Category: I/O Networking

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StorageIO going Dutch: Seminar for Storage and I/O professionals

Data and Storage Networking Industry Trends and Technology Seminar

Greg Schulz of StorageIO in conjunction with or dutch parter Brouwer Storage Consultancy will be presenting a two day seminar for Storage Professionals Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th of May 2011 at Ampt van Nijkerk Netherlands.

Brouwer Storage ConsultanceyThe Server and StorageIO Group

This two day interactive education seminar for storage professionals will focus on current data and storage networking trends, technology and business challenges along with available technologies and solutions. During the seminar learn what technologies and management techniques are available, how different vendors solutions compare and what to use when and where. This seminar digs into the various IT tools, techniques, technologies and best practices for enabling an efficient, effective, flexible, scalable and resilient data infrastructure.

The format of this two seminar will be a mix of presentation and interactive discussion allowing attendees plenty of time to discuss among themselves and with seminar presenters. Attendees will gain insight into how to compare and contrast various technologies and solutions in addition to identifying and aligning those solutions to their specific issues, challenges and requirements.

Major themes that will be discussed include:

  • Who is doing what with various storage solutions and tools
  • Is RAID still relevant for today and tomorrow
  • Are hard disk drives and tape finally dead at the hands of SSD and clouds
  • What am I routinely hearing, seeing or being asked to comment on
  • Enabling storage optimization, efficiency and effectiveness (performance and capacity)
  • What do I see as opportunities for leveraging various technologies, techniques,trends
  • Supporting virtual servers including re-architecting data protection
  • How to modernize data protection (backup/restore, BC, DR, replication, snapshots)
  • Data footprint reduction (DFR) including archive, compression and dedupe
  • Clarifying cloud confusion, don’t be scared, however look before you leap

In addition this two day seminar will look at what are some new and improved technologies and techniques, who is doing what along with discussions around industry and vendor activity including mergers and acquisitions. Greg will also preview the contents and themes of his new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) for enabling efficient, optimized and effective information services delivery across cloud, virtual and traditional environments.

Buzzwords and topic themes to be discussed among others include:
E2E, FCoE and DCB, CNAs, SAS, I/O virtualization, server and storage virtualization, public and private cloud, Dynamic Infrastructures, VDI, RAID and advanced data protection options, SSD, flash, SAN, DAS and NAS, object storage, application optimized or aware storage, open storage, scale out storage solutions, federated management, metrics and measurements, performance and capacity, data movement and migration, storage tiering, data protection modernization, SRA and SRM, data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe), unified and multi-protocol storage, solution bundle and stacks.

For more information or to register contact Brouwer Storage Consultancy

Brouwer Storage Consultancy
Olevoortseweg 43
3861 MH Nijkerk
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31-33-246-6825
Cell: +31-652-601-309
Fax: +31-33-245-8956
Email: info@brouwerconsultancy.com
Web: www.brouwerconsultancy.com

Brouwer Storage Consultancey

Learn about other events involving Greg Schulz and StorageIO at www.storageio.com/events

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Using Removable Hard Disk Drives (RHDDs)

Removable hard disk drives (RHDD) are a form of removable media which includes magnetic tape that address many common use cases. Usage scenarios include enabling bulk data portability for larger environments or for D2D backup where the media needs to be physically moved offsite for small and mid sized environments. RHDDs include among others those from Imation such as the Odyssey (which is what I use) and the Prostor RDX (OEMed by Imation and others). RHDD, tape along with other forms of portable media including those that use flash by being removable and portable presumable should have some extra packaging protection to safeguard against static shock in addition to supporting encryption capabilities.

Compared to disks including RHDD, tape for most and particularly larger environments should have an overall lower media cost for parking, preserving and when needed serving inactive or archived data (e.g. the changing roll of tape from day to back up to archive). Of course your real costs will vary by use in addition to how combined with data footprint reduction and other technologies.

A big benefit of RHDDs is that they are random meaning data can be searched and found quickly vs. tape media which has great sequential or streaming capabilities if you have a system that can support that ability. The other benefit of RHDD is that depending on their implementation, they should plug and play with your systems appearing as disk without any extra drivers or configuration or software tools making for ease of use. Being removable they can be used for portability such as sending data to a cloud or MSP as part of an initial bulk copy, or sending data offset or taking home as part of an offsite backup, data protection or BC/DR strategy as well as being used for archiving. The warning with RHDD is their cost per TByte will generally be higher than compared to tape as well as having to have a docking station or specific drive interface depending on specific product and configuration.

RHDD are a great compliment to traditional fixed or non removable disk, Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) and Solid State Device (SSD) based storage as well as coexist with cloud or MSP backup and archive solutions. The smaller the environment the more affordable using RHDD become vs. tape for backup and archive operations or when portability is required. Even if using a cloud or managed service provider (MSP) backup provider, network bandwidth costs, availability or performance may limit the amount of data that can be moved in a cost effective way. For example placing an archive and gold or master copy of your static data on a RHDD that may be kept on site in a safe off-site place and then sending data that is routinely changed to the cloud or MSP provider (think full local and offsite plus partial full and incremental in the cloud).

By leveraging archiving and data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques including dedupe and compression, you can stretch your budget by sending less data to cloud or MSP services while using removable media for data protection. You would be surprised how many TBytes of data can be kept in a safe deposit box. For my own business, I have used RHDDs for several years to keep gold master copies as well as archives offsite as part of a disk to disk (D2D) or D2D2RHDD strategy. The data protection strategy is also complimented by sending active data to a cloud backup MSP (encrypted of course). It might be belt and suspenders, however it is also eating my own dog food practicing what I talk about and the approach has proven itself a few times.

Here are some related links to more material:
Removable disk drives vs. tape storage for small businesses
The pros and cons of removable disk storage for small businesses
Removable storage media appealing to SMBs, but with caveats
StorageIO Momentus Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) Moments

Ok, nuff said for now

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Spring 2011 Server and StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Spring 2011 Newsletter

Welcome to the Spring 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Winter 2011 edition.

You can access 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 Spring 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter 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.

Cheers gs

Nuff said for now

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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The new Green IT: Efficient, Effective, Smart and Productive

Given the buzz about big data and conversations or confusion around clouds along with virtualizing virtually anything possible, Green IT has fallen off the Buzzword Bingo Bandwagon.

Green IT like so many other buzzwords and trends typically go through a hype cycle before getting tired, worn out, or disillusioned (see here and here). Often these buzzwords will go to Some Day Isle for some rest and recuperation before reappearing later as part of a second or third buzzword wave either making it to broad adoption which means the plateau of profitability (for vendors or vars) and productivity (for customers) or disappearing.

Some Day Isle for those not familiar with it is a visional or fictional place that some day you will go to, a wishful happy place so to speak that is perfect for hyperbole R and R. After some R and R, these trends, technologies or techniques often reappear well rested and ready for the next wave of buzz, FUD, hype and activity.

Keep in mind that industry adoption (e.g. everybody is talking about it) can differ from industry deployment (e.g. some people have actually paid for, deployed and using the technology) to broad customer adoption (e.g. many people are actually paying for, deploying and using the technology on a routine basis).

Confusion still reigns around Green IT not surprising given the heavy dose of Green Washing that has occurred.

Consequently Green IT themes or pitches often fall on deaf ears as people have either become numb or ignore the Green washing hype or FUD. For example many people will skip reading this post because the word Green is in the title assuming that it is another CO2 or related themed piece missing out on the other themes or messages here. Unfortunately as I have discussed in the past, there remains a Green Gap that results in missed opportunities for vendors, vars, service providers, IT organizations along with those who would like to see environmental benefits or change.

Another example of a Green gap is messaging around energy avoidance as being efficient vs. using energy in a more productive or effective manner (doing more work with the same or fewer resources) shown in the figure below.

Tiered Storage
Expanding focus from energy avoidance to energy usage effectiveness

In routine conversations with IT professionals it is clear that the Green Gap and thus missed opportunities will continue for some time until the business and economic values of efficient, effective, smart and productive IT are understood to have environmental benefits as a by product and thus being Green. Watch for more missed messaging around CO2 and related themes popular with so called Greenies (or if you prefer environmentalists) that miss the mark with most business and IT organizations.

Business and thus IT are driven by economics and as such will invest where they can reduce complexity and costs, become more efficient and effective while increasing productivity and reducing waste by working smarter. In other words, by changing how information services are delivered in a smarter more effective efficient manner maximizes what resources are used enabling more to be done in a denser footprint (budget, people staffing, management, power, cooling, floor space) that have positive environmental benefits. Put another way, a benefit for IT organizations to remove complexity results in lower costs, by becoming more efficient and effective reducing waste results in better productivity and fewer missed opportunities meaning enhanced profits. The net result is that environmental concerns get a free ride or being funded as a result of IT organizations improving their productivity which of course should have a business benefit.

Efficient and Optimized IT Wheel of Oppourtunity
Wheel of Opportunity: Various techniques and technologies for infrastructure optimization

Efficient and effective IT (aka the other Green IT) that links to common technology and business issues with the benefit of helping the environment can be accomplished using a combination approaches. The approaches for enabling an efficient, effective, smarter and productive IT environment includes from a generic perspective various technologies, techniques and best practices shown in the wheel of opportunity figure.

For example:

Here are some related links for additional reading:

Also check out my book for enabling efficient, effective and smart IT The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) including a free sample chapter download here.

Ok, nuff said for now, go hug a tree, your computer, hybrid car, droid, ipad or whatever suits your needs.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), 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

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The data storage prayer

On a lighter note.

For those who follow or are involved with data storage religiously with a passion, then this is for you. As for others who do not get or understand what this is about, just ask those who are devout data storage followers.

Now I lay my data to sleep
I pray the lord my backups to keep
If a disk should die before I wake
I hope like heck RAID works and my resume is up to date

Nuff said, now get back to work or what ever it was you were doing before reading this and best wishes!

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?

Here is an article by Drew Robb over at Enterprise Storage Forum about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and its state of adoption. Drews article includes comments and perspectives from myself around where FCoE is going and why it is on a long road and not a sprint for a short temporal technology play (e.g. not a quick passing fad or bandwagon trend).

If you measure FCoE adoption in months, sure, its been slow to gain adoption and deployment similar to how Ethernet, Fibre Channel (FC) and even iSCSI took time to evolve. Part of the time involved is for developing the standards, implementing the technology as well as expanding the capabilities of the new tools. Another part of the time required for technologies that are targeted to be around for a decade or more include ecosystem maturity, education not to mention customers being comfortable with along with having budget to buy the new items.

I have previously said that FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment and depending on your view, that could be either entering, exiting or there to stay. Not surprisingly some cheerleaders thought that saying FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment was being cynical, while some cynics were cheerleading.

My point around FCoE is that any technology or paradigm that goes through a hype cycle that will actually have long term legs or be around for years if not decades goes through a post initial hype disillusionment phase before reappearing. Technologies or trends that go through the trough of disillusionment that will eventually reappear sometimes go to Some Day Isle for rest and relaxation (R and R). Some Day Isle for those not familiar with it is a visional or fictional place that some day you will go to, a wishful happy place so to speak that is perfect for hyperbole R and R. After some R and R, these trends, technologies or techniques often reappear well rested and ready for the next wave of buzz, fud, hype and activity.

Certainly there have been and will continue to be more battles or matches tied to early deployments along with plenty of hype or FUD. After all, if FCoE were to simply pack up and go away like some cynics or naysayers suggest, what will they have to talk, blog, write or speak about? Similarly if FCoE magically goes mainstream tomorrow, the cheerleaders will have to find a new bandwagon or Shiny New Toy (SNT) to rally around.

Also as I have said in the past, its not if, rather when FCoE will be deployed in yours or your customers environment along with how and using what tools or technologies. Another question to pose around FCoE as a converged technology is will you use it in a true converged manner meaning adapting how server, storage and networking resources are managed including best practices? Or, will you use FCoE in a hybrid SAN or LAN mode using traditional SAN and LAN management practice and separate teams perhaps even battling over who owns the tools or technology.

Fwiw, in case you did not pick up on it from my previous posts, tips, articles and coverage in books, I think that FCoE has a very bright future as does NAS and iSCSI along with shared SAS as complimentary technologies when used for the applicable scenario.

What is your take, Is FCoE struggling to gain traction?

Is FCoE on a normal technology evolution path and timeline?

Is it too early to tell what the future holds for FCoE?

Is FCoE too little to late and if so why?

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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StorageIO V20.11 (2011) events seminars and web casts schedule

The V20.11 (e.g. 2011 or follow up from V20.10) Server and StorageIO (StorageIO) out and about events schedule continues to evolve.

In the meantime, here are a few (actually a couple dozen) seminars and web casts currently on the event calendar for 2011 that I will be speaking or presenting at. Topics and themes include Server and Storage Optimization, Clouds, Virtualization, Data Protection Modernization (HA, BC, DR, Backup/restore) along with Data Footprint Reduction (DFR including archive, compression, dedupe), End to End (E2E) Management, efficient IT data centers (and storage) among other related items.

Later this summer watch for the release of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) as well as keep an eye on the StorageIO events page for additional events or details to appear. Also check out the news page for commentary on industry activities, announcements, trends or related topics in addition to the tips (or articles) page. You can also view videos, webinars and pod casts along with news letters containing links from while out and about during 2011 activities (or from past events).

WhenVenueEvent Name Location
Nov 10, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerLos Angeles, CA
Nov 8, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerSeattle, WA
Nov 3, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerDenver, CO
Nov 1, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerChicago, IL
Sept 29, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerMinneapolis, MN
Aug 4, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerSan Francisco, CA
Jul 28, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerHouston, TX
Jul 21, 2011 Event keynote Speaker: Data Center Summit: Virtualization, Business Continuity and Cloud ComputingRaleigh, NC
Jun 28, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerBoston, MA
June 23, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerNew York City
June 21, 2011 Event keynote Speaker: Data Center Summit: Virtualization, Business Continuity and Cloud ComputingTampa, FL
May 18, 2011Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best PracticesIrvine, CA
May 12, 2011Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best PracticesChicago, IL
May 10, 2011Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best PracticesDallas, TX
May 5, 2011Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best PracticesNew York, NY
May 3, 2011Keynote: 2011 Virtualization Best PracticesBoston, MA
Apr 28, 2011 Data Center Summit BC and DR Track Key note speaker: Protect, preserve and server your organizations essential applications and information services in an affordable mannerDallas, TX
Apr 12, 2011 Event keynote Speaker: Data Center Summit: Virtualization, Business Continuity and Cloud ComputingSt. Louis, MO
Mar 29, 2011WebcastCloud and Virtual BC/DRWebcast
Mar 24, 2011WebcastTapes Evolving Data Storage RoleWebcast
Mar 15, 2011Wildfire GrilleKeynote: Virtualization, storage and the enterprise cloudEden Prairie, MN
Feb 10, 2011 Guest participant – Enabling safe and secure SaaSOn demand eSeminar
Jan 31, 2011century CollegeCloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking: Industry TrendsMahtomedi MN
Jan 12, 2011 Presenter – E2E Awareness and insight for cloud, virtualized and legacy IT environments
See more here including viewing the webcast		Virtual event
More information

Watch here for more events updates and information as well as signup for the free StorageIO news letter here.

Nuff said for now, look forward to seeing as well as hearing from you while out and about during 2011.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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From bits to bytes: Decoding Encoding

With networking, care should be taken to understand if a given speed or performance capacity is being specified in bits or bytes as well as in base 2 (binary) or base 10 (decimal).

Another consideration and potential point of confusion are line rates (GBaud) and link speed which can vary based on encoding and low level frame or packet size. For example 1GbE along with 1, 2, 4 and 8Gb Fibre Channel along with Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) use an 8b/10b encoding scheme. This means that at the lowest physical layer 8bits of data are placed into 10bits for transmission with 2 bits being for data integrity.

With an 8Gb link using 8b/10b encoding, 2 out of every 10 bits are overhead. To determine the actual data throughput for bandwidth, or, number of IOPS, frames or packets per second is a function of the link speed, encoding and baud rate. For example, 1Gb FC has a 1.0625 Gb per second speed which is multiple by the current generation so 8Gb FC or 8GFC would be 8 x 1.0625 = 8.5Gb per second.

Remember to factor in that encoding overhead (e.g. 8 of 10 bits are for data with 8b/10b) and usable bandwidth on the 8GFC link is about 6.8Gb per second or about 850Mbytes (6.8Gb / 8 bits) per second. 10GbE uses 64b/66b encoding which means that for every 64 bits of data, only 2 bits are used for data integrity checks thus less overhead.

What do all of this bits and bytes have to do with clouds and virtual data storage network?

Quite a bit when you consider what we have talked about the need to support more information processing, moving as well as storing in a denser footprint.

In order to support higher densities faster servers, storage and networks are not enough and require various approaches to reducing the data footprint impact.

What this means is for fast networks to be effective they also have to have lower overhead to avoid moving more extra data in the same amount of time instead using that capacity for productive work and data.

PCIe leverages multiple serial unidirectional point to point links, known as lanes, compared to traditional PCI that used a parallel bus based design. With traditional PCI, the bus width varied from 32 to 64 bits while with PCIe, the number of lanes combined with PCIe version and signaling rate determines performance. PCIe interfaces can have one, two, four, eight, sixteen or thirty two lanes for data movement depending on card or adapter format and form factor.  For example, PCI and PCIx performance can be up to 528 MByte per second with 64 bit 66 MHz signaling rate.

 

PCIe Gen 1

PCIe Gen 2

PCIe Gen 3

Giga transfers per second

2.5

5

8

Encoding scheme

8b/10b

8b/10b

128b/130b

Data rate per lane per second

250MB

500MB

1GB

x32 lanes

8GB

16GBs

32GB

Table 1: PCIe generation comparisons

Table 1 shows performance characteristics of PCIe various generations. With PCIe Gen 3, the effective performance essentially doubles however the actual underlying transfer speed does not double as it has in the past. Instead the improved performance is a combination of about 60 percent link speed and 40 percent efficiency improvements by switching from an 8b/10b to 128b/130b encoding scheme among other optimizations.

Serial interface

Encoding

PCIe Gen 1

8b/10b

PCIe Gen 2

8b/10b

PCIe Gen 3

128b/120b

Ethernet 1Gb

8b/10b

Ethernet 10Gb

64b/66b

Fibre Channel 1/2/4/8 Gb

8b/10b

SAS 6Gb

8b/10b

Table 2: Common encoding

Bringing this all together is that in order to support cloud and virtual computing environments, data networks need to become faster as well as more efficient otherwise you will be paying for more overhead per second vs. productive work being done. For example, with 64b/66b encoding on a 10GbE or FCoE link, 96.96% of the overall bandwidth or about 9.7Gb per second are available for useful work.

By comparison if an 8b/10b encoding were used, the result would be only 80% of available bandwidth for useful data movement. For environments or applications this means better throughput or bandwidth while for applications that require lower response time or latency it means more IOPS, frames or packets per second.

The above is an example of where a small change such as the encoding scheme can have large benefit when applied to high volume or large environments.

Learn more in The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) at https://storageio.com/books

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

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Winter 2011 Server and StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Winter 2011 Newsletter

 Welcome to the Winter 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Fall 2011 edition.

You can access 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 Winter 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter 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.

Cheers gs

Nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

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Tape talk time (tape summit and tape is alive, for some)

Welcome to the tape summit resources and tape summit resources micro site with links for those who are interested in magnetic tape for backup, archive, BC, DR, big and little data

For being a declared dead or zombie technology (here, here or here) tape remains very much alive however its role is changing. There is no disputing that hard disk drives (HDDs) are continuing to expand their role for data protection including backup/restore, BC and DR where tape has been used  for decades.

What is also occurring is that tapes role is changing from day to day backup to that of longer term data preservation including archiving with more data stored on tape today than in past history at a lower cost. In fact the continued reduced cost per tape and improved capacity as well as utilization has worked against tape from a marketing competitive standpoint. For example if you look at a chart showing tape (media and drive) revenues you see a decline, similar to what was seen a couple of years ago for HDDs.

What is not shown on some charts are how many units (drives or media) shipped with more capacity for a given price (again what was reported for HDDs a few years ago) when net capacity had increased. Vendors of tape technology have also had a rather low profile particular for those with other technologies that have received more marketing resources (people, time, money). After all, if a product is on a plateau of productivity and profitability why spend time or effort on extensive marketing or promotion vs. directing resources to get new items into the market.

As a result, for those looking to make a case that tape is on the decline based on revenues to convince customers to move away from that technology should have a marketing freebie. Recently Oracle announced a new large capacity tape drive and media following on previous announcements of enhanced LTO roadmap and future 35TByte  tape capabilities announced January 2010 by Fujifilm and IBM.

For those who are interested following are some links to various topics including how SSD, HDD and tape can coexist complementing each other for different roles or functions. As to those who do not like tape, feel free to read if you like as there is also material on SSD, HDD, dedupe, cloud, data protection and other topics.

Some previous blog posts:

Here are some additional articles, commentary and reports pertaining to tape related topics:

Something tells me we will be hearing, reading or watching more about tape being alive in the months to come.

Nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Thanks for visiting tape summit resources and tape summit resources micro site with links for those who are interested in magnetic tape for backup, archive, BC, DR, big and little data

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

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What have I been doing this winter?

Its been almost a month since my last post and want to say hello and let you know what I have been doing.

What I have been doing is:

  • Accumulating a long list of ideas for upcoming blog post, article, tips, webinars and other content.
  • Recording some podcasts, web casts doing interviews and commentary along with a few articles here and there.
  • Working with some new venues where if all comes together you should be seeing material or commentary appearing soon.
  • Filling some dates for the 2011 out and about events and activities page.
  • Doing research in several different areas as well as working with clients on various project activities, many of which that are NDA.
  • Getting some recently finished content ready to appear on the main web site as well as in the blog and other venues.
  • Attending vendor events and briefing sessions on solutions some of which are yet to be announced.
  • Enjoying the cold and snowy winter as best as can be (see some videos here) while trying to avoid cold and flue season.

In addition to the above, I have been trying to stay very focused on is getting my new book which is titled Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) wrapped up for a summer 2011 release. This is my third solo book project that is in addition to co writing or contributing to several other book projects.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking

Im doing the project the old fashioned way which means writing it myself as opposed to using ghost writers along with a traditional publishing house (CRC, same as my last book) all of which takes a bit more time. For anyone who has done a project like this you know what is involved. For those who have not it includes research, writing, editing, working with editors and copyeditors, subject matter experts doing initial reviews, illustrations and page layouts, markups, more edits and proofs. Then there are the general project management activities along with marketing and rollout plans, companion presentation material working with the publisher and others.

Anyway, hope you are all doing well, look forward to sharing more with you soon, now it is time to get back to work…

Nuff said for now

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
twitter @storageio

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Are you on the StorageIO IT Data Infrastructure industry links page?

Hey IT data infrastructure vendors, VARs or service providers, are you on the Server and StorageIO IT industry interesting links page?

Dont worry, its free and no obligation!

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Why do I make this links page and list available for free to those who read it, as well as to those who are on it?

Simple, I use it myself to keep a list of companies, firms or organizations that are involved with data infrastructures (servers, storage, I/O and networking, hardware, software, services) that I have come across and worth keeping track of that I also feel worth sharing with others.

Of course, if you feel compelled, you can always contact Server and StorageIO to discuss other services or simply buy one of my books including Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) at Amazon or one of the other many fine global venues.

 

Still interested, all you need to do is the following:

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Please do not submit via web or blog page unless you want your contact information known to others.

Send an email to links at storageio dot com that includes the following:

1. Your company name
2. Your company URL
3. Your company contact person (you or someone else) including:
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4. Brief 40 character or less description of what you do, or solution categories (tip, avoid superlatives, see links page for ideas)

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Its that simple.

Now its up to you to decide if you want to be included or not.

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

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What records will EMC break in NYC January 18, 2011?

What records will EMC break in NYC January 18, 2011?

In case you have not seen or heard, EMC is doing an event next week in New York City (NYC) at the AXA Equitable Center winter weather snow storm clouds permitting (and adequate tools or technologies to deal with the snow removal), that has a theme around breaking records. If you have yet to see any of the advertisements, blogs, tweets, facebook, friendfeed, twitter, yourtube or other mediums messages, here (and here and here) are a few links to learn more as well as register to view the event.

Click on the above image to see more

There is already speculation along with IT industry wiki leaks of what will be announced or talked about next week that you can google or find at some different venues.

The theme of the event is breaking records.

What might we hear?

In addition to the advisor, author, blogger and consultant hats that I wear, Im also in the EMCs analysts relations program and as such under NDA, consequently, what the actual announcement will be next week, no comment for now. BTW, I also wear other hats including one from Boeing even though I often fly on Airbus products as well.

If its not Boeing Im not going, except I do also fly Airbus, Embrear and Bombardiar products
Other hats I wear

However, how about some fun as to what might be covered at next weeks event with getting into a wiki leak situation?

  • A no brainier would be product (hardware, software, services) related as it is mid January and if you have been in the industry for more than a year or two, you might recall that EMC tends to a mid winter launch around this time of year along with sometimes an early summer refresh. Guess what time of the year it is.
  • Im guessing lots of superlatives, perhaps at a record breaking pace (e.g. revolutionary first, explosive growth, exponential explosive growth, perfect storm among others that could be candidates for the Storagebrain wall of fame or shame)
  • Maybe we will even hear that EMC has set a new record of number of members in Chads army aka the vspecialists focused on vSphere related topics along with a growing (quietly) number of Microsoft HyperV specialist.
  • That EMC has a record number of twitter tweeps engaged in conversations (or debates) with different audiences, collectives, communities, competitors, customers, individuals, organizations, partners or venues among others.
  • Possibly that their involvement in the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) has resulted in enough savings to offset the impact of hosting the event making it carbon and environment neutral. After all, we already know that EMC has been in the CDP as in Continual or Constant Data Protection as well as Complete or Comprehensive Data Protection along with Cloud Data Protection not to mention Common Sense Data Protection (CSDP) for sometime now.
  • Perhaps something around the number of acquisitions, patents, products, platforms, products and partners they have amassed recently.
  • For investors, wishful thinking that they will be moving their stock into record territories.
  • Im also guessing we will hear or see a record number of tweets, posts, videos and stories.
  • To be fair and balanced, Im also expecting a record number of counter tweets, counter posts, counter videos and counter stories coming out of the event.

Some records I would like to see EMC break however Im not going to hold my breath at least for next week include:

  • Announcement of upping the game in performance benchmarking battles with record setting or breaking various SPC benchmark results submitted on their own (instead of via a competitor or here) in different categories of block storage devices along with entries for SSD based, clustered and virtualized. Of course we would expect to hear how those benchmarks and workload simulations really do not matter which would be fine, at least they would have broken some records.
  • Announcement of having shipped more hard disk drives (HDD) than anyone else in conjunction with shipping more storage than anyone else. Despite being continually declared dead (its not) and SSD gaining traction, EMC would have a record breaking leg to stand on if the qualify amount of storage shipped as external or shared or networked (SAN or NAS) as opposed to collective (e.g. HP with servers and storage among others).
  • Announcement that they are buying Cisco, or Cisco is buying them, or that they and Cisco are buying Microsoft and Oracle.
  • Announcement of being proud of the record setting season of the Patriots, devastated to losing a close and questionable game to the NY Jets, wishing them well in the 2010 NFL Playoffs (Im just sayin…).
  • Announcement of being the first vendor and solution provider to establish SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, DaaS and many other XaaS offerings via their out of this world new moon base (plans underway for Mars as part of a federated offering).
  • Announcement that Fenway park will be rebranded as the house that EMC built (or rebuilt).

Disclosure: I will be in NYC on Tuesday the 18th as one of EMCs many guests that they have picked up airfare and lodging, thanks to Len Devanna and the EMC social media crew for reaching out and extending the invitation.

Other guests of the event will include analysts, advisors, authors, bloggers, beat writers, consultants, columnist, customers, editors, media, paparazzi, partners, press, protesters (hopefully polite ones), publishers, pundits, twitter tweepps and writers among others.

I wonder if there will also be a record number of disclosures made by others attending the event as guests of EMC?

More after (or maybe during) the event.

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

Posted on

As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

server storage data infrastructure i/o iop hdd ssd trends

Updated 2/10/2018

Despite having been repeatedly declared dead at the hands of some new emerging technology over the past several decades, the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) continues to spin and evolve as it moves towards its 60th birthday.

More recently HDDs have been declared dead due to flash SSD that according to some predictions, should have caused the HDD to be extinct by now.

Meanwhile, having not yet died in addition to having qualified for its AARP membership a few years ago, the HDD continues to evolve in capacity, smaller form factor, performance, reliability, density along with cost improvements.

Back in 2006 I did an article titled Happy 50th, hard drive, but will you make it to 60?

IMHO it is safe to say that the HDD will be around for at least a few more years if not another decade (or more).

This is not to say that the HDD has outlived its usefulness or that there are not other tiered storage mediums to do specific jobs or tasks better (there are).

Instead, the HDD continues to evolve and is complimented by flash SSD in a way that HDDs are complimenting magnetic tape (another declared dead technology) each finding new roles to support more data being stored for longer periods of time.

After all, there is no such thing as a data or information recession!

What the importance of this is about technology tiering and resource alignment, matching the applicable technology to the task at hand.

Technology tiering (Servers, storage, networking, snow removal) is about aligning the applicable resource that is best suited to a particular need in a cost as well as productive manner. The HDD remains a viable tiered storage medium that continues to evolve while taking on new roles coexisting with SSD and tape along with cloud resources. These and other technologies have their place which ideally is finding or expanding into new markets instead of simply trying to cannibalize each other for market share.

Here is a link to a good story by Lucas Mearian on the history or evolution of the hard disk drive (HDD) including how a 1TB device that costs about $60 today would have cost about a trillion dollars back in the 1950s. FWIW, IMHO the 1 trillion dollars is low and should be more around 2 to 5 trillion for the one TByte if you apply common costs for management, people, care and feeding, power, cooling, backup, BC, DR and other functions.

Where To Learn More

View additional NAS, NVMe, SSD, NVM, SCM, Data Infrastructure and HDD related topics via the following links.

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

IMHO, it is safe to say that the HDD is here to stay for at least a few more years (if not decades) or at least until someone decides to try a new creative marketing approach by declaring it dead (again).

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.