Category: Data and Information Management

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Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?

For consumers, the time leading up to the holiday Christmas season is usually busy including door busters as well as black Friday among other specials for purchasing gifts and other items. However savvy shoppers will wait for after Christmas or the holidays altogether perhaps well into the New Year when some good bargains can become available. IT customers are no different with budgets to use up before the end of the year thus a flurry of acquisitions that should become evident soon as we are entering earnings announcement season.

However there are also bargains for IT organizations looking to take advantage of special vendor promotions trying to stimulate sales, not to mention for IT vendors to do some shopping of their own. Consequently, in addition to the flurry of merger and acquisition (M and A) activity from last summer through the fall, there has been several recent deals, some of which might make Monty Hall blush!

Some recent acquisition activity include among others:

  • Dell bought Perot systems for $3.9B
  • DotHill bought Cloverleaf
  • Texas Memory Systems (TMS) bought Incipient
  • HP bought IBRIX and 3COM among others
  • LSI bought Onstor
  • VMware bought Zimbra
  • Micron bought Numonyx
  • Exar bought Neterion

Now the industry is abuzz about Dell, who is perhaps using some of the lose change left over from holiday sales as being in the process of acquiring Israeli clustered storage startup Exanet for about $12M USD. Compared to previous Dell acquisitions including EqualLogic in 2007 for about $1.4B or last years Perot deal in the $3.9B range, $12M is a bargain and would probably not even put a dent in the selling and marketing advertising budget let alone corporate cash coffers which as of their Q3-F10 balance sheet shows about $12.795B in cash.

Who is Exanet and what is their product solution?
Exanet is a small Israeli startup providing a clustered, scale out NAS file serving storage solution (Figure 1) that began shipping in 2003. The Exanet solution (ExaStore) can be either software based, or, as a package solution ExaStore software installed on standard x86 servers with external RAID storage arrays combining as a clustered NAS file server.

Product features include global name space, distributed metadata, expandable file systems, virtual volumes, quotas, snapshots, file migration, replication, and virus scanning, and load balancing, NFS, CIFS and AFP. Exanet scales up to 1 Exabyte of storage capacity along with supporting large files and billions of file per cluster.

The target market that Exanet pursues is large scale out NAS where performance (either small random or large sequential I/Os) along with capacity are required. Consequently, in the scale out, clustered NAS file serving space, competitors include IPM GPFS (SONAS), HP IBRIX or PolyServe, Sun Lustre and Symantec SFS among others.

Clustered Storage Model: Source The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
Figure 1 Generic clustered storage model (Courtesy The Green and Virtual Data Center(CRC)

For a turnkey solution, Exanet packaged their cluster file system software with various vendors storage combined with 3rd party external Fibre Channel or other storage. This should play well for Dell who can package the Exanet software on its own servers as well as leverage either SAS or Fibre Channel  MD1000/MD3000 external RAID storage among other options (see more below).

Click here to learn more about clustered storage including clustered NAS, clustered and parallel file systems.

Dell

Whats the dell play?

  • Its an opportunity to acquire some intellectual property (IP)
  • Its an opportunity to have IP similar to EMC, HP, IBM, NetApp, Oracle and Symantec among others
  • Its an opportunity to address a market gap or need
  • Its an opportunity to sell more Dell servers, storage and services
  • Its an opportunity time for doing acquisitions (bargain shopping)

Note: IBM also this past week announced their new bundled scale out clustered NAS file serving solution based on GPFS called SONAS. HP has IBRIX in addition to their previous PolyServe acquisition, Sun has ZFS and Lustre.

How does Exanet fit into the Dell lineup?

  • Dell sells Microsoft based NAS as NX series
  • Dell has an OEM relationship with EMC
  • Dell was OEMing or reselling IBRIX in the past for certain applications or environments
  • Dell has needed to expand its NAS story to balance its iSCSI centric storage story as well as compliment its multifunction block storage solutions (e.g. MD3000) and server solutions.

Why Exanet?
Why Exanet, why not one of the other startups or small NAS or cloud file system vendors including BlueArc, Isilon, Panasas, Parascale, Reldata, OpenE or Zetta among others?

My take is that probably because those were either not relevant to what Dell is looking for, lack of seamless technology and business fit, technology tied to non Dell hardware, technology maturity, the investors are still expecting a premium valuation, or, some combination of the preceding.

Additional thoughts on why Exanet
I think that Dell simply saw an opportunity to acquire some intellectual property (IP) probably including a patent or two. The value of the patents could be in the form of current or future product offerings, perhaps a negotiating tool, or if nothing else as marketing tool. As a marketing tool, Dell via their EqualLogic acquisition among others has been able to demonstrate and generate awareness that they actually own some IP vs. OEM or resell those from others. I also think that this is an opportunity to either fill or supplement a solution offering that IBRIX provided to high performance, bulk storage and scale out file serving needs.

NAS and file serving supporting unstructured data are a strong growth market for commercial, high performance, specialized or research as well as small business environments. Thus, where EqualLogic plays to the iSCSI block theme, Dell needs to expand their NAS and file serving solutions to provide product diversity to meet various customer applications needs similar to what they do with block based storage. For example, while iSCSI based EqualLogic PS systems get the bulk of the marketing attention, Dell also has a robust business around the PowerVault MD1000/MD3000 (SAS/iSCSI/FC) and Microsoft multi protocol based PowerVault NX series not to mention their EMC CLARiiON based OEM solutions (E.g. Dell AX, Dell/EMC CX).

Thus, Dell can complement the Microsoft multi protocol (block and NAS file) NX with a packaged (Dell servers and MD (or other affordable block storage) powered with Exanet) solution. While it is possible that Dell will find a way to package Exanet as a NAS gateway in front of the iSCSI based EqualLogic PS systems, which would also make for an expensive scale out NAS solution compared to those from other vendors.

Thats it for now.

Lets see how this all plays out.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

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Technology Tiering, Servers Storage and Snow Removal

Granted it is winter in the northern hemisphere and thus snow storms should not be a surprise.

However between December 2009 and early 2010, there has been plenty of record activity from in the U.K. (or here), to the U.S. east coast including New York, Boston and Washington DC, across the midwest and out to California, it made for a white christmas and SANta fun along with snow fun in general in the new year.

2010 Snow Storm via www.star-telegram.com

What does this have to do with Information Factories aka IT resources including public or private clouds, facilities, server, storage, networking along with data management let alone tiering?

What does this have to do with tiered snow removal, or even snow fun?

Simple, different tools are needed for addressing various types of snow from wet and heavy to light powdery or dustings to deep downfalls. Likewise, there are different types of servers, storage, data networks along with operating systems, management tools and even hyper visors to deal with various application needs or requirements.

First, lets look at tiered IT resources (servers, storage, networks, facilities, data protection and hyper visors) to meet various efficiency, optimization and service level needs.

Do you have tiered IT resources?

Let me rephrase that question to do you have different types of servers with various performance, availability, connectivity and software that support various applications and cost levels?

Thus the whole notion of tiered IT resources is to be abe to have different resources that can be aligned to the task at hand in order to meet performance, availability, capacity, energy along with economic along with service level agreement (SLA) requirements.

Computers or servers are targeted for different markets including Small Office Home Office (SOHO), Small Medium Business (SMB), Small Medium Enterprise (SME) and ultra large scale or extreme scaling, including high performance super computing. Servers are also positioned for different price bands and deployment scenarios.

General categories of tiered servers and computers include:

  • Laptops, desktops and workstations
  • Small floor standing towers or rack mounted 1U and 2U servers
  • Medium sizes floor standing towers or larger rack mounted servers
  • Blade Centers and Blade Servers
  • Large size floor standing servers, including mainframes
  • Specialized fault tolerant, rugged and embedded processing or real time servers

Servers have different names email server, database server, application server, web server, and video or file server, network server, security server, backup server or storage server associated with them depending on their use. In each of the previous examples, what defines the type of server is the type of software is being used to deliver a type of service. Sometimes the term appliance will be used for a server; this is indicative of the type of service the combined hardware and software solution are providing. For example, the same physical server running different software could be a general purpose applications server, a database server running for example Oracle, IBM, Microsoft or Teradata among other databases, an email server or a storage server.

This can lead to confusion when looking at servers in that a server may be able to support different types of workloads thus it should be considered a server, storage, networking or application platform. It depends on the type of software being used on the server. If, for example, storage software in the form a clustered and parallel file system is installed on a server to create highly scalable network attached storage (NAS) or cloud based storage service solution, then the server is a storage server. If the server has a general purpose operating system such as Microsoft Windows, Linux or UNIX and a database on it, it is a database server.

While not technically a type of server, some manufacturers use the term tin wrapped software in an attempt to not be classified as an appliance, server or hardware vendor but want their software to be positioned more as a turnkey solution. The idea is to avoid being perceived as a software only solution that requires integration with hardware. The solution is to use off the shelf commercially available general purpose servers with the vendors software technology pre integrated and installed ready for use. Thus, tin wrapped software is a turnkey software solution with some tin, or hardware, wrapped around it.

How about the same with tiered storage?

That is different tiers (Figure 1) of fast high performance disk including RAM or flash based SSD, fast Fibre Channel or SAS disk drives, or high capacity SAS and SATA disk drives along with magnetic tape as well as cloud based backup or archive?

Tiered Storage Resources
Figure 1: Tiered Storage resources

Tiered storage is also sometimes thought of in terms large enterprise class solutions or midrange, entry level, primary, secondary, near line and offline. Not to be forgotten, there are also tiered networks that support various speeds, convergence, multi tenancy and other capabilities from IO Virtualization (IOV) to traditional LAN, SAN, MAN and WANs including 1Gb Ethernet (1GbE), 10GbE up to emerging 40GbE and 100GbE not to mention various Fibre Channel speeds supporting various protocols.

The notion around tiered networks is like with servers and storage to enable aligning the right technology to be used for the task at hand economically while meeting service needs.

Two other common IT resource tiering techniques include facilities and data protection. Tiered facilities can indicate size, availability, resiliency among other characteristics. Likewise, tiered data protection is aligning the applicable technology to support different RTO and RPO requirements for example using synchronous replication where applicable vs. asynchronous time delayed for longer distance combined with snapshots. Other forms of tiered data protection include traditional backups either to disk, tape or cloud.

There is a new emerging form of tiering in many IT environments and that is tiered virtualization or specifically tiered server hyper visors in virtual data centers with similar objectives to having different server, storage, network, data protection or facilities tiers. Instead of an environment running all VMware, Microsoft HyperV or Xen among other hyper visors may be deployed to meet different application service class requirements. For example, VMware may be used for premium features and functionality on some applications, where others that do not need those features along with requiring lower operating costs leverage HyperV or Zen based solutions. Taking the tiering approach a step further, one could also declare tiered databases for example Oracle legacy vs. MySQL or Microsoft SQLserver among other examples.

What about IT clouds, are those different types of resources, or, essentially an extension of existing IT capabilities for example cloud storage being another tier of data storage?

There is another form of tiering, particularly during the winter months in the northern hemisphere where there is an abundance of snow this time of the year. That is, tiered snow management, removal or movement technologies.

What about tiered snow removal?

Well lets get back to that then.

Like IT resources, there are different technologies that can be used for moving, removing, melting or managing snow.

For example, I cant do much about getting ready of snow other than pushing it all down the hill and into the river, something that would take time and lots of fuel, or, I can manage where I put snow piles to be prepared for next storm, plus, to help put it where the piles of snow will melt and help avoid spring flood. Some technologies can be used for relocating snow elsewhere, kind of like archiving data onto different tiers of storage.

Regardless of if snowstorm or IT clouds (public or private), virtual, managed service provider (MSP), hosted or traditional IT data centers, all require physical servers, storage, I/O and data networks along with software including management tools.

Granted not all servers, storage or networking technology let alone software are the same as they address different needs. IT resources including servers, storage, networks, operating systems and even hyper visors for virtual machines are often categorized and aligned to different tiers corresponding to needs and characteristics (Figure 2).

Tiered IT Resources
Figure 2: Tiered IT resources

For example, in figure 3 there is a light weight plastic shovel (Shove 1) for moving small amounts of snow in a wide stripe or pass. Then there is a narrow shovel for digging things out, or breaking up snow piles (Shovel 2). Also shown are a light duty snow blower (snow thrower) capable of dealing with powdery or non wet snow, grooming in tight corners or small areas.

Tiered Snow tools
Figure 3: Tiered Snow management and migration tools

For other light dustings, a yard leaf blower does double duty for migrating or moving snow in small or tight corners such as decks, patios or for cleanup. Larger snowfalls, or, where there is a lot of area to clear involves heavier duty tools such as the Kawasaki mule with 5 foot curtis plow. The mule is a multifunction, multi protocol tool capable of being used for hauling items, towing, pulling or recreational tasks.

When all else fails, there is a pickup truck to get or go out and about, not to mention to pull other vehicles out of ditches or piles of snow when they become stuck!

Snow movement
Figure 4: Sometimes the snow light making for fast, low latency migration

Snow movement
Figure 5: And sometimes even snow migration technology goes off line!

Snow movement

And that is it for now!

Enjoy the northern hemisphere winter and snow while it lasts, make the best of it with the right tools to simplify the tasks of movement and management, similar to IT resources.

Keep in mind, its about the tools and when along with how to use them for various tasks for efficiency and effectiveness, and, a bit of snow fun.

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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California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE)



CCSE Facility and Seminar Series

This past week I had the honor of delivering a keynote presentation in San Diego at the California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE) as part of their continuing education and community outreach and education, workshop and seminar series. The theme of the well attended event was Next Generation Data Center Solutions of which my talk centered around leveraging Green and Virtual Data Centers for enabling efficiencey and effectiveness. In addition to my keynote, included a panel discussion that I moderated with representatives of the events sponsor Compucom, along with their special guests APC, HP, Intel and VMware.

The CCSE has a focus around Climate Change, Energy Efficienecey, Green Buildings, Renewable Energy, Transportation, Home and Business. Their services and focus includes awareness and outreach, education programs, library and tools, consultant and associated services. Speaking of their library, there is even a signed copy of my book The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) now at the CCSE library that can be checked out along with their other resources.

The CCSE staff and facilities were fantastic with hosts Mike Bigelow (an energy engineer) and Marlene King (program manager) orchestrating a great event.

If you are in the San Diego area, check out the CCSE located at 8690 Balboa Ave., Suite 100. They have a great library, cool demonstrations and tools that you can check out to assist with optimization IT data centers from an energy efficicinecy standpoint. Learn more about the CCSE here.

Following are some relevant links to the keynote along with panel discussion from the CCSE event:

Follow these links to view additional videos or podcasts, tips, articles, books, reports and events.

Cheers
gs

Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

Technorati tags: Trends

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2010 and 2011 Trends, Perspectives and Predictions: More of the same?

2011 is not a typo, I figured that since Im getting caught up on some things, why not get a jump as well.

Since 2009 went by so fast, and that Im finally getting around to doing an obligatory 2010 predictions post, lets take a look at both 2010 and 2011.

Actually Im getting around to doing a post here having already done interviews and articles for others soon to be released.

Based on prior trends and looking at forecasts, a simple predictions is that some of the items for 2010 will apply for 2011 as well given some of this years items may have been predicted by some in 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 or, well ok, you get the picture. :)

Predictions are fun and funny in that for some, they are taken very seriously, while for others, at best they are taken with a grain of salt depending on where you sit. This applies both for the reader as well as who is making the predictions along with various motives or incentives.

Some are serious, some not so much…

For some, predictions are a great way of touting or promoting favorite wares (hard, soft or services) or getting yet another plug (YAP is a TLA BTW) in to meet coverage or exposure quota.

Meanwhile for others, predictions are a chance to brush up on new terms for the upcoming season of buzzword bingo games (did you pick up on YAP).

In honor of the Vancouver winter games, Im expecting some cool Olympic sized buzzword bingo games with a new slippery fast one being federation. Some buzzwords will take a break in 2010 as well as 2011 having been worked pretty hard the past few years, while others that have been on break, will reappear well rested, rejuvenated, and ready for duty.

Lets also clarify something regarding predictions and this is that they can be from at least two different perspectives. One view is that from a trend of what will be talked about or discussed in the industry. The other is in terms of what will actually be bought, deployed and used.

What can be confusing is sometimes the two perspectives are intermixed or assumed to be one and the same and for 2010 I see that trend continuing. In other words, there is adoption in terms of customers asking and investigating technologies vs. deployment where they are buying, installing and using those technologies in primary situations.

It is safe to say that there is still no such thing as an information, data or processing recession. Ok, surprise surprise; my dogs could have probably made that prediction during a nap. However what this means is more data will need to be moved, processed and stored for longer periods of time and at a lower cost without degrading performance or availability.

This means, denser technologies that enable a lower per unit cost of service without negatively impacting performance, availability, capacity or energy efficiency will be needed. In other words, watch for an expanded virtualization discussion around life beyond consolidation for servers, storage, desktops and networks with a theme around productivity and virtualization for agility and management enablement.

Certainly there will be continued merger and acquisitions on both a small as well as large scale ranging from liquidation sales or bargain hunting, to large and a mega block buster or two. Im thinking in terms of outside of the box, the type that will have people wondering perhaps confused as to why such a deal would be done until the whole picture is reveled and thought out.

In other words, outside of perhaps IBM, HP, Oracle, Intel or Microsoft among a few others, no vendor is too large not to be acquired, merged with, or even involved in a reverse merger. Im also thinking in terms of vendors filling in niche areas as well as building out their larger portfolio and IT stacks for integrated solutions.

Ok, lets take a look at some easy ones, lay ups or slam dunks:

  • More cluster, cloud conversations and confusion (public vs. private, service vs. product vs. architecture)
  • More server, desktop, IO and storage consolidation (excuse me, server virtualization)
  • Data footprint impact reduction ranging from deletion to archive to compress to dedupe among others
  • SSD and in particular flash continues to evolve with more conversations around PCM
  • Growing awareness of social media as yet another tool for customer relations management (CRM)
  • Security, data loss/leap prevention, digital forensics, PCI (payment card industry) and compliance
  • Focus expands from gaming/digital surveillance /security and energy to healthcare
  • Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) mainstream in discussions with some initial deployments
  • Continued confusion of Green IT and carbon reduction vs. economic and productivity (Green Gap)
  • No such thing as an information, data or processing recession, granted budgets are strained
  • Server, Storage or Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) with event correlation
  • SRA tools that provide and enable automation along with situational awareness

The green gap of confusion will continue with carbon or environment centric stories and messages continue to second back stage while people realize the other dimension of green being productivity.

As previously mentioned, virtualization of servers and storage continues to be popular with an expanding focus from just consolidation to one around agility, flexibility and enabling production, high performance or for other systems that do not lend themselves to consolidation to be virtualized.

6GB SAS interfaces as well as more SAS disk drives continue to gain popularity. I have said in the past there was a long shot that 8GFC disk drives might appear. We might very well see those in higher end systems while SAS drives continue to pick up the high performance spinning disk role in mid range systems.

Granted some types of disk drives will give way over time to others, for example high performance 3.5” 15.5K Fibre Channel disks will give way to 2.5” 15.5K SAS boosting densities, energy efficiency while maintaining performance. SSD will help to offload hot spots as they have in the past enabling disks to be more effectively used in their applicable roles or tiers with a net result of enhanced optimization, productivity and economics all of which have environmental benefits (e.g. the other Green IT closing the Green Gap).

What I dont see occurring, or at least in 2010

  • An information or data recession requiring less server, storage, I/O networking or software resources
  • OSD (object based disk storage without a gateway) at least in the context of T10
  • Mainframes, magnetic tape, disk drives, PCs, or Windows going away (at least physically)
  • Cisco cracking top 3, no wait, top 5, no make that top 10 server vendor ranking
  • More respect for growing and diverse SOHO market space
  • iSCSI taking over for all I/O connectivity, however I do see iSCSI expand its footprint
  • FCoE and flash based SSD reaching tipping point in terms of actual customer deployments
  • Large increases in IT Budgets and subsequent wild spending rivaling the dot com era
  • Backup, security, data loss prevention (DLP), data availability or protection issues going away
  • Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings winning the super bowl

What will be predicted at end of 2010 for 2011 (some of these will be DejaVU)

  • Many items that were predicted this year, last year, the year before that and so on…
  • Dedupe moving into primary and online active storage, rekindling of dedupe debates
  • Demise of cloud in terms of hype and confusion being replaced by federation
  • Clustered, grid, bulk and other forms of scale out storage grow in adoption
  • Disk, Tape, RAID, Mainframe, Fibre Channel, PCs, Windows being declared dead (again)
  • 2011 will be the year of Holographic storage and T10 OSD (an annual prediction by some)
  • FCoE kicks into broad and mainstream deployment adoption reaching tipping point
  • 16Gb (16GFC) Fibre Channel gets more attention stirring FCoE vs. FC vs. iSCSI debates
  • 100GbE gets more attention along with 4G adoption in order to move more data
  • Demise of iSCSI at the hands of SAS at low end, FCoE at high end and NAS from all angles

Gaining ground in 2010 however not yet in full stride (at least from customer deployment)

  • On the connectivity front, iSCSI, 6Gb SAS, 8Gb Fibre Channel, FCoE and 100GbE
  • SSD/flash based storage everywhere, however continued expansion
  • Dedupe  everywhere including primary storage – its still far from its full potential
  • Public and private clouds along with pNFS as well as scale out or clustered storage
  • Policy based automated storage tiering and transparent data movement or migration
  • Microsoft HyperV and Oracle based server virtualization technologies
  • Open source based technologies along with heterogeneous encryption
  • Virtualization life beyond consolidation addressing agility, flexibility and ease of management
  • Desktop virtualization using Citrix, Microsoft and VMware along with Microsoft Windows 7

Buzzword bingo hot topics and themes (in no particular order) include:

  • 2009 and previous year carry over items including cloud, iSCSI, HyperV, Dedupe, open source
  • Federation takes over some of the work of cloud, virtualization, clusters and grids
  • E2E, End to End management preferably across different technologies
  • SAS, Serial Attached SCSI for server to storage systems and as disk to storage interface
  • SRA, E23, Event correlation and other situational awareness related IRM tools
  • Virtualization, Life beyond consolidation enabling agility, flexibility for desktop, server and storage
  • Green IT, Transitions from carbon focus to economic with efficiency enabling productivity
  • FCoE, Continues to evolve and mature with more deployments however still not at tipping point
  • SSD, Flash based mediums continue to evolve however tipping point is still over the horizon
  • IOV, I/O Virtualization for both virtual and non virtual servers
  • Other new or recycled buzzword bingo candidates include PCoIP, 4G,

RAID will again be pronounced as being dead no longer relevant yet being found in more diverse deployments from consumer to the enterprise. In other words, RAID may be boring and thus no longer relevant to talk about, yet it is being used everywhere and enhanced in evolutionary ways, perhaps for some even revolutionary.

Tape remains being declared dead (e.g. on the Zombie technology list) yet being enhanced, purchased and utilized at higher rates with more data stored than in past history. Instead of being killed off by the disk drive, tape is being kept around for both traditional uses as well as taking on new roles where it is best suited such as long term or bulk off-line storage of data in ultra dense and energy efficient not to mention economical manners.

What I am seeing and hearing is that customers using tape are able to reduce the number of drives or transports, yet due to leveraging disk buffers or caches including from VTL and dedupe devices, they are able to operate their devices at higher utilization, thus requiring fewer devices with more data stored on media than in the past.

Likewise, even though I have been a fan of SSD for about 20 years and am bullish on its continued adoption, I do not see SSD killing off the spinning disk drive anytime soon. Disk drives are helping tape take on this new role by being a buffer or cache in the form of VTLs, disk based backup and bulk storage enhanced with compression, dedupe, thin provision and replication among other functionality.

There you have it, my predictions, observations and perspectives for 2010 and 2011. It is a broad and diverse list however I also get asked about and see a lot of different technologies, techniques and trends tied to IT resources (servers, storage, I/O and networks, hardware, software and services).

Lets see how they play out.

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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RAID Relevance Revisited

Following up from some previous posts on the topic, a continued discussion point in the data storage industry is the relevance (or lack there) of RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks).

These discussions tend to evolve around how RAID is dead due to its lack of real or perceived ability to continue scaling in terms of performance, availability, capacity, economies or energy capabilities needed or when compared to those of newer techniques, technologies or products.

RAID Relevance

While there are many new and evolving approaches to protecting data in addition to maintaining availability or accessibility to information, RAID despite the fan fare is far from being dead at least on the technology front.

Sure, there are issues or challenges that require continued investing in RAID as has been the case over the past 20 years; however those will also be addressed on a go forward basis via continued innovation and evolution along with riding technology improvement curves.

Now from a marketing standpoint, ok, I can see where the RAID story is dead, boring, and something new and shiny is needed, or, at least change the pitch to sound like something new.

Consequently, when being long in the tooth and with some of the fore mentioned items among others, older technologies that may be boring or lack sizzle or marketing dollars can and often are declared dead on the buzzword bingo circuit. After all, how long now has the industry trade group RAID Advisory Board (RAB) been missing in action, retired, spun down, archived or ILMed?

RAID remains relevant because like other dead or zombie technologies it has reached the plateau of productivity and profitability. That success is also something that emerging technologies envy as their future domain and thus a classic marketing move is to declare the incumbent dead.

The reality is that RAID in all of its various instances from hardware to software, standard to non-standard with extensions is very much alive from the largest enterprise to the SMB to the SOHO down into consumer products and all points in between.

Now candidly, like any technology that is about 20 years old if not older after all, the disk drive is over 50 years old and been declared dead for how long now?.RAID in some ways is long in the tooth and there are certainly issues to be addressed as have been taken care of in the past. Some of these include the overhead of rebuilding large capacity 1TB, 2TB and even larger disk drives in the not so distant future.

There are also issues pertaining to distributed data protection in support of cloud, virtualized or other solutions that need to be addressed. In fact, go way way back to when RAID appeared commercially on the scene in the late 80s and one of the value propositions among others was to address the reliability of emerging large capacity multi MByte sized SCSI disk drives. It seems almost laughable today that when a decade later, when the 1GB disk drives appeared in the market back in the 90s that there was renewed concern about RAID and disk drive rebuild times.

Rest assured, I think that there is a need and plenty of room for continued innovate evolution around RAID related technologies and their associated storage systems or packaging on a go forward basis.

What I find interesting is that some of the issues facing RAID today are similar to those of a decade ago for example having to deal with large capacity disk drive rebuild, distributed data protecting and availability, performance, ease of use and so the list goes.

However what happened was that vendors continued to innovate both in terms of basic performance accelerated rebuild rates with improvements to rebuild algorithms, leveraged faster processors, busses and other techniques. In addition, vendors continued to innovate in terms of new functionality including adopting RAID 6 which for the better part of a decade outside of a few niche vendors languished as one of those future technologies that probably nobody would ever adopt, however we know that to be different now and for the past several years. RAID 6 is one of those areas where vendors who do not have it are either adding it, enhancing it, or telling you why you do not need it or why it is no good for you.

An example of how RAID 6 is being enhanced is boosting performance on normal read and write operations along with acceleration of performance during disk rebuild. Also tied to RAID 6 and disk drive rebuild are improvements in controller design to detect and proactively make repairs on the fly to minimize or eliminate errors or diminished the need for drive rebuilds, similar to what was done in previous generations. Lets also not forget the improvements in disk drives boosting performance, availability, capacity and energy improvements over time.

Funny how these and other enhancements are similar to those made to RAID controllers hardware and software fine tuning them in the early to mid 2000s in support for high capacity SATA disk drives that had different RAS characteristics of higher performance lower capacity enterprise drives.

Here is my point.

RAID to some may be dead while others continue to rely on it. Meanwhile others are working on enhancing technologies for future generations of storage systems and application requirements. Thus in different shapes, forms, configurations, feature; functionality or packaging, the spirit of RAID is very much alive and well remaining relevant.

Regardless of if a solution using two or three disk mirroring for availability, or RAID 0 fast SSD or SAS or FC disks in a stripe configuration for performance with data protection via rapid restoration from some other low cost medium (perhaps RAID 6 or tape), or perhaps single, dual or triple parity protection, or if using small block or multiMByte or volume based chunklets, let alone if it is hardware or software based, local or disturbed, standard or non standard, chances are there is some theme of RAID involved.

Granted, you do not have to call it RAID if you prefer!

As a closing thought, if RAID were no longer relevant, than why do the post RAID, next generation, life beyond RAID or whatever you prefer to call them technologies need to tie themselves to the themes of RAID? Simple, RAID is still relevant in some shape or form to different audiences as well as it is a great way of stimulating discussion or debate in a constantly evolving industry.

BTW, Im still waiting for the revolutionary piece of hardware that does not require software, and the software that does not require hardware and that includes playing games with server less servers using hypervisors :) .

Provide your perspective on RAID and its relevance in the following poll.

Here are some additional related and relevant RAID links of interests:

Stay tuned for more about RAIDs relevance as I dont think we have heard the last on this.

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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Upcoming Events and Activities Update V2010.1

The end of year christmas and new years holiday season has come and gone which means of course that 2009 is a wrap along with the travel from being out and about.

In addition to getting some time to relax a bit (playing Wii resort, snow plowing, cooking etc.), I have also been catching up on developing some new content including articles, blogs (some yet to be post), tips as well as podcasts along with some custom research advisory projects.

Check out some recent tips, articles, videos and podcasts here along with perspecitives and comments on indusitry news here.

2009 events and activities saw visits to cities including San Jose, Tucson, Cancun Mexico, Dallas, Tampa, Miami, Los Angles, San Jose, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis, Birmingham, Cincinnati, Santa Ana, Minneapolis, Boston, Dallas, Boston, Chicago, Parsipanny, Raleigh, Providence, Kansas City, Denver, Chicago, Orlando, Chicago, Philadelphia, Toronto, Richmond, Columbus, Princeton, Seattle, Portland, Dallas, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Toronto, Chicago, New York, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Boston, Cleveland and Detroit among others.

This time of the year also means that the 2010 events and activities including in person keynote and presentations also known as out and about are getting underway. While the 2010 schedule of events is still being finalized, some initial events have are on the calendar, my bags are about to be packed and tickets in hand not to mention finalizing the presentation and discussion content.

In addition to some non public events including keynote presenting at some vendors annual sales (kick off) meetings, the following are some of what are currently on the calendar that you can click on the links below to learn more about the venues.

February 3, 2010 Green Data Center Conference, San Diego, CA
January 21, 2010 Dinner Event keynote Speaker Dynamic IT Infrastructure, Beverly Hills, CA
January 21, 2010 Morning keynote Speaker The Green and Virtual Data Center, San Diego, CA
January 19, 2010 Dinner Event keynote Speaker Dynamic IT Infrastructure, Miami, FL

Watch for updates to the events calendar and I look forward to seeing you all while Im out and about during 2010.

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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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StorageIO in the News Update V2010.1

StorageIO is regularly quoted and interviewed in various industry and vertical market venues and publications both on-line and in print on a global basis.

The following are some coverage, perspectives and commentary by StorageIO on IT industry trends including servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, services, virtualization, cloud, cluster, grid, SSD, data protection, Green IT and more since the last update.

Realizing that some prefer blogs to webs to twitter to other venues, here are some recent links among others to media coverage and comments by me on a different topics that are among others found at www.storageio.com/news.html:

  • SearchSMBStorage: Comments on EMC Iomega v.Clone for PC data syncronization – Jan 2010
  • Computerworld: Comments on leveraging cloud or online backup – Jan 2010
  • ChannelProSMB: Comments on NAS vs SAN Storage for SMBs – Dec 2009
  • ChannelProSMB: Comments on Affordable SMB Storage Solutions – Dec 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on What to buy a geek for the holidays, 2009 edition – Dec 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on EMC VMAX storage and 8GFC enhancements – Dec 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Data Footprint Reduction – Dec 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Building a private storage cloud – Dec 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on SSD in storage systems – Dec 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on slow adoption of file virtualization – Dec 2009
  • IT World: Comments on maximizing data security investments – Nov 2009
  • SearchCIO: Comments on storage virtualization for your organisation – Nov 2009
  • Processor: Comments on how to win approval for hardware upgrades – Nov 2009
  • Processor: Comments on the Future of Servers – Nov 2009
  • SearchITChannel: Comments on Energy-efficient technology sales depend on pitch – Nov 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on how to get from Fibre Channel to FCoE – Nov 2009
  • Minneapolis Star Tribune: Comments on Google Wave and Clouds – Nov 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on EMC and Cisco alliance – Nov 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on HP virtualizaiton enhancements – Nov 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Apple canceling ZFS project – Oct 2009
  • Processor: Comments on EPA Energy Star for Server and Storage Ratings – Oct 2009
  • IT World Canada: Cloud computing, dot be scared, look before you leap – Oct 2009
  • IT World: Comments on stretching your data protection and security dollar – Oct 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments about Fragmentation and Performance? – Oct 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments about data migration – Oct 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments about What’s inside internal storage clouds? – Oct 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments about T-Mobile and Clouds? – Oct 2009
  • Storage Monkeys: Podcast comments about Sun and Oracle- Sep 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Maxiscale clustered, cloud NAS – Sep 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Maxiscale clustered NAS for web hosting – Sep 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on whos hot in data storage industry – Sep 2009
  • SearchSMBStorage: Comments on SMB Fibre Channel switch options – Sep 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on using storage more efficiently – Sep 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Data and Storage Tiering including SSD – Sep 2009
  • Enterprise IT Planet: Comments on Data Deduplication – Sep 2009
  • SearchDataCenter: Comments on Tiered Storage – Sep 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Sun-Oracle Wedding – Aug 2009
  • Processor.com: Comments on Storage Network Snags – Aug 2009
  • SearchStorageChannel: Comments on I/O virtualizaiton (IOV) – Aug 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Clustered NAS storage and virtualization – Aug 2009
  • SearchITChannel: Comments on Solid-state drive prices still hinder adoption – Aug 2009

    • Check out the Content, Tips, Tools, Videos, Podcasts plus White Papers, and News pages for additional commentary, coverage and related content or events.

    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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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    Recent tips, videos, articles and more update V2010.1

    Realizing that some prefer blogs to webs to twitter to other venues, here are some recent links to articles, tips, videos, webcasts and other content that have appeared in different venues since August 2009.

  • i365 Guest Interview: Experts Corner: Q&A with Greg Schulz December 2009

  • SearchCIO Midmarket: Remote-location disaster recovery risks and solutions December 2009

  • BizTech Magazine: High Availability: A Delicate Balancing Act November 2009

  • ESJ: What Comprises a Green, Efficient and Effective Virtual Data Center? November 2009

  • SearchSMBStorage: Determining what server to use for SMB November 2009

  • SearchStorage: Performance metrics: Evaluating your data storage efficiency October 2009

  • SearchStorage: Optimizing capacity and performance to reduce data footprint October 2009

  • SearchSMBStorage: How often should I conduct a disaster recovery (DR) test? October 2009

  • SearchStorage: Addressing storage performance bottlenecks in storage September 2009

  • SearchStorage AU: Is tape the right backup medium for smaller businesses? August 2009

  • ITworld: The new green data center: From energy avoidance to energy efficiency August 2009

    • Video and podcasts include:
    December 2009 Video: Green Storage: Metrics and measurement for management insight
    Discussion between Greg Schulz and Mark Lewis of TechTarget the importance of metrics and measurement to gauge productivity and efficiency for Green IT and enabling virtual information factories. Click here to watch the Video.

    December 2009 Podcast: iSCSI SANs can be a good fit for SMB storage
    Discussion between Greg Schulz and Andrew Burton of TechTarget about iSCSI and other related technologies for SMB storage. Click here to listen to the podcast.

    December 2009 Podcast: RAID Data Protection Discussion
    Discussion between Greg Schulz and Andrew Burton of TechTarget about RAID data proteciton, techniques and technologies. Click here to listen to the podcast.

    December 2009 Podcast: Green IT, Effiency and Productivity Discussion
    Discussion between Greg Schulz and Jon Flower of Adaptec about data Green IT, energy effiency, inteligent power management (IPM) also known as MAID 2.0 and other forms of optimization techniques including SSD. Click here to listen to the podcast sponsored by Adaptec.

    November 2009 Podcast: Reducing your data footprint impact
    Even though many enterprise data storage environments are coping with tightened budgets and reduced spending, overall net storage capacity is increasing. In this interview, Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at StorageIO Group, discusses how storage managers can reduce their data footprint. Schulz touches on the importance of managing your data footprint on both online and offline storage, as well as the various tools for doing so, including data archiving, thin provisioning and data deduplication. Click here to listen to the podcast.

    October 2009 Podcast: Enterprise data storage technologies rise from the dead
    In this interview, Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst of the Storage I/O group, classifies popular technologies such as solid-state drives (SSDs), RAID and Fibre Channel (FC) as “zombie” technologies. Why? These are already set to become part of standard storage infrastructures, says Schulz, and are too old to be considered fresh. But while some consider these technologies to be stale, users should expect to see them in their everyday lives. Click here to listen to the podcast.

    Check out the Tips, Tools and White Papers, and News pages for additional commentary, coverage and related content or events.

    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 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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    Poll: What was hot in 2009 and what was not, cast your vote!

    This is the time of year when people make their predictions for the next year.


    Building on some recent surveys and polls including:

    Whats your take on Windows 7

    Is IBM XIV still relevant

    EMC and Cisco Acadia VCE, what does it mean?

    What do you think of IT clouds

    Whats Your Take on FTC Guidelines For Bloggers?

    Not to mention those over at Storage Monkeys and the customer collective among others


    Before jumping to what will be hot or a flop in 2010, what do you think were the successful as well as disappointing technologies, trends, events, products or vendors of 2009?


    Cast your including adding in your own nominations in the two polls below.

    What technologies, events, products or vendors did not live up to 2009 predictions?



    What do you think were top 2009 technologies, events or vendors?

    Note:

    Feel free to vote early and often, however be advised, you will have to be creative in doing so as single balloting per IP and cookies are enabled to keep things on the down low.

    Check back soon to see how the results play out…


    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)

    Posted on

    EMC Storage and Management Software Getting FAST

    EMC has announced the availability of the first phase of FAST (Fully Automated Storage Tiering) functionality for their Symmetrix VMAX, CLARiiON and Celerra storage systems.

    FAST was first previewed earlier this year (see here and here).

    Key themes of FAST are to leverage policies for enabling automation to support large scale environments, doing more with what you have along with enabling virtual data centers for traditional, private and public clouds as well as enhancing IT economics.

    This means enabling performance and capacity planning analysis along with facilitating load balancing or other infrastructure optimization activities to boost productivity, efficiency and resource usage effectiveness not to mention enabling Green IT.

    Is FAST revolutionary? That will depend on who you talk or listen to.

    Some vendors will jump up and down similar to donkey in shrek wanting to be picked or noticed claiming to have been the first to implement LUN or file movement inside of storage systems, or, as operating system or file system or volume manager built in. Others will claim to have done it via third party information lifecycle management (ILM) software including hierarchal storage management (HSM) tools among others. Ok, fair enough, than let their games begin (or continue) and I will leave it up to the variou vendors and their followings to debate whos got what or not.

    BTW, anyone remember system manage storage on IBM mainframes or array based movement in HP AutoRAID among others?

    Vendors have also in the past provided built in or third party add on tools for providing insight and awareness ranging from capacity or space usage and allocation storage resource management (SRM) tools, performance advisory activity monitors or charge back among others. For example, hot files analysis and reporting tool have been popular in the past, often operating system specific for identifying candidate files for placement on SSD or other fast storage. Granted the tools provided insight and awareness, there was still the time and error prone task of decision making and subsequently data movement, not to mention associated down time.

    What is new here with FAST is the integrated approach, tools that are operating system independent, functionality in the array, available for different product family and price bands as well as that are optimized for improving user and IT productivity in medium to high-end enterprise scale environments.

    One of the knocks on previous technology is either the performance impact to an application when data was moved, or, impact to other applications when data is being moved in the background. Another issue has been avoiding excessive thrashing due to data being moved at the expense of taking performance cycles from production applications. This would also be similar to having too many snapshots or raid rebuild that are not optimized running in the background on a storage system lacking sufficient performance capability. Another knock has been that historically, either 3rd party host or appliance based software was needed, or, solutions were designed and targeted for workgroup, departmental or small environments.

    What is FAST and how is it implemented
    FAST is technology for moving data within storage systems (and external for Celerra) for load balancing, capacity and performance optimization to meet quality of service (QoS) performance, availability, capacity along with energy and economic initiatives (figure1) across different tiers or types of storage devices. For example, moving data from slower SATA disks where a performance bottleneck exists to faster Fibre Channel or SSD devices. Similarly, cold or infrequently data on faster more expensive storage devices can be marked as candidates for migration to lower cost SATA devices based on customer policies.

    EMC FAST
    Figure 1 FAST big picture Source EMC

    The premise is that policies are defined based on activity along with capacity to determine when data becomes a candidate for movement. All movement is performed in the background concurrently while applications are accessing data without disruptions. This means that there are no stub files or application pause or timeouts that occur or erratic I/O activity while data is being migrated. Another aspect of FAST data movement which is performed in the actual storage systems by their respective controllers is the ability for EMC management tools to identify hot or active LUNs or volumes (files in the case of Celerra) as candidates for moving (figure 2).

    EMC FAST
    Figure 2 FAST what it does Source EMC

    However, users specify if they want data moved on its own or under supervision enabling a deterministic environment where the storage system and associated management tools makes recommendations and suggestions for administrators to approve before migration occurs. This capacity can be a safeguard as well as a learn mode enabling organizations to become comfortable with the technology along with its recommendations while applying knowledge of current business dynamics (figure 3).

    EMC FAST
    Figure 3 The Value proposition of FAST Source EMC

    FAST is implemented as technology resident or embedded in the EMC VMAX (aka Symmetrix), CLARiiON and Cellera along with external management software tools. In the case of the block (figure 4) storage systems including DMX/VMAX and CLARiiON family of products that support FAST, data movement is on a LUN or volume basis and within a single storage system. For NAS or file based Cellera storage systems, FAST is implanted using FMA technology enabling either in the box or externally to other storage systems on a file basis.

    EMC FAST
    Figure 4 Example of FAST activity Source EMC

    What this means is that data at the LUN or volume level can be moved across different tiers of storage or disk drives within a CLARiiON instance, or, within a VMAX instance (e.g. amongst the nodes). For example, Virtual LUNs are a building block that is leveraged for data movement and migration combined with external management tools including Navisphere for the CLARiiON and Symmetrix management console along with Ionix all of which has been enhanced.

    Note however that initially data is not moved externally between different CLARiiONs or VMAX systems. For external data movement, other existing EMC tools would be deployed. In the case of Celerra, files can be moved within a specific CLARiiON as well as externally across other storage systems. External storage systems that files can be moved across using EMC FMA technology includes other Celleras, Centera and ATMOS solutions based upon defined policies.

    What do I like most and why?

    Integration of management tools providing insight with ability for user to setup polices as well as approve or intercede with data movement and placement as their specific philosophies dictate. This is key, for those who want to, let the system manage it self with your supervision of course. For those who prefer to take their time, then take simple steps by using the solution for initially providing insight into hot or cold spots and then helping to make decisions on what changes to make. Use the solution and adapt it to your specific environment and philosophy approach, what a concept, a tool that works for you, vs you working for it.

    What dont I like and why?

    There is and will remain some confusion about intra and inter box or system data movement and migration, operations that can be done by other EMC technology today for those who need it. For example I have had questions asking if FAST is nothing more than EMC Invista or some other data mover appliance sitting in front of Symmetrix or CLARiiONs and the answer is NO. Thus EMC will need to articulate that FAST is both an umbrella term as well as a product feature set combining the storage system along with associated management tools unique to each of the different storage systems. In addition, there will be confusion at least with GA of lack of support for Symmetrix DMX vs supported VMAX. Of course with EMC pricing is always a question so lets see how this plays out in the market with customer acceptance.

    What about the others?

    Certainly some will jump up and down claiming ratification of their visions welcoming EMC to the game while forgetting that there were others before them. However, it can also be said that EMC like others who have had LUN and volume movement or cloning capabilities for large scale solutions are taking the next step. Thus I would expect other vendors to continue movement in the same direction with their own unique spin and approach. For others who have in the past made automated tiering their marketing differentiation, I would suggest they come up with some new spins and stories as those functions are about to become table stakes or common feature functionality on a go forward basis.

    When and where to use?

    In theory, anyone with a Symmetrix/VMAX, CLARiiON or Celerra that supports the new functionality should be a candidate for the capabilities, that is, at least the insight, analysis, monitoring and situation awareness capabilities Note that does not mean actually enabling the automated movement initially.

    While the concept is to enable automated system managed storage (Hmmm, Mainframe DejaVu anyone), for those who want to walk before they run, enabling the insight and awareness capabilities can provide valuable information about how resources are being used. The next step would then to look at the recommendations of the tools, and if you concur with the recommendations, then take remedial action by telling the system when the movement can occur at your desired time.

    For those ready to run, then let it rip and take off as FAST as you want. In either situation, look at FAST for providing insight and situational awareness of hot and cold storage, where opportunities exist for optimizing and gaining efficiency in how resources are used, all important aspects for enabling a Green and Virtual Data Center not to mention as well as supporting public and private clouds.

    FYI, FTC Disclosure and FWIW

    I have done content related projects for EMC in the past (see here), they are not currently a client nor have they sponsored, underwritten, influenced, renumerated, utilize third party off shore swiss, cayman or south american unnumbered bank accounts, or provided any other reimbursement for this post, however I did personally sign and hand to Joe Tucci a copy of my book The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) ;).

    Bottom line

    Do I like what EMC is doing with FAST and this approach? Yes.

    Do I think there is room for improvement and additional enhancements? Absolutely!

    Whats my recommendation? Have a look, do your homework, due diligence and see if its applicable to your environment while asking others vendors what they will be doing (under NDA if needed).

    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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    The other Green Storage: Efficiency and Optimization

    Some believe that green storage is specifically designed to reduce power and cooling costs.

    The reality is that there are many ways to reduce environmental impact while enhancing the economics of data storage besides simply booting utilizing.

    These include optimizing data storage capacity as well as boosting performance to increase productivity per watt of energy used when work needs to be done.

    Some approaches require new hardware or software while others can be accomplished with changes to management including reconfiguration leveraging insight and awareness of resource needs.

    Here are some related links:

    The Other Green: Storage Efficiency and Optimization (Videocast)

    Energy efficient technology sales depend on the pitch

    Performance metrics: Evaluating your data storage efficiency

    How to reduce your Data Footprint impact (Podcast)

    Optimizing enterprise data storage capacity and performance to reduce your data footprint

    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

    Green IT and Virtual Data Centers

    Green IT and virtual data centers are no fad nor are they limited to large-scale environments.

    Paying attention to how resources are used to deliver information services in a flexible, adaptable, energy-efficient, environmentally, and economically friendly way to boost efficiency and productivity are here to stay.

    Read more here in the article I did for the folks over at Enterprise Systems Journal.

    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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    How to win approval for upgrades: Link them to business benefits

    Drew Rob has another good article over at Processor.com about various tips and strategies on how to gain approval for hardware (or software) purchases with some comments by yours truly.

    My tips and advice that are quoted in the story include to link technology resources to business needs impact which may be common sense, however still a time tested effective technique.

    Instead of speaking tech talk such as Performance, capacity, availability, IOPS, bandwidth, GHz, frames or packets per second, VMs to PM or dedupe ratio, map them to business speak, that is things that finance, accountants, MBAs or other management personal understand.

    For example, how many transactions at a given response time can be supported by a given type of server, storage or networking device.

    Or, put a different way, with a given device, how much work can be done and what is the associated monetary or business benefit.

    Likewise, if you do not have a capacity plan for servers, storage, I/O and networking along with software and facilities covering performance, availability, capacity and energy demands now is the time to put one in place.

    More on capacity and performance planning later, however for now, if you want to learn more, check Chapter 10 (Performance and Capacity Planning) in my book Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible and Scalable Data Infrastructure: Elsevier).

    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 is the Future of Servers?

    Recently I provided some comments and perspectives on the future of servers in an article over at Processor.com.

    In general, blade servers will become more ubiquitous, that is they wont go away even with cloud, rather become more common place with even higher density processors with more cores and performance along with faster I/O and larger memory capacity per given footprint.

    While the term blade server may fade giving way to some new term or phrase, rest assured their capabilities and functionality will not disappear, rather be further enhanced to support virtualization with VMware vsphere, Microsoft HyperV, Citrix/Zen along with public and private clouds, both for consolidation and in the next wave of virtualization called life beyond consolidation.

    The other trend is that not only will servers be able to support more processing and memory per footprint; they will also do that drawing less energy requiring lower cooling demands, hence more Ghz per watt along with energy savings modes when less work needs to be performed.

    Another trend is around convergence both in terms of packaging along with technology improvements from a server, I/O networking and storage perspective. For example, enhancements to shared PCIe with I/O virtualization, hypervisor optimization, and integration such as the recently announced EMC, Cisco, Intel and VMware VCE coalition and vblocks.

    Read more including my comments in the article here.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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