storageioblog.com/RSSfullArchive.xml.

Ok, now back to the voting stuff.

It is that time of the year to cast your vote over at Eric Sieberts (aka @ericsiebert) vsphere-land site where my StorageIOblog is among around 180 different IT technology blogs nominated for inclusion and balloting, many of whom are also fellow vExperts. The blogs over at vsphere-land cover diverse topics, technologies, trends and themes including servers, storage, networking, cloud, virtualization, security and related topic themes.

Here is the announcement for the 2012 vsphere-land voting.

Some of the blogs have been around for many years while there is also a category for new less than a year old. In this years voting, anyone can vote however only one ballot per person, there the top ten where you can pick up to ten different blogs and then rank those.

There are categories for virtualization, cloud and storage focused as well as for independent bloggers (e.g. non vendors) as well as for news and media venues. The blogs that are part of the balloting were all via open nomination and if yours or your favorite blog is not on the list, go easy on Eric as he made multiple attempts via different venues to make the process known (hint, make sure Eric knows of your site, however also follow him and his sites for the future).

The voting is up and running until February 7 2012 at this site here.

Check out the voting, balloting and polling process where you can select my StorageIOblog as one of ten overall selections, as well as rank it within those ten, then select StorageIOblog in the storage category as well as in the independent blogger categories if you are so inclined (thanks in advance).

Also, check out Erics great books Maximum vSphere along with VMware VI3 implementation at Amazon.com among other venues.

Ok, nuff said for now, please get out and vote and thank in advance for your interest and support.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

My Server and Storage IO holiday break projects

Happy new years!

Following up from a flurry of posts in the closing days of 2011 including industry trends perspective predictions for 2012 and 2013, top blog posts from 2011, top all time posts, along with a couple of other items here and here, its time to get back to 2012 activity. Also if you missed it, here is the Fall (December) 2011 StorageIO news letter.

Actually I have been busy working on some other projects the past several weeks most of which are NDA so not much else can be said about them, however there are some other things I’m working on that will show themselves in the weeks and months to come. Here is a link to a webinar and live chat that I did the first week of January on CDP (Continuous Data Protection) and how it can be applied to many different environments.

But lets take a step back for a moment and let me share with you some of the things I did or started during the holiday break between christmas and the new years.

Like many others, I found time to relax and get away from normal work activities during the recent holiday season.

However like many of you that may also be techniques or geeks or wanna be geeks at heart, I could not get away from server, storage, IO, networking, data protection, video and other things completely. I used some time to discuss a few projects that I had wanted to do or that I had started before the holidays and here is a synopsis.

Increased storage capacity on a DVR by about 5x In order to get this to work, I modified a 3.5 enclosure with a power supply to accept a 2.5 1.5TB SATA HDD with an eSATA connection, the easy part was then attaching it to the external eSATA port on my DVR. The hard part was then waiting for the DVR to reconfigure and start recording information again. Also as part of upgrading the external storage on the DVR was to get the media share option to do more than basic things leveraging audio and video real-time trans coding using the Tversity software along with various codecs on a media server.

Another project involved upgrading a 500GB HHDD to a 750GB HHDD and did some testing Shortly before the holidays I received a new 750GB Seagate Momentus XT II HHDD to compare to my exiting 500GB previous generation model. I have been using the 750GB HHDD for over a month now and it is amazing to see so much space in a laptop that also has good performance. Some follow-up activities are to go back and analyze some performance data that I collected before and after the upgrade. This includes both workload simulation of reads, writes, random, sequential of different IO size as well as comparing Windows startup and shutdown speed and impact to build on what I did last summer (see this post). More on these in the not so distance future.

Speaking of clouds, I had a chance to do some more testing with my Amazon EC2 and EBS accounts in addition to cleaning up my S3 pool in addition to my other cloud backup and storage providers accounts. This also involved refining some data protection backup/restore and archive frequency and retention settings. In addition to refinements for cloud based backup, I’m also in the process of transitioning from Imation Odyssey Removable Hard Disk Drives (RHDD) too much larger capacity 2.5 portable RHDDs that are used for offsite bulk copies. Part of the migration includes seeing that end of year master or gold backups and archives were made and safely secured elsewhere in addition to having data sent to the cloud.

Another project involved doing some more testing and simulations with my SSD along with more windows boot and shutdown tests mentioned above. More on these results in a future post.

Sometime (actually not very much) was also spent adding some new shares to my Iomega IX4 NAS which is filling up so I also did some more research on what I will upgrade or replace it with. While Iomega has been great (knock on wood), Synology is also looking interesting as a future solution however keeping my options open for now. Right now I’m leaning towards keeping the IX4 and adding another NAS filer using the two for different purposes.

Some other server, storage and IO projects also included upgrading some networking components, and to finish decommissioning old drives making them secure for safe disposal when the time comes.

I also was able to spend time on non tech items including outside enjoying the nice weather, cutting up some fallen trees and roasting them on a bonfire among other things.

Tree cleanupOn break

roasting logswalking on frozen water

Ok, nuff said for now, time to get back to work.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

A conversation from SNW 2011 with Jenny Hamel

Here (.qt) and here (.wmv) is a video from an interview that I did with Jenny Hamel (@jennyhamelsd6) during the Fall 2011 SNW event in Orlando Florida.

audio

Topics covered during the discussion include:

  • Importance of metrics that matter for gaining and maintaining IT situational awareness
  • The continued journey of IT to improve customer service delivery in a cost-effective manner
  • Reducing cost and complexity without negatively impacting customer service experience
  • Participating in SNW and SNIA for over ten years on three different continents

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • Industry trends, buzzword bingo (SSD, cloud, big data, virtualization), adoption vs. deployment
  • Increasing efficiency along with effectiveness and productivity
  • Stretching budgets to do more without degrading performance or availability
  • How customers can navigate their way around various options, products and services
  • Importance of networking at events such as SNW along with information exchange and learning
  • Why data footprint reduction is similar to packing smartly when going on a journey
  • Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (now available on Kindle and other epub formats)

View the video from SNW fall 2011 here (.qt) or here (.wmv).

audio

Check out other videos and pod casts here or at StorageioTV.com

Speaking of industry trends, check out the top 25 new posts from 2011, along with the top 25 all time posts and my comments (predictions) for 2012 and 2013.

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

Top storageio cloud virtualization networking and data protection posts

Im in the process of wrapping up 2011 and getting ready for 2012. Here is a list of the top 25 all time posts from StorageIOblog covering cloud, virtualization, servers, storage, green IT, networking and data protection. Looking back, here is 2010 and 2011 industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions along with looking forward, a 2012 preview here.

Top 25 all time posts about storage, cloud, virtualization, networking, green IT and data protection

Check out the companion post to this which is the top 25 2011 posts located here as well as 2012 and 2013 predictions preview 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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

2012 industry trends perspectives and commentary (predictions)

2011 is almost over, so its wrap up time of the year as well as getting ready for 2012.

Here is a link to a post of the top 25 new posts that appeared on StorageIOblog in 2011.

As a companion to the above, here is a link to the all time top 25 posts from StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Im still finalizing my 2012 and 2013 predictions and perspectives which is a work in progress, however here is a synopsis:

  • Addressing storage woes at the source: Time to start treating the source of data management and protection including backup challenges instead of or in addition to addressing downstream target destination topics.
  • Big data and big bandwidth meet big backup: 2011 was a buzz with big data and big bandwidth so 2012 will see realization that big backup needs to be addressed. Also in 2012 there will be continued realization that many have been doing big data and big bandwidth thus also big backups for many years if not decades before the current big buzzword became popular.
  • Little data does not get left out of the discussion even though younger brother big data gets all of the press and praise. Little data may not be the shining diva it once was, however the revenue annuity stream will keep many software, tools, server and storage vendors afloat while customers continue to rely on the little data darling to run their business.
  • Cloud confusion finds clarity on the horizon: Granted there will be plenty of more cloud fud and hype, cloud washing and cleaning going around, however 2012 and beyond will also find organizations realizing where and how to use different types of clouds (public, private, hybrid) too meet various needs from SaaS and AaaS to PaaS to IaaS and other variations of XaaS. Part of the clarification that will help remove the confusion will be that there are many different types of cloud architectures, products, stacks, solutions, services and products to address various needs. Another part of the clarification will be discussion of what needs to be added to clouds to make them more viable for both new, as well as old or existing applications. This means organizations will determine what they need to do to move their existing applications to some form of a cloud model while understanding how clouds coexist and compliment what they are currently doing. Cloud conversations will also shift from low cost or for free focus expanding to discussions around value, trust, quality of service (QoS), SLOs, SLAs, security, reliability and related themes.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • Cloud and virtualization stack battles: The golden rule of virtualization and clouds is that who ever controls the management and software stacks controls the gold. Hence, watch for more positioning around management and enablement stacks as well as solutions to see who gains control of the gold.
  • Data protection modernization: Building off of first point above, data protection modernization the past several years has been focused on treating the symptoms of downstream problems at the target or destination. This has involved swapping out or moving media around, applying data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques downstream to give near term tactical relief as has been the cause with backup, restore, BC and DR for many years. Now the focus will start to expand to how to address the source of the problem with is an expanding data footprint upstream or at the source using different data footprint reduction tools and techniques. This also means using different metrics including keeping performance and response time in perspective as part of reduction rates vs. ratios while leveraging different techniques and tools from the data footprint reduction tool box. In other words, its time to stop swapping out media like changing tires that keep going flat on a car, find and fix the problem, change the way data is protected (and when) to cut the impact down stream. This will not happen overnight, however with virtualization and cloud activities underway, now is a good time to start modernizing data protection.
  • End to End (E2E) management tools: Continue focus around E2E tools and capabilities to gain situational awareness across different technology layers.
  • FCoE and Fibre Channel continue to mature: One sure sign that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is continuing to evolve, mature and gain initial traction is the increase in activity declaring it dead or dumb or similar things. FCoE is still in its infancy while Fibre Channel (FC) is in the process of transitioning to 16Gb with a roadmap that will enable it to continue for many more years. As FCoE continues to ramp up over next several years (remember, FC took several years to get where it is today), continued FC enhancements will give options for those wishing to stick with it while gaining confidence with FCoE, iSCSI, SAS and NAS.
  • Hard drive shortages drive revenues and profits: Some have declared that the recent HDD shortages due to Thailand flooding will cause Solid State Devices (SSD) using flash memory to dramatically grow in adoption and deployment. I think that both single level cell (SLC) and multi level cell (MLC) flash SSDs will continue to grow in deployments counted in units shipped as well as revenues and hopefully also margin or profits. However I also think that with the HDD shortage and continued demand, vendors will use the opportunity to stabilize some of their pricing meaning less discounting while managing the inventory which should mean more margin or profits in a quarter or too. What will be interesting to watch will be if SSD vendors drop the margin in an effort to increase units shipped and deployed to show market revenue and adoption growth while HDD margins rise.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • QoS, SLA/SLOs part of cloud conversations: Low cost or cost avoidance will continue to be the focus of some cloud conversations. However with metrics and measurements to make informed decisions, discussions will expand to QoS, SLO, SLAs, security, mean time to restore or return information, privacy, trust and value also enter into the picture. In other words, clouds are growing up and maturing for some, while their existing capabilities become discovered by others.
  • Clouds are a shared responsibility model: The cloud blame game when something goes wrong will continue, however there will also be a realization that as with any technology or tool, there is a shared responsibility. This means that customers accept responsibility for how they will use a tool, technologies or service, the provider assumes responsibility, and both parties have a collective responsibility.
  • Return on innovation is the new ROI: For years, no make that decades a popular buzz term is return on investment the companion of total cost of ownership. Both ROI and TCO as you know and like (or hate) will continue to be used, however for situations that are difficult to monitize, a new variation exists. That new variation is return on innovation which is the measure of intangible benefits derived from how hard products are used to derive value for or of soft products and services delivered.
  • Solid State Devices (SSD) confidence: One of the barriers to flash SSD adoption has been cost per capacity with another being confidence in reliability and data consistency over time (aka duty cycle wear and tear). Many enterprise class solutions have used single level cell (SLC) flash SSD which has better endurance, duty cycle or wear handing capabilities however that benefit comes at the cost of a higher price per capacity. Consequently vendors are pushing multi level cell (MLC) flash SSD that reduces the cost per capacity, however needs extra controller and firmware functionality to manage the wear leaving and duty cycle. In some ways, MLC flash is to SSD memory what SATA high-capacity desktop drives were to HDDs in the enterprise storage space about 8 to 9 years ago. What I mean by that is that more cost high performance disk drives were the norm, then lower cost higher capacity SATA drives appeared resulting in enhancements to make them more enterprise capable while boosting the confidence of customers to use the technology. Same thing is happening with flash SSD in that SLC is more expensive and for many has a higher confidence, while MLC is lower cost, higher capacity and gaining the enhancements to take on a role for flash SSD similar to what high-capacity SATA did in the HDD space. In addition to confidence with SSD, new packaging variations will continue to evolve as well.
  • Virtualization beyond consolidation: The current wave of consolidation of desktop using VDI, server and storage aggregation will continue, however a trend that has grown for a couple of years now that will take more prominence in 2012 and 2013 is realization that not everything can be consolidated, however many things can be virtualized. This means for some applications the focus will not be how many VMs to run per PM, rather, how a PM can be more effectively used to boost performance and agility for some applications during part of the day, while being used for other things at different times. For example a high performance database that normally would not be consolidated would be virtualized to enable agility for maintenance, BC, DR load balancing and placed on a fast PM with lots of fast memory, CPU and IO capabilities dedicated to it. However during off hours when little to no database activity is occurring, then other VMs would be moved onto that PM then moved off before the next busy cycle.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • Will applications be ready to leverage cloud: Some applications and functionality can more easily be moved to cloud environments vs. others. A question that organizations will start to ask is what prevents their applications or business functionality from going to or using cloud resources in addition to asking cloud providers what new capabilities will they extend to support old environments.
  • Zombie list grows: More items will be declared dead meaning that they are either still alive, or have reached stability to the point where some want to see them dead so that their preferred technology or topic can take root.
  • Some other topics and trends include continued growing awareness that metrics and measurements matter for cloud, virtualization, data and storage networking. This also means a growing awareness that there are more metrics that matter for storage than cost per GByte or Tbyte that include IOPS, latency or response time, bandwidth, IO size, random and sequential along with availability. 2012 and 2013 will see continued respect being given to NAS at both the high end as well as low end of the market from enterprise down to consumer space. Speaking of consumer and SOHO (Small Office Home Office), now that SMB has generally been given respect or at least attention by many vendors, the new frontier will be to move further down market to the lower end of the SMB which is SOHO, just above consumer space. Of course some vendors have already closed the gap (or at least on paper, power point, web ex or you tube video) from consumer to enterprise. Of course Buzzword bingo will continue to be a popular game.
  • Oh, btw, DevOps will also appear in your vocabulary if it has not already.

Watch for more on these and other topics in the weeks and months to come and if you and to read more now, then get a copy of Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking. Also check out the top 25 new post of 2011 as well as some of the all time most popular posts at StorageIOblog.com that can also be seen on various other venues that pickup the full RSS feed or archive feed. Also check out the StorageIO news letter for more industry trends perspectives and commentary.

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

Top 2011 cloud virtualization storage and networking posts

Im in the process of wrapping up 2011 and getting ready for 2012, here is a list of the top 25 new posts from this past year at StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Here are the top 25 new blog posts from 2011

Check out the companion posts of the top 25 all time posts here as well as 2012 and 2013 predictions preview 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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Fall (December) 2011 StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Fall (December) 2011 News letter

Welcome to the Fall (December) 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) news letter. This follows the Summer 2011 edition.

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 Fall (December) 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the news letter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, 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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking now on Kindle

It only makes sense that a book about Clouds, Virtualization, Data Storage and Networking be available via a cloud service in electronic format. Today Amazon and my publisher (CRC Press Taylor and Francis) released a Kindle version of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking which joins the previously released hardcopy version also available at Amazon.com among other venues.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book on Kindle

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking has been declared The New Enterprise Tech Bible by noted industry blogger and host of the Nekkid Tech (@NekkidTech) pod cast Greg Knieriemen (@Knieriemen). Check out Episode #11 (The Enterprise Tech Bible) of the Nekkid Tech pod cast show here.

Comments and reviews about Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking can be found at Amazon.com along with those from Stephen Guendert, PhD (@DrSteveGuendert) at CMG MeasureIT (@cmgnews) who says: Gregs latest book is the ibuprofen that will make these cloud computing information overload headaches go away. Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking is the single source you can read to get a clear understanding of the fundamentals of the cloud.

Greg Brunton, EDS, an HP Company commented: With all the chatter in the market about cloud storage and how it can solve all your problems, the industry needed a clear breakdown of the facts and how to use Cloud cloud storage effectively. Gregs latest book does exactly that.

Google preview of Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book

Want to know more besides viewing the Google preview above?

Check out this free PDF download of Chapter 1 and view a PDF flyer with more information about the book including discount codes for ordering via the CRC Press or visit the StorageIO books page. In addition to Amazon Kindle version, other ebook formats including (PDF) are available here (bookdepository.com), and here (CRCnetBase) including each chapter.

View this post which has links too more information about cloud conversations and discussions.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

What industry pundits love and loathe about data storage

Drew Robb has a good article about what IT industry pundits including vendors, analysts, and advisors loath including comments from myself.

In the article Drew asks: What do you really love about storage and what are your pet peeves?

One of my comments and perspectives is that I like Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) in addition to traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDD) along with Solid State Devices (SSDs). As much as I like HHDDs, I also believe that with any technology, they are not the best solution for everything, however they can also be used in many ways than being seen. Here is the fifth installment of a series on HHDDs that I have done since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

Seagate Momentus XT
HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

Molly Rector VP of marketing at tape summit resources vendor Spectra Logic mentioned that what she does not like is companies that base their business plan on patent law trolling. I would have expected something different along the lines of countering or correcting people that say tape sucks, tape is dead, or that tape is the cause problem of anything wrong with storage thus clearing the air or putting up a fight that tape summit resources. Go figure…

Another of my comments involved clouds of which there are plenty of conversations taking place. I do like clouds (I even recently wrote a book involving them) however Im a fan of using them where applicable to coexist and enhance other IT resources. Dont be scared of clouds, however be ready, do your homework, listen, learn, do proof of concepts to decide best practices, when, where, what and how to use them.

Speaking of clouds, click here to read about who is responsible for cloud data loss and cast your vote, along with viewing what do you think about IT clouds in general here.

Mike Karp (aka twitter @storagewonk ) an analyst with Ptak Noel mentions that midrange environments dont get respect from big (or even startup) vendors.

I would take that a step further by saying compared to six or so years ago, SMB are getting night and day better respect along with attention by most vendors, however what is lacking is respect of the SOHO sector (e.g. lower end of SMB down to or just above consumer).

Granted some that have traditional sold into those sectors such as server vendors including Dell and HP get it or at least see the potential along with traditional enterprise vendor EMC via its Iomega . Yet I still see many vendors including startups in general discounting, shrugging off or sneering at the SOHO space similar to those who dissed or did not respect the SMB space several years ago. Similar to the SMB space, SOHO requires different products, packaging, pricing and routes to market via channel or etail mechanisms which means change for some vendors. Those vendors who embraced the SMB and realized what needed to change to adapt to those markets will also stand to do better with the SOHO.

Here is the reason that I think SOHO needs respect.

Simple, SOHOs grow up to become SMBs, SMBs grow up to become SMEs, SMEs grow up to become enterprises and not to mention that the amount of data being generated, moved, processed and stored continues to grow. The net result is that SMBs along with SOHO storage demands will continue to grow and for those vendors who can adjust to support those markets will also stand to gain new customers that in turn can become plans for other solution offerings.

Cloud conversations

Not surprising Eran Farajun of Asigra which has been doing cloud backups decades before they were known as clouds loves backup (and restores). However I am surprised that Eran did not jump on the its time to modernize and re architect data protection theme. Oh well, will have to have a chat with Eran on that sometime.

What was surprising were comments from Panzura who has a good distributed (e.g. read also cloud) file system that can be used for various things including online reference data. Panzura has a solution that normally I would not even think about in the context of being pulled into a Datadomain or dedupe appliance type discussion (e.g tape sucks or other similar themes). So it is odd that they are playing to the tape sucks camp and theme vs. playing to where the technology can really shine which IMHO is in the global, distributed, scale out and cloud file system space. Oh well, I guess you go with what you know or has worked in the past to get some attention.

Molly Rector of Spectra also mentioned that she likes High Performance Computing, surprised that she did not throw in high productivity computing as well in conjunction with big data, big bandwidth, green, dedupe, power, disk, tape and related buzzword bingo terms.

Also there are some comments from myself about cost cutting.

While I see the need for organizations to cut costs during tough economic times, Im not a fan of simply cutting cost for the sake of cost cutting as opposed to finding and removing complexity that in turn remove costs of doing work. In other words, Im a fan of finding and removing waste, becoming more effective and productive along with removing the cost of doing a particular piece of work. This in the end meets the aim of bean counters to cut costs, however can be done in a way that does not degrade service levels or customer service experience. For example instead of looking to cut backup costs, do you know where the real costs of doing data protection exist (hint swapping out media is treating the symptoms) and if so, what can be done to streamline those from the source of the problem downstream to the target (e.g. media or medium). In other words, redesign, review, modernize how data protection is done, leverage data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques including archive, compression, consolidation, data management, dedupe and other technologies in effective and creative ways, after all, return on innovation is the new ROI.

Checkout Drews article here to read more on the above topics and themes.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)

Seagate recently announced the next generation Momentus XT Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) with a capacity of 750GB in a 2.5 inch form factor and MSRP of $245.00 USD including integrated NAND flash solid state device (SSD). As a refresher, the Momentus XT is a HHDD in that it includes a 4GB nand flash SSD integrated with a 500GB (or larger) 7,200 RPM hard disk drive (HDD) in a single 2.5 inch package.

Seagate Momentus XT
HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

This is the fifth installment of a series that I have done since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

Whats is new with the new generation.
Besides extra storage space capacity up to 750GB (was 500GB), there is twice as much single level cell (SLC) nand flash memory (8GB vs. 4GB in previous generation) along with an enhanced interface using 6Gb per second SATA that supports native command queuing (NCQ) for better performance. Note that NCQ was available on the previous generation Momentus XT that used a 3Gb SATA interface. Other enhancements include a larger block or sector size of 4096 bytes vs. traditional 512 bytes on previous generation storage devices.

This bigger sector size results in less overhead with managing data blocks on large capacity storage devices. Also new are caching enhancements are FAST Factor Flash Management, FAST Factor Boot and Adaptive Memory Technology. Not to be confused with EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering the other FAST; Seagate FAST is technology that exists inside the storage drive itself. FAST Factor boot enables systems to boot and be productive with speeds similar to SSD or several times faster than traditional HDDs.

The FAST Factor Flash Management provides the integrated intelligence to maximize use of the nand flash or SSD capabilities along with spinning HDD to boot performance, keep up compatibility with different systems and their operating systems. In addition to performance and interoperability, data integrity and SSD flash endurance are also enhanced for investment protection. The Adaptive Memory technology is a self learning algorithm to give SSD like performance for often used applications and data to close the storage capacity too performance gap that has increased along with data center bottlenecks.

Some questions and discussion comments:

When to use SSD vs. HDD vs. HHDD?
If you need the full speed of SSD to boost performance across all data access and cost is not an issue for available capacity that is where you should be focused. However if you are looking for lowest total cost of storage capacity with no need for performance, than lower cost high capacity HDDs should be on your shopping list. On the other hand, if you want a mix of performance and capacity at an effective price, than HHDDs should be considered.

Why the price jump compared to first generation HHDD?
IMHO, it has a lot to do with current market conditions, supply and demand.

With recent floods in Thailand and forecasted HDD and other technology shortages, the lay of supply and demand applies. This means that the supply may be constrained for some products causing demand to rise for others. Your particular vendor or supplier may have inventory however will be less likely to heavily discount while there are shortages or market opportunities to keep prices high. There are already examples of this if you check around on various sites to compare prices now vs. a few months ago. Granted it is the holiday shopping season for both people as well as organizations spending the last of their available budgets so more demand for available supplies.

What kind of performance or productivity have I seen with HHDDs?
While I have not yet tested and compared the second generation or new devices, I can attest to the performance improvements resulting in better productivity over the past year using Seagate Momentus XT HHDDs compared to traditional HDDs. Here is a post that you can follow to see some boot performance comparisons as part of some virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) sizing testing I did earlier this year that included both HHDD and HDD.

HHDD desktop 1

HDD desktop 1

HHDD desktop 2

Avg. IOPS

334

69 to 113

186 to 353

Avg. MByte sec

5.36

1.58 to 2.13

2.76 to 5.2

Percent IOPS read

94

80 to 88

92

Percent MBs read

87

63 to 77

84

Mbytes read

530

201 to 245

504

Mbytes written

128

60 to 141

100

Avg. read latency

2.24ms

8.2 to 9.5ms

1.3ms

Avg. write latency

10.41ms

20.5 to 14.96ms

8.6ms

Boot duration

120 seconds

120 to 240 sec

120

Click here to read the entire post about the above table

When will I jump on the SSD bandwagon?
Great question, I have actually been on the SSD train for several decades using them, selling them, covering, analyzing and consulting around them along with other storage mediums including HDD, HHDD, cloud and tape. I have some SSDs and will eventually put them into my laptops, workstations and servers as primary storage when the opportunity makes sense.

Will HHDDs help backup and other data protection tasks?
Yes, in fact I initially used my Momentus XTs as backup or data protection targets along with for moving large amounts of data between systems faster than what my network could support.

Why not use a SSD?
If you need the performance and can afford the price, go SSD!

On the other hand, if you are looking to add a small 64GB, 128GB or even 256GB SSD while retaining a larger capacity, slower and lower cost HDD, an HHDD should be considered as an option. By using an HHDD instead of both a SSD and HDD, you will cut the need of figuring out how to install both in space constrained laptops, desktop or workstations. In addition, you will cut the need to either manually move data between the different devices or avoid having to acquire software or drivers to do that for you.

How much does the new Seagate Momentus XT HHDD cost?
Manufactures Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is listed at $245 for a 750GB version.

Does the Momentus XT HHDD need any special drivers, adapters or software?
No, they are plug and play. There is no need for caching or performance acceleration drivers, utilities or other software. Likewise no needs for tiering or data movement tools.

How do you install an HHDD into an existing system?
Similar to installing a new HDD to replace an existing one if you are familiar with that process. If not, it goes like this (or uses your own preferred approach).

  • Attach a new HHDD to an existing system using a cable
  • Utilize a disk clone or image tool to make a copy of the existing HDD to HHDD
  • Note that the system may not be able to be used during the copy, so plan ahead.
  • After the clone or image copy is made, shutdown system, remove existing HDD and replace it with the HHDD that was connected to the system during the copy (remember to remove the copy cable).
  • Reboot the system to verify all is well, note that it will take a few reboots before the HHDD will start to learn your data and files along with how they are used.
  • Regarding your old HDD, save it, put it in a safe place and use it as a disaster recovery (DR) backup. For example if you have a safe deposit box or somewhere else safe, put it there for when you will need it in the future.


Seagate Momentus XT and USB to SATA cable

Can an HHDD fit into an existing slot in a laptop, workstation or server?
Yes. In fact, unlike a HDD and SSD combination, that requires multiple slots or forcing one device to be external, HHDDs like the Momentus XT simply use the space where your current HDD is installed.

How do you move data to it?
Beyond the first installation described above, the HHDD appears as just another local device meaning you can move data to or from it like any other HDD, SSD or CD.

Do you need automated tiering software?
No, not unless you need it for some other reason or if you want to use an HHDD as the lower cost, larger capacity option as a companion to a smaller SSD.

Do I have any of the new or second generation HHDDs?
Not yet, maybe soon and I will do another momentus moment point when that time arrives. For the time being, I will continue to use the first generation Momentus XT HHDDs

Bottom line (for now), If you are considering a large capacity, HDDs check out the HHDDs for an added performance boost including faster boot times as well as accessing other data quicker.

On the other hand if you want an SSD however your budget restricts you to a smaller capacity version, look into how an HHDD can be a viable option for some of your needs.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage

Solid state devices (SSD) are a popular topic gaining both industry adoption and customer deployment to speed up storage performance. Here is a link to a recent conversation that I had with John Hillard to discuss industry trends and perspectives pertaining to using SSD to boost performance and productivity for SMB and other environments.

I/O consolidation from Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) www.storageio.com/book3.html

SSDs can be a great way for organizations to do IO consolidation to reduce costs in place of using many hard disk drives (HDDs) grouped together to achieve a certain level of performance. By consolidating the IOs off of many HDDs that often end up being under utilized from a space capacity basis, organizations can boost performance for applications while reducing, or reusing HDD based storage capacity for other purposes including growth.

Here is some related material and comments:
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?
SSD and Storage System Performance
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) getting too big?
Solid state devices and the hosting industry
Achieving Energy Efficiency using FLASH SSD
Using SSD flash drives to boost performance

Four ways to use SSD storage
4 trends that shape how agencies handle storage
Giving storage its due

You can read a transcript of the conversation and listen to the pod cast here, or download the MP3 audio here.

Ok, nuff said about SSD (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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations

Here is a link to a series cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations posts that Im doing over at IT-Toolbox. Each post in the series covers various topics along with a frequently asked question that I encounter pertaining to clouds, virtualization and storage networking.

Here is some related material:
The blame game: Does cloud storage result in data loss?
What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products
Clouds and Data Loss: Time for CDP (Commonsense Data Protection)?
Poll: What Do You Think of IT Clouds?
Clouds are like Electricity: Dont be Scared
Cloud conversations: Loss of data access vs. data loss
Server and Storage Virtualization – Life beyond Consolidation
Should Everything Be Virtualized?

Check out the cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations series 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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

How to write, publish and promote a book or blog

Have you ever read an article, blog post or a book and said to yourself that you could do that, perhaps even better?

Well, unless you have already done so, what are you waiting for to write a book, blog, article or create some other form of content using different mediums or venues?

The other evening I attended a local Stillwater (Artreach St Croix) event (Publishers Forum) with my wife (karenofarcola.com). Karen is working on getting her first book (fiction for children and young adults) published so she was interested in meeting the different publishers. For me I wanted to learn about the local publishers, hear what they had to say in addition to meeting the purveyor of a local book store (Valley Book Seller) who helped promote the event.

It was interesting listening to the panel made up of a nonprofit publisher (Milkweed Editions), a full service self publishing venue (Beaver Pond Press) and regional publishing house (Tristin Publishing).

Having formally published books (e.g. with traditional publishers (Elseiver and CRC/Taylor Francis), ISBNs, Library of Congress (LOC) registration) along with contributing on other projects, not to mention over a thousand articles, tips, reports, white papers, solution briefs, videos and other content, I often get asked what does it take to write a book, blog or other material.

Intel reccomended readingCloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press)

I also get told by people that they could do a better job to which I ask them then why dont they do something about it vs. simply saying that they could do something better.

Back to the Art Reach St Croix publishers forum event, the attendees were mainly aspiring authors looking to get their first works published. Having already been down the path that many in the room were looking to go (get published) it was interesting to hear the various questions and discussion topics. Some of those questions were about the process of self publishing vs. working with the publisher (large or small) in addition to how much costs or how to get discovered. It was also great to hear the panelist discuss some of the hurdles authors face in getting their books published along with promoting their works.

I learned several years ago before I did my first solo book was a tip that another author told me of the importance of promotion. That is your publisher will help enable, however it is up to you the author to promote your works by creating a platform or means of interacting with different audiences. Consequently it was fun to hear the panelist talk with the authors on the importance of creating a platform including a blog, twitter, Google Plus, facebook, doing articles and appearances to help create awareness. What was fun to watch were the authors who seemed to be more comfortable with creating their works and then waiting for the results to occur as opposed to helping make their work a success.

Anyways, for those who are aspiring to write a book, blog or article, or even for those who are content being arm chair authors or Monday morning quarterbacks, here is a link to a series about how to write a book or blog. The series (how to write a book or blog) can be read over at the VMware communities site that Im contributing for as a vExpert.

Oh, and for you aspiring authors or bloggers wondering about creating and developing a platform, what you are reading here is an example of doing just that. In other words, my platform includes what you are reading here in addition to on my regular blog or other venues including Google Plus (G+), Facebook, LinkedIn and twitter among other venues.

So what are you waiting for, go get your book or blog or article written, published and start promoting it.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

Do you know HDS or what it means?

How much do you know about HDS?

When you hear HDS in the context of information technology do you think of Hitachi Data Systems?

Along with a bunch of other IT industry advisors, analysts, bloggers, consultants, financiers and pundits or influencers, Im attending a event being sponsored by HDS this week in San Jose California (SJC).

For those not familiar, as a division of the much larger Japan based conglomerate named Hitachi, HDS sells various types of data storage systems and associated management tools along with services.

While on the airplane from Seattle (SEA) to SJC the other night (Disclosure: HDS picked up the one way coach ticket) it occurred to me different things that HDS could refer to besides Hitachi Data Systems.

In addition to being the International Airtranspot Transport Association (IATA) code for Hoedspruit Airport in South Africa where HDS is in the process of buying Shoeden Data Systems (SDS), here are some other possibilities of what HDS could mean.

Hadoop Data Solutions
Half height Disk Shelve
Hardware Disks and Software
Has Dedupe Solutions
Has Disaster recovery Solutions
Has Disk Story
Has Disks Servers
Has Diverse Solutions
Has Done Servers
Have Daily Schnitzel (in Vienna aka Wien)

HDDs Depend on Software
Healthcare Data Systems
Helps Datacenters Save
Helps Data Survives
Helps Data Synchronize
Helps Delete Spam
Helps Dell Servers
Helps Disk Spin
High Density SAS
Houses Data on SSD
How Data Saved
Hu (Yoshida) Discusses Storage
Huge Disk System
HVAC Down Stairs (Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning)
Hybrid Data Systems

Ok, nuff said for now in case the HDS influence folks dont have a sense of influence humor.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved