Category: Data archiving and preservation

CAS, Archive, ediscovery, Tape, Disk, RHDD, Optical

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Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016

Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016

server storage I/O trends
Updated 12/8/16

In case you had not heard, Microsoft announced the general availability (GA, also known as Release To Manufacturing (RTM) ) of the newest version of its Windows server operating system aka Windows Server 2016 along with System Center 2016. Note that as well as being released to traditional manufacturing distribution mediums as well as MSDN, the Windows Server 2016 bits are also available on Azure.

Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2016 Welcome Screen – Source Server StorageIOlab.com

For some this might be new news, or a refresh of what Microsoft announced a few weeks ago (e.g. the formal announcement). Likewise, some of you may not be aware that Microsoft is celebrating WIndows Server 20th Birthday (read more here).

Yet for others who have participated in the public beta aka public technical previews (TP) over the past year or two or simply after the information coming out of Microsoft and other venues, there should not be a lot of surprises.

Whats New With Windows Server 2016

Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Desktop
Windows Server 2016 Desktop and tools – Source Server StorageIOlab.com

Besides a new user interface including visual GUI and Powershell among others, there are many new feature functionalities summarized below:

  • Enhanced time-server with 1ms accuracy
  • Nano and Windows Containers (Linux via Hyper-V)
  • Hyper-V enhanced Linux services including shielded VMs
  • Simplified management (on-premisess and cloud)
  • Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) and Storage Replica (SR) – view more here and here


Storage Replica (SR) Scenarios including synchronous and asynchronous – Via Microsoft.com

  • Resilient File System aka ReFS (now default file system) storage tiering (cache)
  • Hot-swap virtual networking device support
  • Reliable Change Tracking (RCT) for faster Hyper-V backups
  • RCT improves resiliency vs. VSS change tracking
  • PowerShell and other management enhancements
  • Including subordinated / delegated management roles
  • Compliment Azure AD with on premise AD
  • Resilient/HA RDS using Azure SQL DB for connection broker
  • Encrypted VMs (at rest and during live migration)
  • AD Federation Services (FS) authenticate users in LDAP dir.
  • vTPM for securing and encrypting Hyper-V VMs
  • AD Certificate Services (CS) increase support for TPM
  • Enhanced TPM support for smart card access management
  • AD Domain Services (DS) security resiliency for hybrid and mobile devices

Here is a Microsoft TechNet post that goes into more detail of what is new in WIndows Server 2016.

Free ebook: Introducing Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview (Via Microsoft Press)

Check out the above free ebook, after looking through it, I recommend adding it to your bookshelf. There are lots of good intro and overview material for Windows Server 2016 to get you up to speed quickly, or as a refresh.

Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) CI and HCI

Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) builds on Storage Spaces that appeared in earlier Windows and Windows Server editions. Some of the major changes and enhancements include ability to leverage local direct attached storage (DAS) such as internal (or external) dedicated NVMe, SAS and SATA HDDs as well as flash SSDs that used for creating software defined storage for various scenarios.

Scenarios include converged infrastructure (CI) disaggregated as well as aggregated hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) for Hyper-V among other workloads. Windows Server 2016 S2D nodes communicate (from a storage perspective) via a software storage bus. Data Protection and availability is enabled between S2D nodes via Storage Replica (SR) that can do software based synchronous and asynchronous replication.


Aggregated – Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) – Source Microsoft.com


Desegregated – Converged Infrastructure (CI) – Source Microsoft.com

The following is a Microsoft produced YouTube video providing a nice overview and insight into Windows Server 2016 and Microsoft Software Defined Storage aka S2D.




YouTube Video Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) via Microsoft.com

Server storage I/O performance

What About Performance?

A common question that comes up with servers, storage, I/O and software defined data infrastructure is what about performance?

Following are some various links to different workloads showing performance for Hyper-V, S2D and Windows Server. Note as with any benchmark, workload or simulation take them for what they are, something to compare that may or might not be applicable to your own workload and environments.

  • Large scale VM performance with Hyper-V and in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
  • Benchmarking Microsoft Hyper-V server, VMware ESXi and Xen Hypervisors (Via cisjournal PDF)
  • Server 2016 Impact on VDI User Experience (Via LoginVSI)
  • Storage IOPS update with Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet)
  • SQL Server workload (benchmark) Order Processing Benchmark using In-Memory OLTP (Via Github)
  • Setting up testing Windows Server 2016 and S2D using virtual machines (Via MSDN blogs)
  • Storage throughput with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D TP5 (Via TechNet)
  • Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)

Where To Learn More

For those of you not as familiar with Microsoft Windows Server and related topics, or that simply need a refresh, here are several handy links as well as resources.

  • Introducing Windows Server 2016 (Free ebook from Microsoft Press)
  • What’s New in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft S2D Software Storage Bus (Via TechNet)
  • Understanding Software Defined Storage with S2D in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft Storage Replica (SR) (Via TechNet)
  • Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)
  • Microsoft Windows S2D Software Defined Storage (Via TechNet)
  • Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
  • Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
  • Resilient File System aka ReFS (Via TechNet)
  • DISKSPD now on GitHub, and the mysterious VMFLEET released (Via TechNet)
  • Hyper-converged solution using Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • NVMe, SSD and HDD storage configurations in Storage Spaces Direct TP5 (Via TechNet)
  • General information about SSD at www.thessdplace.com and NVMe at www.thenvmeplace.com
  • How to run nested Hyper-V and Windows Server 2016 (Via Altaro and via MSDN)
  • How to run Nested Windows Server and Hyper-V on VMware vSphere ESXi (Via Nokitel)
  • Get the Windows Server 2016 evaluation bits here
  • Microsoft Azure Stack overview and related material via Microsoft
  • Introducing Windows Server 2016 (Via MicrosoftPress)
  • Various WIndows Server and S2D lab scripts (Via Github)
  • Storage Spaces Direct – Lab Environment Setup (Via Argon Systems)
  • Setting up S2D with a 4 node configuration (Via StarWind blog)
  • SQL Server workload (benchmark) Order Processing Benchmark using In-Memory OLTP (Via Github)
  • Setting up testing Windows Server 2016 and S2D here using virtual machines (Via MSDN blogs)
  • Hyper-V large-scale VM performance for in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
  • BrightTalk Webinar – Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) are in your Future (if not already here)
  • Microsoft TechNet: Understand the cache in Storage Spaces Direct
  • BrightTalk Weibniar – Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Enabling Software-Defined Data Centers
  • Happy 20th Birthday Windows Server, ready for Server 2016?
  • Server StorageIO resources including added links, tools, reports, events and more.

What This All Means

While Microsoft Windows Server recently celebrated its 20th birthday (or anniversary), a lot has changed as well as evolved. This includes Windows Servers 2016 supporting new deployment and consumption models (e.g. lightweight Nano, full data center with desktop interface, on-premises, bare metal, virtualized (Hyper-V, VMware, etc) as well as cloud). Besides how consumed and configured, which can also be for CI and HCI modes, Windows Server 2016 along with Hyper-V extend the virtualization and container capabilities into non-Microsoft environments specifically around Linux and Docker. Not only are the support for those environments and platforms enhanced, so to are the management capabilities and interfaces from Powershell to Bash Linux shell being part of WIndows 10 and Server 2016.

What this all means is that if you have not looked at Windows Server in some time, its time you do, even if you are not a WIndows or Microsoft fan, you will want to know what it is that has been updated (perhaps even update your fud if that is the case) to stay current. Get your hands on the bits and try Windows Server 2016 on a bare metal server, or as a VM guest, or via cloud including Azure, or simply leverage the above resources to learn more and stay informed.

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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EMC is now Dell EMC, part of Dell Technologies and other server storage Updates

EMC is now Dell EMC and other server storage Updates

server storage I/O trends

In case you missed it or did not hear, EMC is now Dell EMC and is future ready (one of their new tag lines).

What this means is that EMC is no longer a publicly traded company instead now being privately held under the Dell Technologies umbrella. In case you did not know or had forgotten, one of the principal owners of Dell Technologies is Michael Dell aka the founder of Dell Computers which itself went private a few years ago. The Dell Server division which sells direct as well as via channels and OEMs is now part of the Dell EMC division (e.g. they sell Servers, Storage, I/O and Networking hardware, software and services).

Dell EMC Storage Portfolio
Dell EMC Storage Portfolio – Via emc.com

Other related news and activities include:

  • Dell EMC sells Content Division (e.g. Documentum (bought in 2003), InfoArchive and LEAP) to OpenText for $1.62B USD
  • Dell is selling its Sonicwall and software division (e.g. what was a mix of Quest and other non-EMC related software) to a Private Equity group. The new company to be called Quest has ironically as one of its investors, activist PE firm Elliott Management. You might recall Elliott Management was the activist investor pushing for more value out of EMC for shareholders.
  • Expands Data Protection Portfolio For VMware Environments
  • Hybrid Cloud Platform Enhancements
  • XtremIO New Features and Management for Virtualized Environments
  • Combines DSSD and PowerEdge Servers for SAS (Software) Analytics
  • ScaleIO Ready Node Offers All-Flash Software-Defined
  • Expands Microsoft Support across Cloud and Converged Infrastructure
  • With approximately 140,000 employees worldwide post merger Dell EMC has announce some expected layoffs.

Dell EMC Enahncements made today

  • Announced a new entry-level VMAX (200F) with very small physical footprint, affordable starter system price and flexibility to scale as you need to grow. Also announced were SRDF third site enhancements as well as VPLEX updates.
  • Data Domain enhancements including OS 6.0, flash and tiering across private, public and hybrid cloud
  • Unity mid-range storage (e.g. the successor to VNX) enhanced with all-flash and UnityOE software updates that include in-line compression along with cloud tiering. All-flash Unity models using 15.36TB SAS Flash SSD drives (3D NAND) can support up to 384TB in a 2U rack. Cloud tiering includes support for Virtustream, AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Dell EMC VMAX storage family
Dell EMC VMAX family and new 200F – Via emc.com

Note that in-line compression on Unity and VMAX systems is available on all-flash based systems, while tiering is available on both all-flash as well as hybrid systems.

Where To Learn More

Dell Updates Storage Center Operating System 7 (SCOS 7)
EMC DSSD D5 Rack Scale Direct Attached Shared SSD All Flash Array Part I
Part II – EMC DSSD D5 Direct Attached Shared AFA
EMCworld 2016 Getting Started on Dell EMC announcements
EMCworld 2016 EMC Hybrid and Converged Clouds Your Way
Dell-EMC: The Storage Ramifications
VMware Targets Synergies in Dell-EMC Deal 
Dell to Buy EMC for $67B; Sharpen Focus on Large Enterprises and High-End Computing
Dell SAN strategy examined after move to go private
EMC VxRack Neutrino Nodes launched for OpenStack cloud storage
EMC Under Pressure To Spin Off VMware
EMC Bridges Cloud, On-Premise Storage With TwinStrata Buy
Top Ten Takeaways from EMC World
When to implement ultra-dense server storage
EMCworld 2015 How Do You Want Your Storage Wrapped?
EMCworld 2015 How Do You Want Your Storage Wrapped?

What This All Means

For those that think (or wish) that now that EMC has gone private (e.g. granted under Dell ownership) that they have gone away and no longer relevant, time will tell what happens long term. However while they (EMC, now Dell EMC) are no longer a publicly held company, they are still very much in the public spotlight addressing legacy, current as well as emerging IT data infrastructure and software-defined data center, software defined storage and related topics spanning cloud, virtual, container among others.

What this all means is that Dell EMC is following through with providing different types of data infrastructure along with associated server, storage and I/O solutions as well as associated software defined storage management and data protection tools to meet various needs. How do you want your storage wrapped? Do you want it software defined such as a ScaleIO, ECS (object), DataDomain (data protection), VIPR, or Unity among other virtual storage appliances (VSAs), or tin-wrapped as a physical storage system or appliance?

With the VMAX 200F, Dell EMC is showing that they can scale-down the VMAX. Dell EMC is also showing they can scale VMAX up and out while making it affordable and physically practical for smaller environments who want, need or are required to have traditional enterprise class storage in a small footprint (price, physical space) with enterprise resiliency.

Dell EMC Storage Portfolio
Dell EMC Storage Portfolio – Via emc.com

A question that comes up is what happens with the various competing Dell and EMC (pre-merger) storage product lines. If you look closely at the storage line up photo above, you will notice the Dell SC (e.g. Compellent) is shown along with all of the EMC solutions. This should or could prompt the question of what about the PS series (e.g. EqualLogic) or some MD. So far the answer I have received is that they remain available for sale which you can confirm via the Dell website. However, what will the future bring to those or others is still TBD.

Needless to say there is more to see and hear coming out of Dell EMC in the weeks and months ahead, that is unless as some predict (or wishful thinking) they go away which I don’t see happening anytime soon. Oh, FWIW, Dell and EMC have been Server StorageIO clients direct and indirect via 3rd parties in the past (that’s a disclosure btw).

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP and VMware vSAN vExpert, 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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Back To Software Defined Data Infrastructure School, Webinar and Fall 2016 events

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Webinars and Fall 2016 events

server storage I/O trends

Its September and that means back to school time, and not just for the kids. Here is the preliminary Server StorageIO fall 2016 back to school, webinar and event activities covering software defined data center, data infrastructure, virtual, cloud, containers, converged, hyper-converged server, storage, I/O network, performance and data protection among other topics.

December 7, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – BrightTalk
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Decision Making

Are Converged Infrastructures (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructures (HCI), Cluster in Box or Cloud in Box (CiB) solutions for you? The answer is it depends on what your needs, requirements, application among other criteria are. In addition are you focused on a particular technology solution or architecture approach, or, looking for something that adapts to your needs? Join us in this discussion exploring your options for different scenarios as we look beyond they hype including to next wave of hyper-scale converged along with applicable decision-making criteria. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– What are your application and environment needs along with other objectives
– Explore various approaches for hyper-small and hyper-large environments
– What are you converging, hardware, hypervisors, management or something else?
– Does HCI mean hyper-vendor-lock-in, if so, is that a bad thing?
– When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

November 23, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT BrightTalk
BCDR and Cloud Backup Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Data Protection

The answer is BCDR and Cloud Backup, however what was the question? Besides how to protect preserve and secure your data, applications along with data Infrastructures against various threat risk issues, what are some other common questions? For example how to modernize, rethink, re-architect, use new and old things in new ways, these and other topics, techniques, trends, tools have a common theme of BCDR and Cloud Backup. Join us in this discussion exploring your options for protecting data, applications and your data Infrastructures spanning legacy, software-defined virtual and cloud environments. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
– Do clouds need to be backed-up or protected?
– How to leverage clouds for various data protection objectives
– When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

November 23, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
Cloud Storage – Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

You have been told, or determined that you need (or want) to use cloud storage, ok, now what? What type of cloud storage do you need or want, or do you simply want cloud storage? However, what are your options as well as application requirements including Performance, Availability, Capacity and Economics (PACE) along with access or interfaces? Where are your applications and where will they be located? What are your objectives for using cloud storage or is it simply you have heard or told its cheaper. Join us in this discussion exploring your options, considerations for cloud storage decision-making. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
– Storage for primary, secondary, performance, availability, capacity, backup, archiving
– Public, private and hybrid cloud storage options from block, file, object to application service
– When, where, why and how to use cloud storage for different scenarios

November 22, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT – BrightTalk
Cloud Infrastructure Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

At the core of cloud (public, private, hybrid) next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that exist to protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for cloud services (and underlying data infrastructures). Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services options for cloud infrastructures. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers and clouds
– Various types of clouds along with cloud services that determine how resources get defined
– When, where, why and how to use cloud Infrastructures along with associated resources

October 27, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT – Virtual Instruments
The Value of Infrastructure Insight

This webinar looks at the value of data center infrastructure insight both as a technology as well as a business productivity enabler. Besides productivity, having insight into how data infrastructure resources (servers, storage, networks, system software) are used, enables informed analysis, troubleshooting, planning, forecasting as well as cost-effective decision-making. In other words, data center infrastructure insight, based on infrastructure performance analytics, enables you to avoid flying blind, having situational awareness for proactive Information Technology (IT) management. Your return on innovation is increased, and leveraging insight awareness along with metrics that matter drives return on investment (ROI) along with enhanced service delivery.

October 20, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
Next-Gen Data Centers Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) including Servers, Storage and Virtualizations

At the core of next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that enable, protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for virtual servers and storage. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around storage and virtualization for today, tomorrow, and in the years to come. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers
– Server and Storage Virtualization better together, with and without CI/HCI
– Many different facets (types) of Server virtualization and virtual storage
– When, where, why and how to use storage virtualization and virtual storage

September 20, 2016 – Webinar 8AM PT – BrightTalk
Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) Enabling Software Defined Data Centers – Part of Software-Defined Storage summit

Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs. Software-Defined Infrastructures (SDI) are what enable Software-Defined Data Centers, and at the heart of a SDI is storage that is software-defined. This spans cloud, virtual and physical storage and is at the focal point of today. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around SDI and SDDC- today, tomorrow, and in the years to come.

September 13, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and
Dell Software
Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory
Whats New and How to Plan for Migration

Windows Server 2016 is expected to GA this fall and is a modernized version of the Microsoft operating system that includes new capabilities such as Active Directory (AD) enhancements. AD is critical to organizational operations providing control and secure access to data, networks, servers, storage and more from physical, virtual and cloud (public and hybrid). But over time, organizations along with their associated IT infrastructures have evolved due to mergers, acquisitions, restructuring and general growth. As a result, yesterday’s AD deployments may look like they did in the past while using new technology (e.g. in old ways). Now is the time to start planning for how you will optimize your AD environment using new tools and technologies such as those in Windows Server 2016 and AD in new ways. Optimizing AD means having a new design, performing cleanup and restructuring prior to migration vs. simply moving what you have. Join us for this interactive webinar to begin planning your journey to Windows Server 2016 and a new optimized AD deployment that is flexible, scalable and elastic, and enables resilient infrastructures. You will learn:

  • What’s new in Windows Server 2016 and how it impacts your AD
  • Why an optimized AD is critical for IT environments moving forward
  • How to gain insight into your current AD environment
  • AD restructuring planning considerations

September 8, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT (Watch on Demand) – Redmond Magazine, Acronis and Unitrends
Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments

Your organization’s business depends on modern Microsoft® environments — Microsoft Azure and new versions of Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Hyper-V with RCT, and business applications — and you need a data protection solution that keeps pace with Microsoft technologies. If you lose mission-critical data, it can cost you $100,000 or more for a single hour of downtime. Join our webinar and learn how different data protection solutions can protect your Microsoft environment, whether you store data on company premises, at remote locations, in private and public clouds, and on mobile devices.

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

Its back to school and learning time, join me on these and other upcoming event activities.

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Server StorageIO May 2016 Update Newsletter

Volume 16, Issue V

Hello and welcome to this May 2016 Server StorageIO update newsletter.

In This Issue

  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Events and Webinars
  • Industry Activity Trends
  • Resources and Links

    • Enjoy this shortened edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter, watch for more tips, articles, lab report test drive reviews, blog posts, videos and podcast’s and in the news commentary appearing soon.

    Cheers GS

    StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past blog posts here

     

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

    Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking: Various comments and discussions

    StorageIOblog: Additional comments and perspectives

    SearchCloudStorage: Comments on OpenIO joins object storage cloud scrum

    SearchCloudStorage: Comments on EMC VxRack Neutrino Nodes and OpenStack

    View more Server, Storage and I/O hardware as well as software trends comments here

     

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Recent Server StorageIO articles appearing in different venues include:

    Via Micron Blog (Guest Post): What’s next for NVMe and your Data Center – Preparing for Tomorrow Today

    Check out these resources techniques, trends as well as tools. View more tips and articles here

    StorageIO Webinars and Industry Events

    Brouwer Storage (Nijkerk Holland) June 10-15, 2016 – Various in person seminar workshops

    June 15: Software Defined Data center with Greg Schulz and Fujitsu International

    June 14: Round table with Greg Schulz and John Williams (General manager of Reduxio) and Gert Brouwer. Discussion about new technologies with Reduxio as an example.

    June 10: Hyper converged, Converged , and related subjects presented Greg Schulz

    Simplify and Streamline Your Virtual Infrastructure – May 17 webinar

    Is Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Right for Your Business? May 11 webinar

    EMCworld (Las Vegas) May 2-4, 2016

    Interop (Las Vegas) May 4-6 2016

    Making the Cloud Work for You: Rapid Recovery April 27, 2016 webinar

    See more webinars and other activities on the Server StorageIO Events page here.

     

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Check out these useful links and pages:

    storageio.com/links – Various industry links (over 1,000 with more to be added soon)
    objectstoragecenter.com – Cloud and object storage topics, tips and news items
    storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/ – Various data protection items and topics
    thenvmeplace.com – Focus on NVMe trends and technologies
    thessdplace.com – NVM and Solid State Disk topics, tips and techniques
    storageio.com/performance.com – Various server, storage and I/O performance and benchmarking

    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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    EMCworld 2016 Getting Started on Dell EMC announcements

    EMCworld 2016 Getting Started on Dell EMC announcements

    server storage I/O trends

    It’s the first morning of EMCworld 2016 here in Las Vegas with some items already announced today, and more in the wings. One of the underlying themes and discussions besides what’s new or who’s doing what, is that this is for all practical purpose the last EMCworld with the upcoming Dell acquisition. What’s not clear is will there be a renamed and repackaged Dell/EMCworld?

    With current EMC President Jeremy Burton who used to be the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at EMC slated to become the CMO across all of Dell, my bet is that there will be some type of new event picking up and moving to a new level of where EMCworld and Dellworld have been. More on the future of EMC and Dell in future posts, however for now, lets see what has unfolded so far today.

    Today’s EMCworld theme is modernize the data center which means a mix of hardware, software and services announcements spanning physical, virtual, cloud among others (e.g. how do you want your servers, storage and data infrastructure wrapped). While the themes are still EMC as the Dell acquisition has yet to be completed, however there is a Dell presence, including Michael Dell here in person (more on Dell later).

    The first wave of announcements include:

    • Unity All Flash Array (AFA) for small, entry-level environments
    • EMC Enterprise Copy Data Management software tools portfolio
    • ViPR Version 3.0 Controller
    • Virtustream global hyper-scale Storage Cloud for data protection and cloud native object
    • MyService360

    • Datadomain virtual edition and long-term archive

    What About The Dell Deal

    Michael Dell who is here at EMCworld announced on the main stage that Dell Technologies will be the name of the families of business.

    This family of business includes the joint Dell, EMC, VMware, Pivotal, Secureworks, RSA and Virtustream. The Dell client focused business will be called Dell leveraging

    that Brand, while the new joint Dell and EMC enterprise business will be called Dell EMC leveraging both of those brands. As a reminder, the Dell servers business unit will be moving into the existing EMC business as part of the enterprise business unit.

    Lets move onto the technology announcements from today.

    Unity AFA (and Hybrid)

    The new Unity all flash array (AFA) is a dual controller storage system optimized for Nonvolatile Memory (NVM) flash SSD, with unified (block and file) access. EMC is positioning Unity as an entry-level AFA starting around $18K USD for a 2U solutions (much capacity that includes is not yet known, more on that in a future post). As well as having a low entry cost, EMC is positioning Unity for a broad, mass market, volume distribution that can be leveraged by their partners, including Dell. More on Unity in future posts. While Unity is new and modern, it comes from the same group who has created the VNXe leveraging that knowledge and skills base.

    Note that Unity is positioned for small, mid-sized, remote office branch office (ROBO), departmental and specialized AFA situations, where EMC NVMe based DSSD D5 is positioned for higher-end shared direct attached server flash, while XtremIO and VMAX also positioned for higher-end, higher performance and workload consolidation scenarios.

    • Simple, flexible, easy to use in a 2U packaging that scale up to 80TB of NVM flash SSD storage
    • Scalable up to 3PB of storage for larger expanded configurations
    • Affordable ($18K USD starting price, $10K entry-level hybrid)
    • Modern AFA storage for entry, small, mid-sized, workgroup, departments and specialized environments
    • Unified file, block, and VMware VVOL support for storage access
    • Also available in hybrid, as well as software defined virtual and converged configurations
    • Higher performance (EMC indicates 300,000 IOPs) for given entry-level systems
    • Available in all-flash array, hybrid array, software-defined and converged configurations
    • Native controller based encryption with synchronous and asynchronous replication
    • VMware VASA 2.0, VAAI, VVols and VMware integration
    • Tight integration with EMC Data Protection portfolio tools

    Read more about Unity here.

    Copy Data Management

    Enterprise Copy Data Management (eCDM) spans data copies from data protection including backup, BC, DR as well as for operational, analytics, test, dev, devops among other uses. Another term is Enterprise Copy Data Analytics (eCDA) which includes monitoring and management along with insight, awareness and of course analytics. These new offerings and initiatives tie together various capabilities across storage platforms and software defined storage management. Watch for more activity in and around eCDM and general copy data management. Read more here.

    ViPR Controller 3.0

    ViPR controller enhancements build on previous announcements, include automation as well as fail over with native replication to a standby ViPR controller. Note that there can actually be two standby controllers that are synchronized asynchronous with software built-in to ViPR. This means that there is no need for RecoverPoint or other products to do the replication of the ViPR controllers. To be clear, this is for high availability of the ViPR controllers themselves and not a replacement for HA or replication of upper layer applications, storage servers or underlying storage services. Also note that ViPR is available via open source (CoprHD via Github here). Read more here.

    MyService360

    MyService360 is a cloud based dashboard and data infrastructure monitoring management platform. Read more here.

    Virtustream Storage Cloud

    Viutustream cloud services and software tools compliments EMC (and others) storage systems as back-end for cool, cold or other bulk data storage needs. Focus is to sell primary storage to customers, then leverage back-end public cloud services for backup, archive, copy data management and other applications. This also means that the Virtustream storage cloud is not just for data protection such as archiving, backup, BC, DR it’s also for other big fast data including cloud and object native applications. Does this mean Virtustream is an alternative to other cloud and object storage services such as AWS S3, Google GCS among others? Yup. Read more here.

    Where To Learn More

    • Session Streaming For video of keynotes, general sessions, backstage sessions, and EMC TV coverage, click here
    • Social: Follow @EMCWorld,  @EMCCorp, @EMC_News and @EMCStorage, and join conversations with  #EMCWORLD, and like EMC on Facebook
    • Photos: Access event photos via  Flickr and EMC Pulse Blog or visit the special EMC World News microsite here
    • Reflections: Read Core Technologies President, Guy Churchward’s Reflections post on today’s announcements here
    • Visit the EMC Store, the EMC Community Network Site and The Core Blog

    What This All Means

    With the announcement of Unity and impending Dell deal, some of you might (or should) have a Dejavu moment of over a decade or so ago when Dell and EMC entered into OEM agreement around the then Clariion mid range storage arrays (e.g. predecessors of VNX and VNXe). Unity is being designed as a high performance, easy to use, flexible, scalable, cost-effective storage solutions for a broad high-volume sales and distribution channel market.

    What does Unity mean for EMC VNX and VNXe as well as XtremIO? Unity will position near where the VNXe has been positioned, along with some of the competing solutions from Dell among others. There might be some overlap with other EMC solutions, however if executed properly, Unity should open up some new markets, perhaps at the hands of some of the newer popular startups that only offer AFA vs. hybrids. Likewise I would expect Unity to appear in future converged solutions such as those via the EMC Converged business unit (e.g. VCE).

    Even with the upcoming Dell acquisition and integration, EMC continues to evolve and innovate in many areas.

    Watch for more announcements later today and throughout the week

    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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Which Enterprise HDD for Content Server Platform

    Which Enterprise HDD to use for a Content Server Platform

    data infrastructure HDD server storage I/O trends

    Updated 1/23/2018

    Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform?

    Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
    Server StorageIO Lab Review

    Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

    This post is the first in a multi-part series based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Equus Computer Systems and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Equus Computer Systems (www.equuscs.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). I was given the opportunity to do some hands-on testing running different application workloads with a 2U content solution platform along with various Seagate Enterprise 2.5” HDD’s handle different application workloads. This includes Seagate’s Enterprise Performance HDD’s with the enhanced caching feature.

    Issues And Challenges

    Even though Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) including NAND flash solid state devices (SSDs) have become popular storage for use internal as well as external to servers, there remains the need for HDD’s Like many of you who need to make informed server, storage, I/O hardware, software and configuration selection decisions, time is often in short supply.

    A common industry trend is to use SSD and HDD based storage mediums together in hybrid configurations. Another industry trend is that HDD’s continue to be enhanced with larger space capacity in the same or smaller footprint, as well as with performance improvements. Thus, a common challenge is what type of HDD to use for various content and application workloads balancing performance, availability, capacity and economics.

    Content Applications and Servers

    Fast Content Needs Fast Solutions

    An industry and customer trend are that information and data are getting larger, living longer, as well as there is more of it. This ties to the fundamental theme that applications and their underlying hardware platforms exist to process, move, protect, preserve and serve information.

    Content solutions span from video (4K, HD, SD and legacy streaming video, pre-/post-production, and editing), audio, imaging (photo, seismic, energy, healthcare, etc.) to security surveillance (including Intelligent Video Surveillance [ISV] as well as Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance [ISR]). In addition to big fast data, other content solution applications include content distribution network (CDN) and caching, network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined network (SDN), to cloud and other rich unstructured big fast media data, analytics along with little data (e.g. SQL and NoSQL database, key-value stores, repositories and meta-data) among others.

    Content Solutions And HDD Opportunities

    A common theme with content solutions is that they get defined with some amount of hardware (compute, memory and storage, I/O networking connectivity) as well as some type of content software. Fast content applications need fast software, multi-core processors (compute), large memory (DRAM, NAND flash, SSD and HDD’s) along with fast server storage I/O network connectivity. Content-based applications benefit from having frequently accessed data as close as possible to the application (e.g. locality of reference).

    Content solution and application servers need flexibility regarding compute options (number of sockets, cores, threads), main memory (DRAM DIMMs), PCIe expansion slots, storage slots and other connectivity. An industry trend is leveraging platforms with multi-socket processors, dozens of cores and threads (e.g. logical processors) to support parallel or high-concurrent content applications. These servers have large amounts of local storage space capacity (NAND flash SSD and HDD) and associated I/O performance (PCIe, NVMe, 40 GbE, 10 GbE, 12 Gbps SAS etc.) in addition to using external shared storage (local and cloud).

    Where To Learn More

    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

    Fast content applications need fast content and flexible content solution platforms such as those from Equus Computer Systems and HDD’s from Seagate. Key to a successful content application deployment is having the flexibility to hardware define and software defined the platform to meet your needs. Just as there are many different types of content applications along with diverse environments, content solution platforms need to be flexible, scalable and robust, not to mention cost effective.

    Continue reading part two of this multi-part series here where we look at how and what to test as well as project planning.

    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.

    Posted on

    Part 3 – Which HDD for content applicaitons – Test Configuration

    Which HDD for content applications – HDD Test Configuration

    HDD Test Configuration server storage I/O trends

    Updated 1/23/2018

    Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform hdd test configuratoin

    Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
    Server StorageIO Lab Review

    Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

    This is the third in a multi-part series (read part two here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). In this post the focus expands to hardware and software defining as well as configuring the test environments along with applications workloads.

    Defining Hardware Software Environment

    Servers Direct content platforms are software defined and hardware defined to your specific solution needs. For my test-drive, I used a pair of 2U Content Solution platforms, one for a client System Test Initiator (STI) (3), the other as server SUT shown in figure-1 (next page). With the STI configured and SUT setup Seagate Enterprise class 2.5” 12Gbps SAS HDD’s were added to the configuration.

    (Note 3) System Test Initiator (STI) was hardware defined with dual Intel Xeon E5-2695 v3 (2.30 GHz) processors, 32GB RAM running Windows Server 2012 R2 with two network connections to the SUT. Network connections from the STI to SUT included an Intel GbE X540-AT2 as well as an Intel XL710 Q2 40 GbE Converged Network Adapter (CNA). In addition to software defining the STI with Windows Server 2012 R2, Dell Benchmark Factory (V7.1 64b bit 496) part of the Database Administrators (DBA) Toad Tools (including free versions) was also used. For those familiar with HammerDB, Sysbench among others, Benchmark Factory is an alternative that supports various workloads and database connections with robust reporting, scripting and automation. Other installed tools included Spotlight on Windows, Iperf 2.0.5 for generating network traffic and reporting results, as well as Vdbench with various scripts.

    SUT setup (4)  included four Enterprise 10K and two 15K Performance drives with enhanced performance caching feature enabled, along with two Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s, all were attached to an internal 12Gbps SAS RAID controller. With the STI configured and SUT setup Seagate Enterprise class 2.5” 12Gbps SAS HDD’s were added to the configuration.

    (Note 4) System Under Test (SUT) dual Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 (2.60 GHz) providing 54 logical processors, 64GB of RAM (expandable to 768GB with 32GB DIMMs, or 3TB with 128GB DIMMs) and two network connections. Network connections from the STI to SUT consisting of an Intel 1 GbE X540-AT2 as well as an Intel XL710 Q2 40 GbE CNA. The GbE LAN connection was used for management purposes while the 40 GbE was used for data traffic. System disk was a 6Gbs SATA flash SSD. Seagate Enterprise class HDD’s were installed into the 16 available 2.5” small form factor (SFF) drive slots. Eight (left most) drive slots were connected to an Intel RMS3CC080 12 Gbps SAS RAID internal controller. The “Blue” drives in the middle were connected to both an NVMe PCIe card and motherboard 6 Gbps SATA controller using an SFF-8637 connector. The four right most drives were also connected to the motherboard 6 Gbps SATA controller.

    System Test Configuration
    Figure-1 STI and SUT hardware as well as software defined test configuration

    This included four Enterprise 10K and two 15K Performance drives with enhanced performance caching feature enabled, along with two Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s, all were attached to an internal 12Gbps SAS RAID controller. Five 6 Gbps SATA Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s were setup using Microsoft Windows as a spanned volume. System disk was a 6Gbps flash SSD and an NVMe flash SSD drive was used for database temp space.

    What About NVM Flash SSD?

    NAND flash and other Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) memory and SSD complement content solution. A little bit of flash SSD in the right place can have a big impact. The focus for theses tests is HDD’s, however some flash SSDs were used as system boot and database temp (e.g. tempdb) space. Refer to StorageIO Lab reviews and visit www.thessdplace.com

    Seagate Enterprise HDD’s Used During Testing

    Various Seagate Enterprise HDD specifications use in the testing are shown below in table-1.

     

    Qty

     

    Seagate HDD’s

     

    Capacity

     

    RPM

     

    Interface

     

    Size

     

    Model

    Servers Direct Price Each

    Configuration

    4

    Enterprise 10K
    Performance

    1.8TB

    10K with cache

    12 Gbps SAS

    2.5”

    ST1800MM0128
    with enhanced cache

    $875.00 USD

    HW(5) RAID 10 and RAID 1

    2

    Enterprise
    Capacity 7.2K

    2TB

    7.2K

    12 Gbps SAS

    2.5”

    ST2000NX0273

    $399.00 USD

    HW RAID 1

    2

    Enterprise 15K
    Performance

    600GB

    15K with cache

    12 Gbps SAS

    2.5”

    ST600MX0082
    with enhanced cache

    $595.00 USD

    HW RAID 1

    5

    Enterprise
    Capacity 7.2K

    2TB

    7.2K

    6 Gbps SATA

    2.5”

    ST2000NX0273

    $399.00 USD

    SW(6) RAID Span Volume

    Table-1 Seagate Enterprise HDD specification and Servers Direct pricing

    URLs for additional Servers Direct content platform information:
    https://serversdirect.com/solutions/content-solutions
    https://serversdirect.com/solutions/content-solutions/video-streaming
    https://www.serversdirect.com/File%20Library/Data%20Sheets/Intel-SDR-2P16D-001-ds2.pdf

    URLs for additional Seagate Enterprise HDD information:
    https://serversdirect.com/Components/Drives/id-HD1558/Seagate_ST2000NX0273_2TB_Hard_Drive

    https://serversdirect.com/Components/Drives/id-HD1559/Seagate_ST600MX0082_SSHD

    Seagate Performance Enhanced Cache Feature

    The Enterprise 10K and 15K Performance HDD’s tested had the enhanced cache feature enabled. This feature provides a “turbo” boost like acceleration for both reads and write I/O operations. HDD’s with enhanced cache feature leverage the fact that some NVM such as flash in the right place can have a big impact on performance (7).

    In addition to their performance benefit, combing a best of or hybrid storage model (combing flash with HDD’s along with software defined cache algorithms), these devices are “plug-and-play”. By being “plug-and-play” no extra special adapters, controllers, device drivers, tiering or cache management software tools are required.

    (Note 5) Hardware (HW) RAID using Intel server on-board LSI based 12 Gbps SAS RAID card, RAID 1 with two (2) drives, RAID 10 with four (4) drives. RAID configured in write-through mode with default stripe / chunk size.

    (Note 6) Software (SW) RAID using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (span). Hardware RAID used write-through cache (e.g. no buffering) with read-ahead enabled and a default 256KB stripe/chunk size.

    (Note 7) Refer to Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy

    The Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K and 15K with enhanced cache feature are a good example of how there is more to performance in today’s HDD’s than simply comparing RPM’s, drive form factor or interface.

    Where To Learn More

    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

    Careful and practical planning are key steps for testing various resources as well as aligning the applicable tools, configuration to meet your needs.

    Continue reading part four of this multi-part series here where the focus expands to database application workloads.

    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.

    Posted on

    HDDs evolve for Content Application servers

    HDDs evolve for Content Application servers

    hdds evolve server storage I/O trends

    Updated 1/23/2018

    Enterprise HDDs evolve for content server platform

    Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
    Server StorageIO Lab Review

    Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

    This is the seventh and final post in this multi-part series (read part six here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). The focus of this post is comparing how HDD continue to evolve over various generations boosting performance as well as capacity and reliability. This also looks at how there is more to HDD performance than the traditional focus on Revolutions Per Minute (RPM) as a speed indicator.

    Comparing Different Enterprise 10K And 15K HDD Generations

    There is more to HDD performance than RPM speed of the device. RPM plays an important role, however there are other things that impact HDD performance. A common myth is that HDD’s have not improved on performance over the past several years with each successive generation. Table-10 shows a sampling of various generations of enterprise 10K and 15K HDD’s (14) including different form factors and how their performance continues to improve.

    different 10K and 15K HDDs
    Figure-9 10K and 15K HDD performance improvements

    Figure-9 shows how performance continues to improve with 10K and 15K HDD’s with each new generation including those with enhanced cache features. The result is that with improvements in cache software within the drives, along with enhanced persistent non-volatile memory (NVM) and incremental mechanical drive improvements, both read and write performance continues to be enhanced.

    Figure-9 puts into perspective the continued performance enhancements of HDD’s comparing various enterprise 10K and 15K devices. The workload is the same TPC-C tests used earlier in a similar (14) (with no RAID). 100 simulated users are shown in figure-9 accessing a database on each of the different drives all running concurrently. The older 15K 3.5” Cheetah and 2.5” Savio used had a capacity of 146GB which used a database scale factor of 1500 or 134GB. All other drives used a scale factor 3000 or 276GB. Figure-9 also highlights the improvements in both TPS performance as well as lower response time with new HDD’s including those with performance enhanced cache feature.

    The workloads run are same as the TPC-C ones shown earlier, however these drives were not configured with any RAID. The TPC-C activity used Benchmark Factory with similar setup and configuration to those used earlier including on a multi-socket, multi-core Windows 2012 R2 server supporting a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database with a database for each drive type.

    ENT 10K V3 2.5"

    ENT (Cheetah) 15K 3.5"

    Users

    1

    20

    50

    100

    Users

    1

    20

    50

    100

    TPS (TPC-C)

    14.8

    50.9

    30.3

    39.9

    TPS (TPC-C)

    14.6

    51.3

    27.1

    39.3

    Resp. Time (Sec.)

    0.0

    0.4

    1.6

    1.7

    Resp. Time (Sec.)

    0.0

    0.3

    1.8

    2.1

    ENT 10K 2.5" (with cache)

    ENT (Savio) 15K 2.5"

    Users

    1

    20

    50

    100

    Users

    1

    20

    50

    100

    TPS (TPC-C)

    19.2

    146.3

    72.6

    71.0

    TPS (TPC-C)

    15.8

    59.1

    40.2

    53.6

    Resp. Time (Sec.)

    0.0

    0.1

    0.7

    0.0

    Resp. Time (Sec.)

    0.0

    0.3

    1.2

    1.2

    ENT 15K V4 2.5"

    Users

    1

    20

    50

    100

    TPS (TPC-C)

    19.7

    119.8

    75.3

    69.2

    Resp. Time (Sec.)

    0.0

    0.1

    0.6

    1.0

    ENT 15K (enhanced cache) 2.5"

    Users

    1

    20

    50

    100

    TPS (TPC-C)

    20.1

    184.1

    113.7

    122.1

    Resp. Time (Sec.)

    0.0

    0.1

    0.4

    0.2

    Table-10 Continued Enterprise 10K and 15K HDD performance improvements

    (Note 14) 10K and 15K generational comparisons were run on a separate comparable server to what was used for other test workloads. Workload configuration settings were the same as other database workloads including using Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on a Windows 2012 R2 system with Benchmark Factory driving the workload. Database memory sized was reduced however to only 8GB vs. 16GB used in other tests.

    Where To Learn More

    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

    A little bit of flash in the right place with applicable algorithms goes a long way, an example being the Seagate Enterprise HDD’s with enhanced cache feature. Likewise, HDD’s are very much alive complementing SSD and vice versa. For high-performance content application workloads flash SSD solutions including NVMe, 12Gbps SAS and 6Gbps SATA devices are cost effective solutions. HDD’s continue to be cost-effective data storage devices for both capacity, as well as environments that do not need the performance of flash SSD.

    For some environments using a combination of flash and HDD’s complementing each other along with cache software can be a cost-effective solution. The previous workload examples provide insight for making cost-effective informed storage decisions.

    Evaluate today’s HDD’s on their effective performance running workloads as close as similar to your own, or, actually try them out with your applications. Today there is more to HDD performance than just RPM speed, particular with the Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K and 15K HDD’s with enhanced caching feature.

    However the Enterprise Performance 10K with enhanced cache feature provides a good balance of capacity, performance while being cost-effective. If you are using older 3.5” 15K or even previous generation 2.5” 15K RPM and “non-performance enhanced” HDD’s, take a look at how the newer generation HDD’s perform, looking beyond the RPM of the device.

    Fast content applications need fast content and flexible content solution platforms such as those from Servers Direct and HDD’s from Seagate. Key to a successful content application deployment is having the flexibility to hardware define and software defined the platform to meet your needs. Just as there are many different types of content applications along with diverse environments, content solution platforms need to be flexible, scalable and robust, not to mention cost effective.

    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.

    Posted on

    Happy Earth Day 2016 Eliminating Digital and Data e-Waste

    Happy Earth Day 2016 Eliminating Digital and Data e-Waste

    With Earth Day 2016 on April 22, here are some thoughts about electronic waste (e-waste).

    For those involved in data management or data infrastructures, the following are five tips to help cut the overhead and resulting impact of digital e-waste and later physical e-waste. Most conversations involving e-waste focus on the physical aspects from disposing of electronics along with later impacts. While physical e-waste is an important topic, lets expand the conversation including other variations of e-waste including digital. By digital e-waste I’m referring to the use of physical items that end up contributing to traditional e-waste.

    digital and data ewaste

    Digital e-waste ranges from the overhead of keeping extra copies of data that result in an expanding data footprint that in turn requires extra physical resources and their impact. Addressing physical e-waste also means keeping digital (not the physical items) including data waste in perspective.

    Also note that digital or data waste may in fact not be waste per say if it exists as a by-product of making sure applications, data and resulting information are protected, preserved, secured and served for when needed. The warning is what can be done to make sure there are good useful effective and efficient copy data that has a relative low data footprint overhead impact, more on this later.

    Here are six themes to consider to cut the impact without costing or compromising your organization when address e-waste (physical, digital, data).

    1. Understand Digital e-waste

    You might be familiar with the term e-waste (electronic waste), you know, those physical items that get discarded from supporting your digital lifestyle. The reason awareness around e-waste is important is because of the environmental impacts of discarding all those devices. The more known about the issue, impacts, causes and effects helps to drive awareness as well as insight into what can be done to mitigate those items.

    ewaste

    Devices range from smart and dumb cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), tablets, notebook and workstation computers, MP3 devices, cameras, video display monitors along with larger servers, storage and networking technology, not to mention all the other Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Device (IoD) items. What’s important to know about physical e-waste is the impact of the various components. You can learn more about physical e-waste impact in general with a web search such as Google e-waste impact.

    2. Reuse, Repurpose, Redeploy, Reconfigure, Re-Tool, Recycle

    Reconfigure and retool where possible by re-driving installing newer, more energy-efficient high-capacity drives, or more performance effective devices. Besides replacing Hard Disk Drives (HDD), Solid State Devices (SSDs), magnetic tape among other mediums, look at the pro’s and con’s of replacing CPU processor sockets, upgrading memory and PCIe I/O cards for networking or storage among other enhancements.

    Pro’s include being able to use the chassis longer reducing amount of physical e-waste, however at some point it can be more cost-effective to do a total replacement. However the longer you can use the asset or device the more that has as a positive benefit to cut e-waste.

    Repurpose, reuse and redeploy assets such as servers, storage and networking devices in a hand me down approach assuming there is a value or benefit in doing so.

    Recycle when done, dispose of the technology properly including for storage secure erase of digital media and later physical handling.

    3. Responsible Recycle and Disposition of technology (including secure digital destruction)

    What are you doing with, how are you disposing of physical items ranging from laptops, workstations, tablets, phones, MP3 players, TVs and monitors, servers, network and storage devices among others when no longer needed?

    Are you securely erasing your digital data on HDDs as well as SSDs or even tape and optical devices before they are disposed of? If not, you should be. For example if you are not yet using or looking at Self Encrypting Drives (SED) including HDDs and SSDs for securing your data, start investigating them. Sure they have a security value proposition for when lost or stolen, however they can also cut the time to secure erase to a given standard from days or hours to minutes or seconds.

    These will become e-waste

    Smart shopping up front, what you want, what you need, how long can you leverage, spend more up front to get something that can last 3-5 years vs. discarding in 1.5-3 years.
    Smart management with insight, know your cost and impacts, not just for PR purpose, for profit and practicality

    4. Plan acquisitions with disposition in mind

    Redesign and design for replacement, maximizing what you have or will acquire, using it for longer time to cut costs, improve productivity (and profitability) while reducing e-waste overhead contributing footprint.

    For example, do you need or want to have the latest in new technology replacing that phone, tablet, watch or other IoT or IoD item as soon as something newer comes along? No worries if you are also doing something responsible with what was new and now old by such as donating or giving it to somebody else who might be able to get a few more years worth of use out of it before it becomes e-waste.

    On the other hand, if you are acquiring technology with a 2-3 year useful life plan, what would it take to upgrade that item to a larger or more robust version using it for 3-5 years. Granted, you might not use it in its primary role for the longer duration, however can it be repurposed for some other uses? Also from a technology acquisition perspective, have a forecast and plan that can help you make smart, informed decisions up front knowing when upgrades or extra resources will be needed to prolong the usefulness of the item.

    Of course you can also simply move everything to the cloud and out-source your e-waste footprint to the vendor, MSP or cloud provider.

    5. Understand Changing Data Value

    Keep in mind that data has either no value, some value or unknown value all of which can change over time. For example some data has value for seconds, minutes or hours and can then be discarded. Other data have some value which can be low or high which determines how as well as when, where and how to protect, preserve, secure and serve it when needed. Then there is data that has an unknown value. However, that can change over time.

    Different and Changing Data Value

    Over time your data may end up having no value meaning it can be discarded, or, it might have some value (low or high) meaning change how it should be protected, preserved, secured and served. Then there is data that may stay in limbo or unknown status indefinitely or until somebody, or some software or via other means decide if it has value or not.

    The point is that to cut digital e-waste is to discard data with no value as soon as possible, protect, preserve, secure and serve data with value appropriately. Likewise, for all of that growing data with an unknown value, rethink how it is protected and stored, all of which has an impact on both physical as well as digital e-waste.

    This means having insight and awareness into your environment, applications, data, settings, configuration and metadata, not only of the space being used, or when it was last updated. Also, look beyond when data was last modified or changed, look at when it was last read or accessed to decide how protected and secured including virus and other scans.

    6. Data Footprint Reduction (DFR)

    Implement data footprint reduction (DFR) to lower overhead impact not only at the target or downstream destination using compression, dedupe and other techniques. Also, move upstream to the source where the problem starts and address it there. Addressing at the source leverages various techniques from Archiving, Backup/Data Protection Modernization (rethinking what saved, when, how often, etc), Cleanup, Compression and Consolidation, Data management, Deletion and Dedupe along with storage tiering, RAID/Parity/Mirroring/Replication/Erasure Code and Advanced Parity/LRC/Forward Error Correction and other technologies.

    For example if you have 10TB of data, how many copies do you have and why, how are those copies protected and what is their overhead. The issue and concern should not be primarily how many copies, rather, if those copies add or give value, then what can you do to keep them while reducing their overhead impact, besides simply trying to compress or dedupe everything. Hint, start exploring copy management as well as revisiting what you protect, when, where, why, how often along with options for implementing DFR as close to the data source as possible, as well as downstream.

    Where To Learn More

    What This All Means

    Gain insight and awareness into what is occurring with physical and digital ewaste side stepping the greenwashing and other activity. Small steps implemented by many will have a big impact. Every bit, byte, block, blob, bucket file or object along with their copies have an impact, hopefully as well as a benefit, a question is how can you reduce the overhead while increasing your return on innovation reducing costs, complexity and overhead while enhancing organization capabilities. There are many techniques, technologies, tools and approaches to apply to various environments, after all, everything is not the same, yet there are similarities. Happy Earth Day 2016 and happy spring to those of you in the northern hemisphere (as well as elsewhere).

    Ok, nuff said, for now

    Cheers
    Gs

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

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Cloud Constellation SpaceBelt – Out Of This World Cloud Data Centers?

    Cloud Constellation SpaceBelt – Out Of This World Cloud Data Centers?

    server storage I/O trends

    A new startup called Cloud Constellation (aka SpaceBelt) has announced and proposes converge space terrestrial satellite technology with IT information and cloud related data infrastructure technologies including NVM (e.g. SSD) and storage class memory (SCM). While announcing their Series A funding and proposed value proposition (below), Cloud Constellation did not say how much funding, who the investors are, or management team leading to some, well, rather cloud information.

    Cloud Constellation’s SpaceBelt transforms cybersecurity for enterprise and government operations moving high-value data around the world by:

    • insulating it completely from the Internet and terrestrial leased lines
    • liberating it from cyberattacks and surreptitious activities
    • protecting it from natural disasters and force majeure events
    • addressing all jurisdictional complexities and constraints
    • avoiding risks of violating privacy regulations

    Truly secure data transfer: Enterprises and governments will finally be enabled to bypass use of leaky networks and compromised servers interconnecting their sites around the world.

    New option for cloud service providers: The service will be a key market differentiator for cloud service providers to offer a transformative, ultra-high degree of network security to clients reliant on moving sensitive, mission-critical data around the world each day.

    What is SpaceBelt Cloud Constellation?

    From their website www.cloudconstellation.com you will see following.

    Cloud Constellation Space Belt
    www.cloudconstellation.com

    Keeping in mind that today is April 1st which means April Fools day 2016, my motto for the day is trust yet verify. So just for fun, check out this new company that I had a briefing with earlier this week that also announced their Series A funding earlier in March 2016.

    The question you have to ask yourself today is if this is an out of this world April Fools prank, an out of this world idea that will eclipse current cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, IBM Softlayer, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace among others?

    Or, will SpaceBelt go the way of earlier cloud high flyers HP Cloud, Nirvanix among others.

    Btw, keep in mind that only you can prevent cloud data loss, however cloud and virtual data availability is also a shared responsibility.

    Some Questions and Things To Ponder

    • Is this an April Fools Joke?
    • How much Non Volatile Memory (NVM) such as NAND, 3D Nand, 3D XPoint or other Storage Class Memory (SCM) can be physically placed on each bird (e.g. Satellite)
    • What will the solar panels look like to power the birds, plus battery’s for heating and cooling the NVM (contrary to popular myth, NVMs do get warm if not hot)
    • What is the availability, accessibility and durability model, how will data be replicated, mirrored or an out of this world LRC/Erasure Code Advanced Parity model be used?
    • How will the storage be accessed, what will the end-points look like, iSCSI, NDB, FUSE, NFS, CIFS, HDFS, Torrent, JSON, ODBC, REST/HTTP, FTP or something else?
    • Security will be a concern as well as geo placement, after all, its one thing to move data across some borders, how about if the data is hundreds of miles above those borders?
    • Cost will be an interesting model to follow, as well as competitors from SpaceX, Amazon, Boeing, GE, NSA, Google, Facebook or others emerge?
    • What will the uplink and download speeds be, not to mention latency of moving and accessing data from the satellites. For those who have DirectTV or other terrestrial service you know the pros and cons associated with that. Speaking of which, perhaps you have experienced a thunder-storm with DirecTV or Dish, or perhaps a cloud storm due to a cloud provider service or site failure, think about what happens to your cloud data if the satellite dish is disrupted during an upload or download.
    • I also wonder how the various industry trade groups will wrap their head around this one, what kind of new standards, initiatives and out of this world marketing promotions will we see or hear about? You know that some creative marketer will declare surface clouds as dead, just saying.

    Where To Learn More

    What This All Means

    The folks over at cloud constellation say their space belt made up of a constellation (e.g. in orbit cluster) of satellites will be circling the globe around 2019. I wonder if they will be ready to do a proof of concept (poc) technology demonstrator of their IP using TCP based networking, server, storage I/O protocols leveraging a hot air balloon or weather balloon near term, if not, would be a great marketing ploy.

    If nothing else, putting their data infrastructure technology on a hot air balloon could be a fun marketing ploy to say their cloud rises above the hot air of other cloud marketing. Or if they do a POC using a weather balloon, they could show and say their cloud rises above traditional cloud storms, oh the fun…

    Check out Cloud Constellation and their Spacebelt, see for yourself and then you decide what is going on!

    Remember, its April Fools day today, trust, yet verify.

    What say you, is this an April Fools Joke or the next big thing?

    Ok, nuff said (for now), time to listen to Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon ;)

    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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Server StorageIO March 2016 Update Newsletter

    Volume 16, Issue III

    Hello and welcome to the March 2016 Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Here in the northern hemisphere spring has officially arrived as of March 20th equinox along with warmer weather, more hours and minutes of day light, and plenty of things to do. In addition to the official arrival of spring here (fall in the southern hemisphere), it also means in the U.S. that March Madness and college basketball tournament playoff brackets and office (betting) pools are in full swing.

    In This Issue

  • Feature Topic and Themes
  • Industry Trends News
  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Videos and Podcast’s
  • Events and Webinars
  • Recommended Reading List
  • Industry Activity Trends
  • Server StorageIO Lab reports
  • New and Old Vendor Update
  • Resources and Links

    • A couple of other things associated with spring is to move clocks forward which occurred recently here in the U.S. Spring is also a good time to check your smoke and dangerous gas detectors or other alarms. This means replacing batteries and cleaning the detectors.

    Besides smoke and gas detectors, spring is also a good time do preventive maintenance on your battery backup uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), as well as generators and other standby power devices. For my part, I had a service tech out to do a tune up on my Kohler generator, as well as replaced some batteries in APC UPS devices.

    Besides smoke and CO2 detectors, generators and UPS standby power systems, March madness basketball and other sports tournaments, something else occurs on March 31st (besides being the day before April 1st and April fools day). March 31st is World Backup (and Restore) Day meaning an awareness on making sure your data, applications, settings, configurations, keys, software and systems are backed up, and can be recovered.

    Hopefully none of you are in the situation where data, applications, systems, computers, laptops, tablets, smart phones or other devices only get backed up or protected once a year, however maybe you know somebody who does.

    March also marks the 10th anniversary of Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services (more here), happy birthday AWS.

    March wraps up on the 31st with World Backup Day which is intended to draw attention to the importance of data protection and your ability to recover applications and data. While backup are important, so to are testing to make sure you can actually use and recover from what was protected. Keep in mind that while some claim backup is dead, data protection is alive and as along as vendors and others keep referring to data protection as backup, backup will stay alive.

    Join me and folks from HP Enterprise (HPE) on March 31st at 1PM ET for a free webinar compliments of HPE with a theme of Backup with Brains, emphasis on awareness and analytics to enable smart data protection. Click here to learn more and register.

    Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and podcast’s along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

    Cheers GS

    Feature Topic and Theme

    This months feature theme and topics include backup (and restore) as part of data protection, more on clouds (public, private and hybrid) including how some providers such as DropBox are moving out of public cloud providers such as AWS building their own data centers.

    Building off of the February newsletter there is more on Google including their use of Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) aka NAND Flash Solid State Devices (SSD). and some of their research. In addition to Google’s use of SSD, check out the posts and industry activity on NVMe as well as other news and updates including new converged platforms from Cisco and HPE among others.

    StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past blog posts here

    Server Storage I/O Industry Activity Trends (Cloud, Virtual, Physical)

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)

    Some new Products Technology Services Announcements (PTSA) include:

  • Via Redmondmag: AWS Cloud Storage Service Turns 10 years old in March, happy birthday AWS (read more here at the AWS site).
  • Cisco announced new flexible HyperFlex converged compute server platforms for hybrid cloud and other deployments. Also announced were NetApp All Flash Array (AFA) FlexPod converged solutions powered by Cisco UCS servers and networking technology. In other activity, Cisco unveiled a Digital Network Architecture to enable customer digital data transformation. Cisco also announced its intent to acquire CliQr for management of hybrid clouds.

  • Data Direct Networks (DDN) expands NAS offerings with new GS14K platform via PRnewswire.

  • Via Computerworld: DropBox quits Amazon cloud, takes back 500 PB of data. DropBox has created their own cloud to host videos, images, files, folders, objects, blobs and other storage items that used to be stored within AWS S3. In this DropBox post, you can read about the why they decided to create their own cloud, as well as how they used a hybrid approach with metadata kept local, actual data stored in AWS S3. Now the data and the metadata are in DropBox data centers. However, DropBox is still keeping some data in AWS particular in different geographies.

  • Web site hosting company GoDaddy has extended their capabilities similar to other service providers by adding an OpenStack powered cloud service. This is a trend that others such as Bluehost (where my sites are located on a DPS) have evolved from simple shared hosting, to dedicated private servers (DPS), virtual private servers (VPS) along with other cloud related services. Think of a VPS as a virtual machine or cloud instance. Likewise some of the cloud service providers such as AWS are moving into dedicated private servers.

  • Following up from the February 2016 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter that included Google’s message to disk vendors: Make hard drives like this, even if they lose more data and Google Disk for Data Centers White Paper (PDF Here), read about Google experiences SSD.

    In this PDF white paper that was presented at the recent Usenix 2016 conference outlining Google’s experiences with different types (SLC, MLC, eMLC) and generations of NAND flash SSD media across various vendors and generations. Some of the takeaways include that context matters when looking at SSD metrics on endurance, durability and errors. While some in the industry focus on Unrecoverable Bit Error Rates (UBER), there needs to be awareness around Raw Bit Error Rate (RBER) among other metrics and usage. Read more about Google’s experiences here.


  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced Hyper-Converged systems Via Marketwired including HC 380 based on ProLiant DL380 technology providing all in one (AiO) converged compute, storage and virtualization software with simplified management. The HC 380 is targeted for mid-market aka small medium business (SMB), remote office branch office (ROBO) and workgroups. HPE also announced all flash array (AFA) enhancements for 3PAR storage (Via Businesswire).

  • Microsoft has announced that it will be releasing a version of its SQL Server database on Linux. What this means is that as well as being able to use SQL Server and associated tools on Windows and Azure platforms, you will also in the not so distant future be able to deploy on Linux. By making SQL Server available on Linux opens up some interesting scenarios and solution alternatives vs. Oracle along with MySQL and associated MySQL derivatives, as well as NoSQL offerings (Read more about NoSQL Databases here). Read more about Microsoft’s SQL Server for Linux here.

    In addition to SQL Server for Linux, Microsoft has also announced enhancements for easing docker container migrations to clouds. In other Microsoft activity, they announced enhancements to Storsimple and Azure. Keep an eye out for Windows Server 2016 Tech Preview 5 (e.g. TP5) which will be the next release of the upcoming new version of the popular operating systems.


  • MSDI, Rockland IT Solutions and Source Support Services Merge to Form Congruity with CEO Todd Gresham, along with Mike Stolz and Mark Shirman (formerly of Glasshouse) among others you may know.

  • Via Businesswire: PrimaryIO announces server-based flash acceleration for VMware systems, while Riverbed extends Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) cloud connectivity Via Businesswire.

  • Via Computerworld: Samsung ships 12Gbs SAS 15TB 2.5" 3D NAND Flash SSD (Hey Samsung, send me a device or two and will give them a test drive in the Server StorageIO lab ;). Not to be out done, Via Forbes: Seagate announces fast SSD card, as well as for the High Performance Compute (HPC) and Super Compute (SC) markets, Via HPCwire: Seagate Sets Sights on Broader HPC Market with their scale-out clustered Lustre based systems.

  • Servers Direct is now offering the HGST 4U x 60 drive enclosures while Via PRnewswire: SMIC announces RRAM partnership.

  • ATTO Technology has enhanced their RAID Arrays Behind FibreBridge 7500, while Oracle announced mainframe virtual tape library (VTL) cloud support Via Searchdatabackup. In other updates for this month, VMware has released and made generally available (GA) VSAN 6.2 and Via Businesswire: Wave and Centeris Launch Transpacific Broadband Data and Fiber Hub.

    • The above is a sampling of some of the various industry news, announcements and updates for this March. Watch for more news and updates in April coming out of NAB and OpenStack Summit among other events.

    View other recent news and industry trends here.

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    View more Server, Storage and I/O hardware as well as software trends comments here

    Vendors you may not have heard of

    Various vendors (and service providers) you may not know or heard about recently.

    • Continum – R1Soft Server Backup Manager
    • HyperIO – HiMon and HyperIO server storage I/O monitoring software tools
    • Runcast – VMware automation and management software tools
    • Opvizor – VMware health management software tools
    • Asigra – Cloud, Managed Service and distributed backup/data protection tools
    • Datera – Software defined storage management startup
    • E8 Storage – Software Defined Stealth Storage Startup
    • Venyu – Cloud and data center data protection tools
    • StorPool – Distributed software defined storage management tools
    • ExaBlox – Scale out storage solutions

    Check out more vendors you may know, have heard of, or that are perhaps new on the Server StorageIO Industry Links page here (over 1,000 entries and growing).

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Recent Server StorageIO articles appearing in different venues include:

    • InfoStor:  Data Protection Gaps, Some Good, Some Not So Good

    • Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs):  Part III EVO:RAIL – When And Where To Use It?

    • InfoStor:  Object Storage Is In Your Future

    Check out these resources and links technology, techniques, trends as well as tools. View more tips and articles here

    StorageIO Videos and Podcasts

    Check out this video (Via YouTube) of a Google Data Center tour.

    In the IoT and IoD era of little and big data, how about this video I did with my Phantom DJI drone and a HD GoPro (e.g. 1K vs. 2.7K or 4K in newer cameras). This generates about a GByte of raw data per 10 minutes of flight, which then means another GB copies to a staging area, then to a protected copies, then production versions and so forth. Thus a 2 minute clip in 1080p resulted in plenty of storage including produced, uploaded versions along with backup copies in archives spread across YouTube, Dropbox and elsewhere.

    StorageIO podcasts are also available via and at StorageIO.tv

    StorageIO Webinars and Industry Events

    EMCworld (Las Vegas) May 2-4, 2016

    Interop (Las Vegas) May 4-6 2016

    TBA – April 27, 2016 webinar

    NAB (Las Vegas) April 19-20, 2016

    Backup with Brains – March 31, 2016 free webinar (1PM ET)

    See more webinars and other activities on the Server StorageIO Events page here.

    From StorageIO Labs

    Research, Reviews and Reports

    NVMe is in your future, resources to start preparing today for tomorrow

    NVM and NVMe corner (Via and Compliments of Micron.com)

    View more NVMe related items at microsite thenvmeplace.com.

    Read more in this Server StorageIO industry Trends Perspective white paper and lab review.

    Server StorageIO Recommended Reading List

    The following are various recommended reading including books, blogs and videos. If you have not done so recently, also check out the Intel Recommended Reading List (here) where you will also find a couple of mine as well as books from others.

    For this months recommended reading, it’s a blog site. If you have not visited Eric Siebert’s (@ericsiebert) site vSphere-land and its companion resources pages including top blogs, do so now.

    Granted there is a heavy VMware server virtualization focus, however there is a good balance of other data infrastructure topics spanning servers, storage, I/O networking, data protection and more.

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Check out these useful links and pages:

    storageio.com/links – Various industry links (over 1,000 with more to be added soon)
    objectstoragecenter.com – Cloud and object storage topics, tips and news items
    storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/ – Various data protection items and topics
    thenvmeplace.com – Focus on NVMe trends and technologies
    thessdplace.com – NVM and Solid State Disk topics, tips and techniques
    storageio.com/performance.com – Various server, storage and I/O performance and benchmarking

    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

    Server StorageIO February 2016 Update Newsletter

    Volume 16, Issue II

    Hello and welcome to the February 2016 Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Even with an extra day during the month of February, there was a lot going on in a short amount of time. This included industry activity from servers to storage and I/O networking, hardware, software, services, mergers and acquisitions for cloud, virtual, containers and legacy environments. Check out the sampling of some of the various industry activities below.

    Meanwhile, its now time for March Madness which also means metrics that matter and getting ready for World Backup Data on March 31st. Speaking of World Backup Day, check out the StorageIO events and activities page for a webinar on March 31st involving data protection as part of smart backups.

    While your focus for March may be around brackets and other related themes, check out the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) white paper listed below that looks at NAND flash SSD failures at Facebook. Some of the takeaways involve the importance of cooling and thermal management for flash, as well as wear management and role of flash translation layer firmware along with controllers.

    Also see the links to the Google White Paper on their request to the industry for a new type of Hard Disk Drive (HDD) to store capacity data while SSD’s handle the IOP’s. The take away is that while Google uses a lot of flash SSD for high performance, low latency workloads, they also need to have a lot of high-capacity bulk storage that is more affordable on a cost per capacity basis. Google also makes several proposals and suggestions to the industry on what should and can be done on a go forward basis.

    Backblaze also has a new report out on their 2015 HDD reliability and failure analysis which makes for an interesting read. One of the take away’s is that while there are newer, larger capacity 6TB and 8TB drives, Backblaze is leveraging the lower cost per capacity of 4TB drives that are also available in volume quantity.

    Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and podcast’s along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

    Cheers GS

    In This Issue

  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Industry Activity Trends
  • New and Old Vendor Update
  • Events and Webinars

    • StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    • EMC DSSD D5 Rack Scale Direct Attached Shared SSD All Flash Array Part I
      and Part II – EMC DSSD D5 Direct Attached Shared AFA
      EMC announced the general availability of their DSSD D5 Shared Direct Attached SSD (DAS) flash storage system (e.g. All Flash Array or AFA) which is a rack-scale solution. If you recall, EMC acquired DSSD back in 2014 which you can read more about here. EMC announced four configurations that include 36TB, 72TB and 144TB raw flash SSD capacity with support for up to 48 dual-ported host client servers.
    • Various Hardware (SAS, SATA, NVM, M2) and Software (VHD) Defined Odd’s and Ends
      Ever need to add another GbE port to a small server, workstation or perhaps Intel NUC, however no PCIe slots are available? How about attaching a M2 form factor flash SSD card to a server or device that does not have an M2 port, or, for mirroring two M2 cards together with a RAID adapter? Looking for tool to convert a Windows system to a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) while it is running? The following are a collection of odd’s and end’s devices and tools for hardware and software defining your environment.
    • Software Defined Storage Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Algorithms + Data Structures
      For those who are into, or simply like to talk about software defined storage (SDS), API’s, Windows, Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) or VHDX, or Hyper-V among other related themes, have you ever actually looked at the specification for VHDX? If not, here is the link to the open specification that Microsoft published (this one dates back to 2012).
    • Big Files and Lots of Little File Processing and Benchmarking with Vdbench
      Need to test a server, storage I/O networking, hardware, software, services, cloud, virtual, physical or other environment that is either doing some form of file processing, or, that you simply want to have some extra workload running in the background for what ever reason?

    View other recent as well as past blog posts here

    Server Storage I/O Industry Activity Trends (Cloud, Virtual, Physical)

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)

    Some new Products Technology Services Announcements (PTSA) include:

  • Tegile – IntelliFlash HD Now Available To Enterprises Worldwide
  • Via Forbes – Competitors and Cash Bleed Put Pressure on Pure Storage
  • Via HealthCareBusiness – Philips and Amazon team up on cloud-based health record storage
  • Via Zacks – IBM Advances Hybrid Cloud Object Based Storage
  • DataONstorage expands Microsoft Hyper Converged Infrastructure platforms
  • Via ITBusinessEdge – Nimble updates All Flash Array (AFA) storage
  • Carnegie Mellon University – A Large-Scale Study of Flash Memory Failures
  • Cisco Buys Cliqr Cloud Orchestration
  • Backblaze – 2015 Hard Drive Reliability Reports and Analysis
  • Via BusinessCloudNews – Verizon Closing Down Its Public Cloud
  • Via BusinessInsider – US Government Approves Dell and EMC Deal
  • EMC and VMware announce new VCE VxRAIL Converged Solutions
  • EMC announces new IBM zSeries Mainframe enhancements for VMAX
  • EMC announces new DSSD D5 AFA and VMAX AFA enhancements
  • HPE announces enhancements to StoreEasy 1650 storage
  • Seagate now shipping worlds slimmest and fastest 2TB mobile HDD
  • Via VMblog – Oracle Scoops Up Ravello to Boosts Its Public Cloud Offerings
  • Via Investors – SSD and Chinese Investments in Western Digital
  • ATTO announces 32G (e.g. Gen 6) Fibre Channel adapters
  • Google to disk vendors: Make hard drives like this, even if they lose more data
  • Google Disk for Data Centers White Paper (PDF Here)

    • View other recent news and industry trends here

    Vendors you may not have heard of

    Various vendors (and service providers) you may not know or heard about recently.

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)

    • SkySync – Enterprise File Sync and Share
    • SANblaze – Storage protocol emulation tools
    • OpenIT – DCIM and Data Infrastructure Management Tools
    • Infinit.sh – Decentralized Software Based File Storage Platform
    • Alluxio –
      Open Source Software Defined Storage Abstraction Layer
    • Genie9 –
      Backup and Data Protection Tools
    • E8 Storage – Software Defined Stealth Storage Startup

    Check out more vendors you may know, have heard of, or that are perhaps new on the Server StorageIO Industry Links page here (over 1,000 entries and growing).

     

    StorageIO Webinars and Industry Events

    EMCworld (Las Vegas) May 2-4, 2016

    Interop (Las Vegas) May 4-6 2016

    NAB (Las Vegas) April 19-20, 2016

    March 31, 2016 Webinar (1PM ET) – Smart Backup and World Backup Day

    February 25, 2016 Webinar (11AM PT) – Migrating to Hyper-V including from Vmware

    February 24, 2016 Webinar (11AM ET) – How To Become a Data Protection Hero

    February 23, 2016 Webinar (11AM PT) – Rethinking Data Protection

    January 19, 2016 Webinar (9AM PT) – Solve Virtualization Performance Issues Like a Pro

    See more webinars and other activities on the Server StorageIO Events page here.

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Check out these useful links and pages:

    storageio.com/links,
    objectstoragecenter.com, storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/,
    thenvmeplace.com, thessdplace.com and storageio.com/performance among others.

    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

    Big Files Lots of Little File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench

    Big Files Lots of Little File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench


    server storage data infrastructure i/o File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench

    Updated 2/10/2018

    Need to test a server, storage I/O networking, hardware, software, services, cloud, virtual, physical or other environment that is either doing some form of file processing, or, that you simply want to have some extra workload running in the background for what ever reason? An option is File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench.

    I/O performance

    Getting Started


    Here’s a quick and relatively easy way to do it with Vdbench (Free from Oracle). Granted there are other tools, both for free and for fee that can similar things, however we will leave those for another day and post. Here’s the con to this approach, there is no Uui Gui like what you have available with some other tools Here’s the pro to this approach, its free, flexible and limited by your creative, amount of storage space, server memory and I/O capacity.

    If you need a background on Vdbench and benchmarking, check out the series of related posts here (e.g. www.storageio.com/performance).

    Get and Install the Vdbench Bits and Bytes


    If you do not already have Vdbench installed, get a copy from the Oracle or Source Forge site (now points to Oracle here).

    Vdbench is free, you simply sign-up and accept the free license, select the version down load (it is a single, common distribution for all OS) the bits as well as documentation.

    Installation particular on Windows is really easy, basically follow the instructions in the documentation by copying the contents of the download folder to a specified directory, set up any environment variables, and make sure that you have Java installed.

    Here is a hint and tip for Windows Servers, if you get an error message about counters, open a command prompt with Administrator rights, and type the command:

    $ lodctr /r


    The above command will reset your I/O counters. Note however that command will also overwrite counters if enabled so only use it if you have to.

    Likewise *nix install is also easy, copy the files, make sure to copy the applicable *nix shell script (they are in the download folder), and verify Java is installed and working.

    You can do a vdbench -t (windows) or ./vdbench -t (*nix) to verify that it is working.

    Vdbench File Processing

    There are many options with Vdbench as it has a very robust command and scripting language including ability to set up for loops among other things. We are only going to touch the surface here using its file processing capabilities. Likewise, Vdbench can run from a single server accessing multiple storage systems or file systems, as well as running from multiple servers to a single file system. For simplicity, we will stick with the basics in the following examples to exercise a local file system. The limits on the number of files and file size are limited by server memory and storage space.

    You can specify number and depth of directories to put files into for processing. One of the parameters is the anchor point for the file processing, in the following examples =S:\SIOTEMP\FS1 is used as the anchor point. Other parameters include the I/O size, percent reads, number of threads, run time and sample interval as well as output folder name for the result files. Note that unlike some tools, Vdbench does not create a single file of results, rather a folder with several files including summary, totals, parameters, histograms, CSV among others.


    Simple Vdbench File Processing Commands

    For flexibility and ease of use I put the following three Vdbench commands into a simple text file that is then called with parameters on the command line.
    fsd=fsd1,anchor=!fanchor,depth=!dirdep,width=!dirwid,files=!numfiles,size=!filesize

    fwd=fwd1,fsd=fsd1,rdpct=!filrdpct,xfersize=!fxfersize,fileselect=random,fileio=random,threads=!thrds

    rd=rd1,fwd=fwd1,fwdrate=max,format=yes,elapsed=!etime,interval=!itime

    Simple Vdbench script

    # SIO_vdbench_filesystest.txt
    
#
    
# Example Vdbench script for file processing
    
#
    
# fanchor = file system place  where directories and files will be created
    
# dirwid = how wide should the directories be (e.g. how many directories wide)
    
# numfiles = how many files per directory
    
# filesize = size in in k, m, g e.g. 16k = 16KBytes
    
# fxfersize = file I/O transfer size in kbytes
    
# thrds = how many threads or workers
    
# etime = how long to run in minutes (m) or hours (h)
    
# itime = interval sample time e.g. 30 seconds
    
# dirdep = how deep the directory tree
    
# filrdpct = percent of reads e.g. 90 = 90 percent reads
    
# -p processnumber = optional specify a process number, only needed if running multiple vdbenchs at same time, number should be unique
    
# -o output file that describes what being done and some config info
    
#
    
# Sample command line shown for Windows, for *nix add ./
    
#
    
# The real Vdbench script with command line parameters indicated by !=
    
#
    

    fsd=fsd1,anchor=!fanchor,depth=!dirdep,width=!dirwid,files=!numfiles,size=!filesize
    

    fwd=fwd1,fsd=fsd1,rdpct=!filrdpct,xfersize=!fxfersize,fileselect=random,fileio=random,threads=!thrds
    

    rd=rd1,fwd=fwd1,fwdrate=max,format=yes,elapsed=!etime,interval=!itime

    Big Files Processing Script


    With the above script file defined, for Big Files I specify a command line such as the following.
    $ vdbench -f SIO_vdbench_filesystest.txt fanchor=S:\SIOTemp\FS1 dirwid=1 numfiles=60 filesize=5G fxfersize=128k thrds=64 etime=10h itime=30 numdir=1 dirdep=1 filrdpct=90 -p 5576 -o SIOWS2012R220_NOFUZE_5Gx60_BigFiles_64TH_STX1200_020116

    Big Files Processing Example Results


    The following is one of the result files from the folder of results created via the above command for Big File processing showing totals.


    
Run totals
    

    21:09:36.001 Starting RD=format_for_rd1
    

    Feb 01, 2016 .Interval. .ReqstdOps.. ...cpu%...  read ....read.... ...write.... ..mb/sec... mb/sec .xfer.. ...mkdir... ...rmdir... ..create... ...open.... ...close... ..delete...
    
                          rate  resp total  sys   pct   rate  resp   rate  resp  read write  total    size  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp
    
21:23:34.101   avg_2-28 2848.2  2.70   8.8 8.32   0.0    0.0  0.00 2848.2  2.70  0.00 356.0 356.02  131071   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.1 109176   0.1  0.55   0.1  2006   0.0  0.00
    

    21:23:35.009 Starting RD=rd1; elapsed=36000; fwdrate=max. For loops: None
    

    07:23:35.000 avg_2-1200 4939.5  1.62  18.5 17.3  90.0 4445.8  1.79  493.7  0.07 555.7 61.72 617.44  131071   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.1  0.03   0.1  2.95   0.0  0.00

    Lots of Little Files Processing Script


    For lots of little files, the following is used.


    
$ vdbench -f SIO_vdbench_filesystest.txt fanchor=S:\SIOTEMP\FS1 dirwid=64 numfiles=25600 filesize=16k fxfersize=1k thrds=64 etime=10h itime=30 dirdep=1 filrdpct=90 -p 5576 -o SIOWS2012R220_NOFUZE_SmallFiles_64TH_STX1200_020116

    Lots of Little Files Processing Example Results


    The following is one of the result files from the folder of results created via the above command for Big File processing showing totals.
    Run totals
    

    09:17:38.001 Starting RD=format_for_rd1
    

    Feb 02, 2016 .Interval. .ReqstdOps.. ...cpu%...  read ....read.... ...write.... ..mb/sec... mb/sec .xfer.. ...mkdir... ...rmdir... ..create... ...open.... ...close... ..delete...
    
                          rate  resp total  sys   pct   rate  resp   rate  resp  read write  total    size  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp
    
09:19:48.016    avg_2-5  10138  0.14  75.7 64.6   0.0    0.0  0.00  10138  0.14  0.00 158.4 158.42   16384   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00 10138  0.65 10138  0.43 10138  0.05   0.0  0.00
    

    09:19:49.000 Starting RD=rd1; elapsed=36000; fwdrate=max. For loops: None
    

    19:19:49.001 avg_2-1200 113049  0.41  67.0 55.0  90.0 101747  0.19  11302  2.42 99.36 11.04 110.40    1023   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00  7065  0.85  7065  1.60   0.0  0.00

    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

    The above examples can easily be modified to do different things particular if you read the Vdbench documentation on how to setup multi-host, multi-storage system, multiple job streams to do different types of processing. This means you can benchmark a storage systems, server or converged and hyper-converged platform, or simply put a workload on it as part of other testing. There are even options for handling data footprint reduction such as compression and dedupe.

    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.

    Posted on

    Server StorageIO January 2016 Update Newsletter

    Volume 16, Issue I – beginning of Year (BoY) Edition

    Hello and welcome to the January 2016 Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Is it just me, or did January disappear in a flash like data stored in non-persistent volatile DRAM memory when the power is turned off? It seems like just the other day that it was the first day of the new year and now we are about to welcome in February. Needless to say, like many of you I have been busy with various projects, many of which are behind the scenes, some of which will start appearing publicly sooner while others later.

    In terms of what have I been working on, it includes the usual of performance, availability, capacity and economics (e.g. PACE) related to servers, storage, I/O networks, hardware, software, cloud, virtual and containers. This includes NVM as well as NVMe based SSD’s, HDD’s, cache and tiering technologies, as well as data protection among other things with Hyper-V, VMware as well as various cloud services.

    Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and podcast’s along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

    Cheers GS

    In This Issue

  • Feature Topic
  • Industry Trends News
  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Videos and Podcasts
  • Events and Webinars
  • Recommended Reading List
  • Industry Activity Trends
  • Server StorageIO Lab reports
  • New and Old Vendor Update
  • Resources and Links

    • Feature Topic – Microsoft Nano, Server 2016 TP4 and VMware

    This months feature topic is virtual servers and software defined storage including those from VMware and Microsoft. Back in November I mentioned the 2016 Technical Preview 4 (e.g. TP4) along with Storage Spaces Direct and Nano. As a reminder you can download your free trial copy of Windows Server 2016 TP4 from this Microsoft site here.

    Three good Microsoft Blog posts about storage spaces to check out include:

    • Storage Spaces Direct in Technical Preview 4 (here)
    • Hardware options for evaluating Storage Spaces Direct in Technical Preview 4 (here)
    • Storage Spaces Direct – Under the hood with the Software Storage Bus (here)

    As for Microsoft Nano, for those not familiar, it’s not a new tablet or mobile device, instead, it is a very light weight streamlined version of the Windows Server 2016 server. How streamlined? Much more so then the earlier Windows Server versions that simply disabled the GUI and desktop interfaces. Nano is smaller from a memory and disk storage space perspective meaning it uses less RAM, boots faster, has fewer moving parts (e.g. software modules) to break (or need patching).

    Specifically Nano removes 32 bit support and anything related to the desktop and GUI interfaces as well as removing the console interface. That’s right, no console or virtual console to log into, Wow is gone, access is via Powershell or Windows Management Interface tools from remote systems. How small is it? I have a Nano instance built on a VHDX that is under a GB in size, granted, its only for testing. The goal of Nano is to have a very light weight streamlined version of Windows Server that can run hundreds (or more) VMs in a small memory footprint, not to mention supports lots of containers. Nano is part of WIndows TP4, learn more about Nano here in this Microsoft post including how to get started using it.

    Speaking of VMware, if you have not received an invite yet to their Digital Enterprise February 6, 2016 announcement event, click here to register.

    StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past blog posts here

    Server Storage I/O Industry Activity Trends (Cloud, Virtual, Physical)

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)

    Some new Products Technology Services Announcements (PTSA) include:

    • EMC announced Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) V2.2. A main theme of V2.2 is that besides being the 3rd generation of EMC object storage (dating back to Centera, then Atmos), is that ECS is also where the functionality of Centera, Atmos and other functionality converge. ECS provides object storage access along with HDFS (Hadoop and Hortonworks certified) and traditional NFS file access.

      Object storage access includes Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, ATMOS and CAS (Centera). In addition to the access, added Centera functionality for regulatory compliance has been folded into the ECS software stack. For example, ECS is now compatible with SEC 17 a-4(f) and CFTC 1.3(b)-(c) regulations protecting data from being overwritten or erased for a specified retention period. Other enhancements besides scalability, resiliency and ease of use include meta data and search capabilities. You can download and try ECS for non-production workloads with no capacity or functionality limitations from EMC here.

    View other recent news and industry trends here

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)
    Recent Server StorageIO commentary and industry trends perspectives about news, activities tips, and announcements. In case you missed them from last month:

    • TheFibreChannel.com: Industry Analyst Interview: Greg Schulz, StorageIO

    • EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments Handling Virtual Storage Challenges

    • PowerMore (Dell): Q&A: When to implement ultra-dense storage

    View more Server, Storage and I/O hardware as well as software trends comments here

    Vendors you may not have heard of

    Various vendors (and service providers) you may not know or heard about recently.

    • Datrium – DVX and NetShelf server software defined flash storage and converged infrastructure

    • DataDynamics – StorageX is the software solution for enabling intelligent data migration, including from NetApp OnTap 7 to Clustered OnTap, as well as to and from EMC among other NAS file serving solutions.

    • Paxata – Little and Big Data management solutions

    Check out more vendors you may know, have heard of, or that are perhaps new on the Server StorageIO Industry Links page here (over 1,000 entries and growing).

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Recent Server StorageIO articles appearing in different venues include:

    • InfoStor:  Data Protection Gaps, Some Good, Some Not So Good

    And in case you missed them from last month

    • IronMountain:  5 Noteworthy Data Privacy Trends From 2015

    • Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs):  Part III EVO:RAIL – When And Where To Use It?

    • InfoStor:  Object Storage Is In Your Future

    • InfoStor:  Water, Data and Storage Analogy

    Check out these resources and links technology, techniques, trends as well as tools. View more tips and articles here

    StorageIO Videos and Podcasts

    StorageIO podcasts are also available via and at StorageIO.tv

    StorageIO Webinars and Industry Events

    EMCworld (Las Vegas) May 2-4, 2016

    Interop (Las Vegas) May 4-6 2016

    NAB (Las Vegas) April 19-20, 2016

    TBA – March 31, 2016

    Redmond Magazine Gridstore (How to Migrate from VMware to Hyper-V) February 25, 2016 Webinar (11AM PT)

    TBA – February 23, 2016

    Redmond Magazine and Dell Foglight – Manage and Solve Virtualization Performance Issues Like a Pro (Webinar 9AM PT) – January 19, 2016

    See more webinars and other activities on the Server StorageIO Events page here.

    From StorageIO Labs

    Research, Reviews and Reports

    Quick Look: What’s the Best Enterprise HDD for a Content Server?
    Which enterprise HDD for content servers

    Insight for Effective Server Storage I/O decision-making
    This StorageIO® Industry Trends Perspectives Solution Brief and Lab Review (compliments of Seagate and Servers Direct) looks at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate (www.seagate.com) Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDDs).

    I was given the opportunity to do some hands-on testing running different application workloads with a 2U content solution platform along with various Seagate Enterprise 2.5” HDDs handle different application workloads. This includes Seagate’s Enterprise Performance HDDs with the enhanced caching feature.

    Read more in this Server StorageIO industry Trends Perspective white paper and lab review.

    Looking for NVM including SSD information? Visit the Server StorageIO www.thessdplace.com and www.thenvmeplace.com micro sites. View other StorageIO lab review and test drive reports here.

    Server StorageIO Recommended Reading List

    The following are various recommended reading including books, blogs and videos. If you have not done so recently, also check out the Intel Recommended Reading List (here) where you will also find a couple of mine as well as books from others. For this months recommended reading, it’s a blog site. If you have not visited Duncan Eppings (@DuncanYB) Yellow-Bricks site, you should, particular if you are interested in virtualization, high availability and related topical themes.

    Seven Databases in Seven Weeks guide to no SQL via Amazon.com

    Granted Duncan being a member of the VMware CTO office covers a lot of VMware related themes, however being the author of several books, he also covers non VMware related topics. Duncan recently did a really good and simple post about rebuilding a failed disk in a VMware VSAN vs. in a legacy RAID or erasure code based storage solution.

    One of the things that struck me as being important with what Duncan wrote about is avoiding apples to oranges comparisons. What I mean by this is that it is easy to compare traditional parity based or mirror type solutions that chunk or shard data on KByte basis spread over disks, vs. data that is chunk or sharded on GByte (or larger) basis over multiple servers and their disks. Anyway, check out Duncan’s site and recent post by clicking here.

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Check out these useful links and pages:

    storageio.com/links
    objectstoragecenter.com
    storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/
    storageperformance.us
    thenvmeplace
    thessdplace.com
    storageio.com/performance.com
    storageio.com/raid
    storageio.com/ssd

    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