Category: Infrastructure Resource Management

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Dell EMC Announce Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud Solution

server storage I/O trends

Dell EMC Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud Solution

Dell EMC have announced their Microsoft Azure Stack hybrid cloud platform solutions. This announcement builds upon earlier statements of support and intention by Dell EMC to be part of the Microsoft Azure Stack community. For those of you who are not familiar, Azure Stack is an on premise extension of Microsoft Azure public cloud.

What this means is that essentially you can have the Microsoft Azure experience (or a subset of it) in your own data center or data infrastructure, enabling cloud experiences and abilities at your own pace, your own way with control. Learn more about Microsoft Azure Stack including my experiences with and installing Technique Preview 3 (TP3) here.

software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

What Is Azure Stack

Microsoft Azure Stack is an on-premises (e.g. in your own data center) private (or hybrid when connected to Azure) cloud platform. Currently Azure Stack is in Technical Preview 3 (e.g. TP3) and available as a proof of concept (POC) download from Microsoft. You can use Azure Stack TP3 as a POC for learning, demonstrating and trying features among other activities. Here is link to a Microsoft Video providing an overview of Azure Stack, and here is a good summary of roadmap, licensing and related items.

In summary, Microsoft Azure Stack and this announcement is about:

  • A onsite, on-premises, in your data center extension of Microsoft Azure public cloud
  • Enabling private and hybrid cloud with good integration along with shared experiences with Azure
  • Adopt, deploy, leverage cloud on your terms and timeline choosing what works best for you
  • Common processes, tools, interfaces, management and user experiences
  • Leverage speed of deployment and configuration with a purpose-built integrated solution
  • Support existing and cloud-native Windows, Linux, Container and other services
  • Available as a public preview via software download, as well as vendors offering solutions

What Did Dell EMC Announce

Dell EMC announced their initial product, platform solutions, and services for Azure Stack. This includes a Proof of Concept (PoC) starter kit (PE R630) for doing evaluations, prototype, training, development test, DevOp and other initial activities with Azure Stack. Dell EMC also announced a larger for production deployment, or large-scale development, test DevOp activity turnkey solution. The initial production solution scales from 4 to 12 nodes, or from 80 to 336 cores that include hardware (server compute, memory, I/O and networking, top of rack (TOR) switches, management, Azure Stack software along with services. Other aspects of the announcement include initial services in support of Microsoft Azure Stack and Azure cloud offerings.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

The announcement builds on joint Dell EMC Microsoft experience, partnerships, technologies and services spanning hardware, software, on site data center and public cloud.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC along with Microsoft have engineered a hybrid cloud platform for organizations to modernize their data infrastructures enabling faster innovate, accelerate deployment of resources. Includes hardware (server compute, memory, I/O networking, storage devices), software, services, and support.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

The value proposition of Dell EMC hybrid cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack includes consistent experience for developers and IT data infrastructure professionals. Common experience across Azure public cloud and Azure Stack on-premises in your data center for private or hybrid. This includes common portal, Powershell, DevOps tools, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure and associated experiences (management, provisioning, services).
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Secure, protect, preserve and serve applications VMs hosted on Azure Stack with Dell EMC services along with Microsoft technologies. Dell EMC data protection including backup and restore, Encryption as a Service, host guard and protected VMs, AD integration among other features.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC services for Microsoft Azure Stack include single contact support for prepare, assessment, planning; deploy with rack integration, delivery, configuration; extend the platform with applicable migration, integration with Office 365 and other applications, build new services.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC Hyper-converged scale out solutions range from minimum of 4 x PowerEdge R730XD (total raw specs include 80 cores (4 x 20), 1TB RAM (4 x 256GB), 12.8TB SSD Cache, 192TB Storage, plus two top of row network switches (Dell EMC) and 1U management server node. Initial maximum configuration raw specification includes 12 x R730XD (total 336 cores), 6TB memory, 86TB SSD cache, 900TB storage along with TOR network switch and management server.

The above configurations initially enable HCI nodes of small (low) 20 cores, 256GB memory, 5.7TB SSD cache, 40TB storage; mid size 24 cores, 384GB memory, 11.5TB cache and 60TB storage; high-capacity with 28 cores, 512GB memory, 11.5TB cache and 80TB storage per node.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC Evaluator program for Microsoft Azure Stack including the PE R630 for PoCs, development, test and training environments. The solution combines Microsoft Azure Stack software, Dell EMC server with Intel E5-2630 (10 cores, 20 threads / logical processors or LPs), or Intel E5-2650 (12 cores, 24 threads / LPs). Memory is 128GB or 256GB, storage includes flash SSD (2 x 480GB SAS) and HDD (6 x 1TB SAS).
and networking.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Collaborative support single contact between Microsoft and Dell EMC

Who Is This For

This announcement is for any organization that is looking for an on-premises, in your data center private or hybrid cloud turnkey solution stack. This initial set of announcements can be for those looking to do a proof of concept (PoC), advanced prototype, support development test, DevOp or gain cloud-like elasticity, ease of use, rapid procurement and other experiences of public cloud, on your terms and timeline. Naturally, there is a strong affinity and seamless experience for those already using, or planning to use Azure Public Cloud for Windows, Linux, Containers and other workloads, applications, and services.

What Does This Cost

Check with your Dell EMC representative or partner for exact pricing which varies for the size and configurations. There are also various licensing models to take into consideration if you have Microsoft Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs) that your Dell EMC representative or business partner can address for you. Likewise being cloud based, there is also time usage-based options to explore.

Where to learn more

What this all means

The dust is starting to settle on last falls Dell EMC integration, both of whom have long histories working with, and partnering along with Microsoft on legacy, as well as virtual software-defined data centers (SDDC), software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI), native, and hybrid clouds. Some may view the Dell EMC VMware relationship as a primary focus, however, keep in mind that both Dell and EMC had worked with Microsoft long before VMware came into being. Likewise, Microsoft remains one of the most commonly deployed operating systems on VMware-based environments. Granted Dell EMC have a significant focus on VMware, they both also sell, service and support many services for Microsoft-based solutions.

What about Cisco, HPE, Lenovo among others who have to announce or discussed their Microsoft Azure Stack intentions? Good question, until we hear more about what those and others are doing or planning, there is not much more to do or discuss beyond speculating for now. Another common question is if there is demand for private and hybrid cloud, in fact, some industry expert pundits have even said private, or hybrid are dead which is interesting, how can something be dead if it is just getting started. Likewise, it is early to tell if Azure Stack will gain traction with various organizations, some of whom may have tried or struggled with OpenStack among others.

Given a large number of Microsoft Windows-based servers on VMware, OpenStack, Public cloud services as well as other platforms, along with continued growing popularity of Azure, having a solution such as Azure Stack provides an attractive option for many environments. That leads to the question of if Azure Stack is essentially a replacement for Windows Servers or Hyper-V and if only for Windows guest operating systems. At this point indeed, Windows would be an attractive and comfortable option, however, given a large number of Linux-based guests running on Hyper-V as well as Azure Public, those are also primary candidates as are containers and other services.

Overall, this is an excellent and exciting move for both Microsoft extending their public cloud software stack to be deployed within data centers in a hybrid way, something that those customers are familiar with doing. This is a good example of hybrid being spanning public and private clouds, remote and on-premises, as well as familiarity and control of traditional procurement with the flexibility, elasticity experience of clouds.

software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

Some will say that if OpenStack is struggling in many organizations and being free open source, how Microsoft can have success with Azure Stack. The answer could be that some organizations have struggled with OpenStack while others have not due to lack of commercial services and turnkey support. Having installed both OpenStack and Azure Stack (as well as VMware among others), Azure Stack is at least the TP3 PoC is easy to install, granted it is limited to one node, unlike the production versions. Likewise, there are easy to use appliance versions of OpenStack that are limited in scale, as well as more involved installs that unlock full functionality.

OpenStack, Azure Stack, VMware and others have their places, along, or supporting containers along with other tools. In some cases, those technologies may exist in the same environment supporting different workloads, as well as accessing various public clouds, after all, Hybrid is the home run for many if not most legality IT environments.

Overall this is a good announcement from Dell EMC for those who are interested in, or should become more aware about Microsoft Azure Stack, Cloud along with hybrid clouds. Likewise look forward to hearing more about the solutions from others who will be supporting Azure Stack as well as other hybrid (and Virtual Private Clouds).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book "Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials" (CRC Press).

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

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Broadcom aka Avago aka LSI announces SAS SATA NVMe Adapters with RAID

server storage I/O trends

Broadcom aka Avago aka LSI announces SAS SATA NVMe Adapters with RAID

In case you missed it, Broadcom formerly known as Avago who bought the LSI adapter and RAID card business announced shipping new SAS, SATA and NVMe devices.

While SAS and SATA are well established continuing to be deployed for both HDD as well as flash SSD, NVMe continues to evolve with a bright future. Likewise, while there is a focus on software-defined storage (SDS), software defined data centers (SDDC) and software defined data infrastructures (SDDI) along with advanced parity RAID including erasure codes, object storage among other technologies, there is still a need for adapter cards including traditional RAID.

Keep in mind that while probably not meeting the definition of some software-defined aficionados, the many different variations, permutations along with derivatives of RAID from mirror and replication to basic parity to advanced erasure codes (some based on Reed Solomon aka RAID 2) rely on software. Granted, some of that software is run on regular primary server processors, some on packaged in silicon via ASICs or FPGAs, or System on Chips (SOC), RAID on Chip (RoC) as well as BIOS, firmware, drivers as well as management tools.

SAS, SATA and NVMe adapters

For some environments cards such as those announced by Broadcom are used in passthru mode effectively as adapters for attaching SAS, SATA and NVMe storage devices to servers. Those servers may be deployed as converged infrastructures (CI), hyper-converged infrastructures (HCI), Cluster or Cloud in Box (CiB) among other variations. To name names you might find the above (or in the not so distant future) in VMware vSAN or regular vSphere based environments, Microsoft Windows Server, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) or Azure Stack, OpenStack among other deployments (check your vendors Hardware Compatibility Lists aka HCLs). In some cases these cards may be adapters in passthru mode, or using their RAID (support various by different software stacks). Meanwhile in other environments, the more traditional RAID features are still used spanning Windows to Linux among others.

Who Is Broadcom?

Some of you may know of Broadcom having been around for many years with a focus on networking related technologies. However some may not realize that Avago bought Broadcom and changed their name to Broadcom. Here is a history that includes more recent acquisitions such as Brocade, PLX, Emulex as well as LSI. Some of you may recall Avago buying LSI (the SAS, SATA, PCIe HBA, RAID and components) business not sold to NetApp as part of Engenio. Also recall that Avago sold the LSI flash SSD business unit to Seagate a couple of years ago as part of its streamlining. That’s how we get to where we are at today with Broadcom aka formerly known as Avago who bought the LSI adapter and RAID business announcing new SAS, SATA, NVMe cards.

What Was Announced?

Broadcom has announced cards that are multi-protocol supporting Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), SATA/AHCI as well as NVM Express (NVMe) as basic adapters for attaching storage (HDD, SSD, storage systems) along with optional RAID as well as cache support. These cards can be used in application servers for traditional, as well as virtualized SDDC environments, as well as storage systems or appliances for software-defined storage among other uses. The basic functionality of these cards is to provide high performance (IOPs and other activity, as well as bandwidth) along with low latency combined with data protection as well as dense connectivity.

Specific features include:

  • Broadcom’s Tri-Mode SerDes Technology enables the operation of NVMe, SAS or SATA devices in a single drive bay, allowing for endless design flexibility.
  • Management software including LSI Storage Authority (LSA), StorCLI, HII (UEFI)
  • Optional CacheVault(R) flash cache protection
  • Physical dimension Low Profile 6.127” x 2.712”
  • Host bus type x8 lane PCIe Express 3.1
  • Data transfer rates SAS-3 12Gbs; NVMe up to 8 GT/s PCIe Gen 3
  • Various OS and hypervisors host platform support
  • Warranty 3 yrs, free 5×8 phone support, advanced replacement option
  • RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60

Note that some of the specific feature functionality may be available at a later date, check with your preferred vendors HCL

Specification

9480 8i8e

9440 8i

9460 8i

9460 16i

Image

Internal Ports

8

 

8

16

Internal Connectors

2 x Mini-SAS HD x4 SFF-8643

2 x Mini-SAS HD x4 SFF-8643

2 x Mini-SAS HD x4 SFF-8643

4 Mini-SAS HD x4
SFF-8643

External Ports

8

 

 

 

External Connectors

2 x Mini-SAS HD SFF8644

 

 

 

Cache Protection

CacheVault CVPM05

 

CacheVault CVPM05

CacheVault CVPM05

Cache Memory

2GB 2133 MHz DDR4 SDRAM

 

2GB 2133 MHz DDR4 SDRAM

4GB 2133 MHz DDR4 SDRAM

Devices Supported

SAS/SATA: 255, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

SAS/SATA: 63, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

SAS/SATA: 255, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

SAS/SATA: 255, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

I/O Processors (SAS Controller)

SAS3516 dual-core RAID-on-Chip (ROC)

SAS3408 I/O controller (IOC)

SAS3508 dual-core RAID-on-Chip (ROC)

SAS3516 dual-core RAID-on-Chip (ROC)

In case you need a refresher on SFF cable types, click on the following two images which take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more, as well as order various cable options. PC Pit Stop has a good selection of cables (See other SFF types), connectors and other accessories that I have used, along with those from Amazon.com and others.

Available via Amazon.com sff 8644 8643 sas mini hd cable
Left: SFF 8644 Mini SAS HD (External), Right SFF-8643 Mini SAS HD (internal) Image via Amazon.com

Available via Amazon.com sff 8644 8642 sas mini hd cable
Left: SFF 8643 Mini SAS HD (Internal), Right SFF-8642 SATA with power (internal) Image via Amazon.com

Wait, Doesnt NVMe use PCIe

For those who are not familiar with NVMe and in particular U.2 aka SFF 8639 based devices, physically they look the same (almost) as a SAS device connector. The slight variation is if you look at a SAS drive, there is a small tab to prevent plugging into a SATA port (recall you can plug SATA into SAS. For SAS drives that tab is blank, however on the NVMe 8639 aka U.2 drives (below left) that tab has several connectors which are PCIe x4 (single or dual path).

What this means is that the PCIe x4 bus electrical signals are transferred via a connector, to backplane chassis to 8639 drive slot to the drive. Those same 8639 drive slots can also have a SAS SATA connection using their traditional connectors enabling a converged or hybrid drive slot so to speak. Learn more about NVMe here (If the Answer is NVMe, then what were and are the questions?) as well as at www.thenvmeplace.com.

NVMe U.2 8639 driveNVMe U.2 8639 sas sata nvme drive
Left NVMe U.2 drive showing PCIe x4 connectors, right, NVMe U.2 8639 connector

Who Is This For?

These cards are applicable for general purpose IT and other data infrastructure environments in traditional servers among others uses. They are also applicable for systems builders, integrators and OEMs whom you may be buying your current systems from, or future ones.

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to learn more about vSAN and related technologies.

What this all means

Even as the industry continues to talk and move towards more software-defined focus, even for environments that are serverless, there is still need for hardware somewhere. These adapters are a good sign of the continued maturing cycle of NVMe to be well positioned into the next decade and beyond, while also being relevant today. Likewise, even though the future involves NVMe, there is a still a place for SAS along with SATA to coexist in many environments. For some environment there is a need for traditional RAID while for others simply the need for attachment of SAS, SATA and NVMe devices. Overall, a good set of updates, enhancements and new technology for today and tomorrow, now, when do I get some to play with? ;).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book "Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials" (CRC Press).

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

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April 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructures Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue IV

Hello and welcome to the April 2017 issue of the Server StorageIO data infrastructures update newsletter.

Spring is here in the northern hemisphere which means that there is a lot of things going on, or about to be occurring soon. April has been a busy month for me including spending time in Europe doing some seminar and workshop presentations, along with other consulting advisory activities involving data infrastructures.

Besides travel, I have been busy working on client projects, attending to various post-production activities for my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (more about this in the May issue). Other things I have been doing include being briefed on upcoming technology announcements along with some hands activities trying out things that will be covered in future updates, as well as working with some interesting NDA items that, well, are NDA.

Be sure to check out the recent blog posts, as well as industry trends perspectives commentary below, along with recent and upcoming webinar among events.

In This Issue

Enjoy this abbreviated edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

Cheers GS

 

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via SearchCloudComputing: Virtual private clouds an alternative to on-premisess computing
Hybrid clouds continue to grow in popularity as well as deployed usage, from storage to compute to networking, said Greg Schulz, the senior advisory analyst at StorageIO in Stillwater, Minn. Most cloud and service providers talk about hybrid along with public clouds, while AWS tends to talk about [VPC aka virtual private clouds].

Via SearchDataCenter: Ask the right questions before committing to a collocation SLA policy
Do you just need a physical space to put things, or do you need high bandwidth and ultra-reliable power? asked Greg Schulz, senior advisory analyst at StorageIO, a consultancy in Stillwater, Minn.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Tips for Enterprise SSD Form Factor Selection Deployment
It’s doubtful that there is one form factor to rule them all. Some may be best for X but lousy for Y. But Greg Schulz, an analyst at StorageIO Group notes that many vendors attempt to champion a particular flash SSD form factor and interface, claiming it’s the best and only fit for the enterprise.

Via SearchITOperations: Storage performance analysis reveals IT’s ongoing bottleneck
Sometimes it takes more than an aspirin to cure a headache, said Greg Schulz

Via SearchDNS: Parsing through the software-defined storage hype
Beyond scalability, SDS technology aims for freedom from the limits of proprietary hardware, explained StorageIO analyst Greg Schulz.

Via InfoStor: Data Storage Industry Braces for AI and Machine Learning
AI could also lead to untapped hidden or unknown value in existing data that has no or little perceived value, said Greg Schulz.

View more Server, Storage and I/O trends and perspectives comments here

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

May 11, 2017 – Webinar – Email Archiving, Compliance and Ransomware

May 8-10, 2017 – Dell EMCworld – Las Vegas

April 3-7, 2017 – Seminars – Dutch workshop seminar series – Nijkerk Netherlands

March 15, 2017 – Webinar – SNIA/BrightTalk – HyperConverged and Storage – 10AM PT

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

Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Useful links and pages:
Microsoft TechNet – Various Microsoft related from Azure to Docker to Windows
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
OpenStack.org – Various OpenStack related items
storageio.com/protect – 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/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). 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. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials(CRC Press).

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

Posted on

VMware vSAN 6.6 hyper-converged (HCI) software defined data infrastructure

server storage I/O trends

VMware vSAN 6.6 hyper-converged (HCI) software defined data infrastructure

In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the first of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

Software-defined data infrastructure

Excuse Me, What is vSAN and who is if for

Some might find it odd having to explain what vSAN is, on the other hand, not everybody is dialed into the VMware world ecosystem, so let’s give them some help, for everybody else, and feel free to jump ahead.

For those not familiar, VMware vSAN is an HCI software-defined storage solution that converges compute (hypervisors and server) with storage space capacity and I/O performance along with networking. Being HCI means that with vSAN as you scale compute, storage space capacity and I/O performance also increases in an aggregated fashion. Likewise, increase storage space capacity and server I/O performance you also get more compute capabilities (along with memory).

For VMware-centric environments looking to go CI or HCI, vSAN offers compelling value proposition leveraging known VMware tools and staff skills (knowledge, experience, tradecraft). Another benefit of vSAN is the ability to select your hardware platform from different vendors, a trend that other CI/HCI vendors have started to offer as well.

CI and HCI data infrastructure

Keep in mind that fast applications need a fast server, I/O and storage, as well as server storage I/O needs CPU along with memory to generate I/O operations (IOPs) or move data. What this all means is that HCI solutions such as VMware vSAN combine or converge the server compute, hypervisors, storage file system, storage devices, I/O and networking along with other functionality into an easy to deploy (and management) turnkey solution.

Learn more about CI and HCI along with who some other vendors are as well as considerations at www.storageio.com/converge. Also, visit VMware sites to find out more about vSphere ESXi hypervisors, vSAN, NSX (Software Defined Networking), vCenter, vRealize along with other tools for enabling SDDC and SDDI.

Give Me the Quick Elevator Pitch Summary

VMware has enhanced vSAN with version 6.6 (V6.6) enabling new functionality, supporting new hardware platforms along with partners, while reducing costs, improving scalability and resiliency for SDDC and SDDI environments. This includes from small medium business (SMB) to mid-market to small medium enterprise (SME) as well as workgroup, departmental along with Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO).

Being a HCI solution, management functions of the server, storage, I/O, networking, hypervisor, hardware, and software are converged to improve management productivity. Also, vSAN integrated with VMware vSphere among other tools enable modern, robust data infrastructure that serves, protect, preserve, secure and stores data along with their associated applications.

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to learn more about vSAN and related technologies.

What this all means

Overall a good set of enhancements as vSAN continues its evolution looking back just a few years ago, to where it is today and will be in the future. If you have not looked at vSAN recently, take some time beyond reading this piece to learn some more.

Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) located here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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

Posted on

VMware vSAN V6.6 Part II (just the speeds feeds features please)

server storage I/O trends

VMware vSAN v6.6 Part II (just the speeds feeds features please)

In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the second of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

Just the Speeds and Feeds Please

For those who just want to see the list of what’s new with vSAN V6.6, here you go:

  • Native encryption for data-at-rest
  • Compliance certifications
  • Resilient management independent of vCenter
  • Degraded Disk Handling v2.0 (DDHv2)
  • Smart repairs and enhanced rebalancing
  • Intelligent rebuilds using partial repairs
  • Certified file service & data protection solutions
  • Stretched clusters with local failure protection
  • Site affinity for stretched clusters
  • 1-click witness change for Stretched Cluster
  • vSAN Management Pack for vRealize
  • Enhanced vSAN SDK and PowerCLI
  • Simple networking with Unicast
  • vSAN Cloud Analytics with real-time support notification and recommendations
  • vSAN ConfigAssist with 1-click hardware lifecycle management
  • Extended vSAN Health Services
  • vSAN Easy Install with 1-click fixes
  • Up to 50% greater IOPS for all-flash with optimized checksum and dedupe
  • Support for new next-gen workloads
  • vSAN for Photon in Photon Platform 1.1
  • Day 0 support for latest flash technologies
  • Expanded caching tier choice
  • Docker Volume Driver 1.1

What’s New and Value Proposition of vSAN 6.6

Let’s take a closer look beyond the bullet list of what’s new with vSAN 6.6, as well as perspectives of those features to address different needs. The VMware vSAN proposition is to evolve and enable modernizing data infrastructures with HCI powered by vSphere along with vSAN.

Three main themes or characteristics (and benefits) of vSAN 6.6 include addressing (or enabling):

  • Reducing risk while scaling
  • Reducing cost and complexity
  • Scaling for today and tomorrow

VMware vSAN 6.6 summary
Image via VMware

Reducing risk while scaling

Reducing (or removing) risk while evolving your data infrastructure with HCI including flexibility of choosing among five support hardware vendors along with native security. This includes native security, availability and resiliency enhancements (including intelligent rebuilds) without sacrificing storage efficiency (capacity) or effectiveness (performance productivity), management and choice.

VMware vSAN DaRE
Image via VMware

Dat level Data at Rest Encryption (DaRE) of all vSAN dat objects that are enabled at a cluster level. The new functionality supports hybrid along with all flash SSD as well as stretched clusters. The VMware vSAN DaRE implementation is an alternative to using self-encrypting drives (SEDs) reducing cost, complexity and management activity. All vSAN features including data footprint reduction (DFR) features such as compression and deduplication are supported. For security, vSAN DaRE integrations with compliance key management technologies including those from SafeNet, Hytrust, Thales and Vormetric among others.

VMware vSAN management
Image via VMware

ESXi HTML 5 based host client, along with CLI via ESXCLI for administering vSAN clusters as an alternative in case your vCenter server(s) are offline. Management capabilities include monitoring of critical health and status details along with configuration changes.

VMware vSAN health management
Image via VMware

Health monitoring enhancements include handling of degraded vSAN devices with intelligence proactively detecting impending device failures. As part of the functionality, if a replica of the failing (or possible soon to fail) device exists, vSAN can take action to maintain data availability.

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

What this all means

With each new release, vSAN is increasing its feature, functionality, resiliency and extensiveness associated with traditional storage and non-CI or HCI solutions. Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in Part I here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the Spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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

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VMware vSAN V6.6 Part III (reducing costs complexity)

server storage I/O trends

VMware vSAN V6.6 Part III (Reducing costs complexity)

In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the third of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

Reducing cost and complexity

Reducing your total cost of ownership (TCO) including lower capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating (OPEX). VMware is claiming CapEx and OpEx reduced TCO of 50%. Keep in mind that solutions such as vSAN also can help drive return on investment (ROI) as well as return on innovation (the other ROI) via improved productivity, effectiveness, as well as efficiencies (savings). Another aspect of addressing TCO and ROI includes flexibility leveraging stretched clusters to address HA, BR, BC and DR Availability needs cost effectively. These enhancements include efficiency (and effectiveness e.g. productivity) at scale, proactive cloud analytics, and intelligent operations.

VMware vSAN stretch cluster
Image via VMware

Low cost (or cost-effective) Local, Remote Resiliency and Data Protection with Stretched Clusters across sites. Upon a site failure, vSAN maintains availability is leveraging surviving site redundancy. For performance and productivity effectiveness, I/O traffic is kept local where possible and practical, reducing cross-site network workload. Bear in mind that the best I/O is the one you do not have to do, the second is the one with the least impact.

This means if you can address I/Os as close to the application as possible (e.g. locality of reference), that is a better I/O. On the other hand, when data is not local, then the best I/O is the one involving a local or remote site with least overhead impact to applications, as well as server storage I/O (including networks) resources. Also keep in mind that with vSAN you can fine tune availability, resiliency and data protection to meet various needs by adjusting fault tolerant mode (FTM) to address a different number of failures to tolerate.

server storage I/O locality of reference

Network and cloud friendly Unicast Communication enhancements. To improve performance, availability, and capacity (CPU demand reduction) multicast communications are no longer used making for easier, simplified single site and stretched cluster configurations. When vSAN clusters upgrade to V6.6 unicast is enabled.

VMware vSAN unicast
Image via VMware

Gaining insight, awareness, adding intelligence to avoid flying blind, introducing vSAN Cloud Analytics and Proactive Guidance. Part of a VMware customer, experience improvement program, leverages cloud-based health checks for easy online known issue detection along with relevant knowledge bases pieces as well as other support notices. Whether you choose to refer to this feature as advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), proactive rules enabled management problem isolation, solving resolution I will leave that up to you.

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

Part of the new tools analytics capabilities and prescriptive problem resolution (hmm, some might call that AI or advanced analytics, just saying), health check issues are identified, notifications along with suggested remediation. Another feature is the ability to leverage continuous proactive updates for advance remediation vs. waiting for subsequent vSAN releases. Net result and benefit are reducing time, the complexity of troubleshooting converged data infrastructure issues spanning servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, cloud, and configuration. In other words, enable you more time to be productive vs. finding and fixing problems leveraging informed awareness for smart decision-making.

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

What this all means

Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in part I here, part II (just the speeds feeds please) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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

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VMware vSAN V6.6 Part IV (HCI scaling ROBO and data centers today)

server storage I/O trends

VMware vSAN V6.6 Part IV (HCI scaling ROBO and data centers today)

In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the fourth of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

Scaling HCI for ROBO and data centers today and for tomorrow

Scaling with stability for today and tomorrow. This includes addressing your applications Performance, Availability, Capacity and Economics (PACE) workload requirements today and for the future. By scaling with stability means boosting performance, availability (data protection, security, resiliency, durable, FTT), effective capacity without one of those attributes compromising another.

VMware vSAN data center scaling
Image via VMware

Scaling today for tomorrow also means adapting to today’s needs while also flexible to evolve with new application workloads, hardware as well as a cloud (public, private, hybrid, inter and intra-cloud). As part of continued performance improvements, enhancements to optimize for higher performance flash SSD including NVMe based devices.

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

Part of scaling with stability means enhancing performance (as well as productivity) or the effectiveness of a solution. Keep in mind that efficiency is often associated with storage (or server or network) space capacity savings or reductions. In that context then effectiveness means performance and productivity or how much work can be done with least overhead impact. With vSAN, V6.6 performance enhancements include reduced checksum overhead, enhanced compression, and deduplication, along with destaging optimizations.

Other enhancements that help collectively contribute to vSAN performance improvements include VMware object handling (not to be confused with cloud or object storage S3 or Swift objects) as well as faster iSCSI for vSAN. Also improved are more accurate refined cache sizing guidelines. Keep in mind that a little bit of NAND flash SSD or SCM in the right place can have a significant benefit, while a lot of flash cache costs much cash.

Part of enabling and leveraging new technology today includes support for larger capacity 1.6TB flash SSD drives for cache, as well as lower read latency with 3D XPoint and NVMe drives such as those from Intel among others. Refer to the VMware vSAN HCL for current supported devices which continue evolve along with the partner ecosystem. Future proofing is also enabled where you can grow from today to tomorrow as new storage class memories (SCM) among other flash SSD as well as NVMe enhanced storage among other technologies are introduced into the market as well as VMware vSAN HCL.

VMware vSAN and data center class applications
Image via VMware

Traditional CI and in particular many HCI solutions have been optimized or focused on smaller application workloads including VDI resulting in the perception that HCI, in general, is only for smaller environments, or larger environment non-mission critical workloads. With vSAN V6.6 VMware is addressing and enabling larger environment mission critical applications including Intersystem Cache medical health management software among others. Other application workload extensions including support for higher performance demanding Hadoop big data analytics, a well as extending virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) workspace with XenDesktop/XenApp, along with Photon 1.1 container support.

What about VMware vSAN 6.6. Packaging and License Options

As part of vSAN 6.6 VMware several solution bundle packaged options for the data center as well as smaller ROBO environment. Contact your VMware representative or partner to learn more about specific details.

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

What this all means

Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in part I here, part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the Spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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

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VMware vSAN V6.6 Part V (vSAN evolution and summary)

server storage I/O trends

VMware vSAN V6.6 Part V (vSAN evolution and summary)

In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the fifth of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) found here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) located here.

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

How has vSAN (formerly referred to as VSAN) Evolved

A quick recap of the VMware vSAN progression which first appeared as part of vSphere 5.5. (e.g. vSAN 5.5 can be thought of 1.0 in some ways) consists of several releases. Since vSAN is tightly integrated with VMware vSphere along with associated management tools, there is a correlation between enhancements to the underlying hypervisor, and added vSAN functionality. Keep in mind sometimes by seeing where something has been, helps to view where going.

Previous vSAN enhancements include:

  • 5.5 Hybrid (mixed HDD and flash)
  • 6.2 (2016) All flash (e.g. AFA) versions included data footprint reduction (DFR) technologies such as compression and dedupe along with performance Quality of Service (QoS) enhancements.
  • 6.5 Cross Cloud functionality including the announcement of container support, cloud-native apps, as well as upcoming vSphere, vSAN, NSX and other VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) and software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) technology running natively on AWS (not on EC2) cloud infrastructure.
  • 6.6 Modern data infrastructure flexibility, scalability, resiliency, extensibility including performance, availability, capacity and economics (PACE).

V5.5

  • Distributed RAID
  • Per-VM SPBM
  • Set and change FTT via policy
  • In-kernel hyper-convergence engine
  • RVC and Observer

V6.0

  • All-flash architecture
  • Perf improvements (4xIOPS)
  • 64-node support
  • High-density storage blades
  • Fault domain awareness
  • Scalable snapshots and clones
  • Disk enclosure management

V6.1

  • Windows Failover Clustering
  • Oracle RAC support
  • HW checksum and encryption
  • 2-node ROBO mode
  • UltraDIMM and NVMe support
  • Stretch clusters
  • 5 min RPO (vSphere Rep)
  • SMP-FT support
  • Health Check, vROps, Log Insight

V6.2

  • IPv6 support
  • Software checksum
  • Nearline dedupe and compression on all-flash
  • Erasure coding on all-flash
  • QoS IOPS limits
  • Performance monitoring service

V6.5

  • iSCSI
  • 2-Node direct connect
  • PowerCLI
  • Public APIs and SDK
  • 512e support
  • All-Flash to all editions

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

What this all means, wrap up and summary

VMware continues to extend the software-defined data center (SDDC) and Software-Defined Data Infrastructure (SDDI) ecosystem with vSAN to address the needs from smaller SMB and ROBO environments to larger SME and enterprise workloads. To me a theme with V6.6 is expanding resiliency, scalability with stability to expand vSAN upmarket as well as into new workloads similar to how vSphere has evolved.

With each new release, vSAN is increasing its feature, functionality, resiliency and extensiveness associated with traditional storage and non-CI or HCI solutions. Overall a good set of enhancements as vSAN continues its evolution looking back just a few years ago, to where it is today and will be in the future. If you have not looked at vSAN recently, take some time beyond reading this piece to learn some more.

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the Spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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

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Cisco Next Gen 32Gb Fibre Channel NVMe SAN Updates

server storage I/O trends

Cisco Next Gen 32Gb Fibre Channel and NVMe SAN Updates

Cisco announced today next generation MDS storage area networking (SAN) Fibre Channel (FC) switches with 32Gb, along with NVMe over FC support.

Cisco Fibre Channel (FC) Directors (Left) and Switches (Right)

Highlights of the Cisco announcement include:

  • MDS 9700 48 port 32Gbps FC switching module
  • High density 768 port 32Gbps FC directors
  • NVMe over FC for attaching fast flash SSD devices (current MDS 9700, 9396S, 9250i and 9148S)
  • Integrated analytics engine for management insight awareness
  • Multiple concurrent protocols including NVMe, SCSI (e.g. SCSI_FCP aka FCP) and FCoE

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to learn more.

What this all means, wrap up and summary

Fibre Channel remains relevant for many environments and it makes sense that Cisco known for Ethernet along with IP networking enhance their offerings. By having 32Gb Fibre Channel, along with adding NVMe over Fabric provides existing (and new) Cisco customers to support their legacy (e.g. FC) and emerging (NVMe) workloads as well as devices. For those environments that still need some mix of Fibre Channel, as well as NVMe over fabric this is a good announcement. Keep an eye and ear open for which storage vendors jump on the NVMe over Fabric bandwagon now that Cisco as well as Brocade have made switch support announcements.

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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

Posted on

March 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue III

Hello and welcome to the March 2017 issue of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

First a reminder world backup (and recovery) day is on March 31. Following up from the February Server StorageIO update newsletter that had a focus on data protection this edition includes some additional posts, articles, tips and commentary below.

Other data infrastructure (and tradecraft) topics in this edition include cloud, virtual, server, storage and I/O including NVMe as well as networks. Industry trends include new technology and services announcements, cloud services, HPE buying Nimble among other activity. Check out the Converged Infrastructure (CI), Hyper-Converged (HCI) and Cluster in Box (or Cloud in Box) coverage including a recent SNIA webinar I was invited to be the guest presenter for, along with companion post below.

In This Issue

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

Some recent Industry Activities, Trends, News and Announcements include:

Dell EMC has discontinued the NVMe direct attached shared DSSD D5 all flash array has been discontinued. At about the same time Dell EMC is shutting down the DSSD D5 product, it has also signaled they will leverage the various technologies including NVMe across their broad server storage portfolio in different ways moving forward. While Dell EMC is shutting down DSSD D5, they are also bringing additional NVMe solutions to the market including those they have been shipping for years (e.g. on the server-side). Learn more about DSSD D5 here and here including perspectives of how it could have been used (plays for playbooks).

Meanwhile NVMe industry activity continues to expand with different solutions from startups such as E8, Excelero, Everspin, Intel, Mellanox, Micron, Samsung and WD SANdisk among others. Also keep in mind, if the answer is NVMe, then what were and are the questions to ask, as well as what are some easy to use benchmark scripts (using fio, diskspd, vdbench, iometer).

Speaking of NVMe, flash and SSDs, Amazon Web Services (AWS) have added new Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) storage and I/O optimized i3 instances. These new instances are available in various configurations with different amounts of vCPU (cores or logical processors), memory and NVMe SSD capacities (and quantity) along with price.

Note that the price per i3 instance varies not only by its configuration, also for image and region deployed in. The flash SSD capacities range from an entry-level (i3.large) with 2 vCPU (logical processors), 15.25GB of RAM and a single 475GB NVMe SSD that for example in the US East Region was recently priced at $0.156 per hour. At the high-end there is the i3.16xlarge with 64 vCPU (logical processors), 488GB RAM and 8 x 1900GB NVMe SSDs with a recent US East Region price of $4.992 per hour. Note that the vCPU refers to the available number of logical processors available and not necessarily cores or sockets.

Also note that your performance will vary, and while NVMe protocol tends to use less CPU per I/O, if generating a large number of I/Os you will need some CPU. What this means is that if you find your performance limited compared to expectations with the lower end i3 instances, move up to a larger instance and see what happens. If you have a Windows-based environment, you can use a tool such as Diskspd to see what happens with I/O performance as you decrease the number of CPUs used.

Chelsio has announced they are now Microsoft Azure Stack Certified with their iWARP RDMA host adapter solutions, as well as for converged infrastructure (CI), hyper-converged (HCI) and legacy server storage deployments. As part of the announcement, Chelsio is also offering a 30 day no cost trial of their adapters for Microsoft Azure Stack, Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 client environments. Learn more about the Chelsio trial offer here.

Everspin (the MRAM Spintorque, persistent RAM folks) have announced a new Storage Class Memory (SCM) NVMe accessible family (nvNITRO) of storage accelerator devices (PCIe AiC, U.2). Whats interesting about Everspin is that they are using NVMe for accessing their persistent RAM (e.g. MRAM) making it easily plug compatible with existing operating systems or hypervisors. This means using standard out of the box NVMe drivers where the Everspin SCM appears as a block device (for compatibility) functioning as a low latency, high performance persistent write cache.

Something else interesting besides making the new memory compatible with existing servers CPU complex via PCIe, is how Everspin is demonstrating that NVMe as a general access protocol is not just exclusive to nand flash-based SSDs. What this means is that instead of using non-persistent DRAM, or slower NAND flash (or 3D XPoint SCM), Everspin nvNITRO enables high endurance write cache with persistent to compliment existing NAND flash as well as emerging 3D XPoint based storage. Keep an eye on Everspin as they are doing some interesting things for future discussions.

Google Cloud Services has added additional regions (cloud locations) and other enhancements.

HPE continued buying into server storage I/O data infrastructure technologies announcing an all cash (e.g. no stock) acquisition of Nimble Storage (NMBL). The cash acquisition for a little over $1B USD amounts to $12.50 USD per Nimble share, double what it had traded at. As a refresh, or overview, Nimble is an all flash shared storage system leverage NAND flash solid storage device (SSD) performance. Note that Nimble also partners with Cisco and Lenovo platforms that compete with HPE servers for converged systems.View additional perspectives here.

Riverbed has announced the release of Steelfusion 5 which while its name implies physical hardware metal, the solution is available as tin wrapped (e.g. hardware appliance) software. However the solution is also available for deployment as a VMware virtual appliance for remote office branch office (ROBO) among others. Enhancements include converged functionality such as NAS support along with network latency as well as bandwidth among other features.

Check out other industry news, comments, trends perspectives here.

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via InfoStor: 8 Big Enterprise SSD Trends to Expect in 2017
Watch for increased capacities at lower cost, differentiation awareness of high-capacity, low-cost and lower performing SSDs versus improved durability and performance along with cost capacity enhancements for active SSD (read and write optimized). You can also expect increased support for NVMe both as a back-end storage device with different form factors (e.g., M.2 gum sticks, U.2 8639 drives, PCIe cards) as well as front-end (e.g., storage systems that are NVMe-attached) including local direct-attached and fiber-attached. This means more awareness around NVMe both as front-end and back-end deployment options.

Via SearchITOperations: Storage performance bottlenecks
Sometimes it takes more than an aspirin to cure a headache. There may be a bottleneck somewhere else, in hardware, software, storage system architecture or something else.

Via SearchDNS: Parsing through the software-defined storage hype
Beyond scalability, SDS technology aims for freedom from the limits of proprietary hardware.

Via InfoStor: Data Storage Industry Braces for AI and Machine Learning
AI could also lead to untapped hidden or unknown value in existing data that has no or little perceived value

Via SearchDataCenter: New options to evolve data backup recovery

View more Server, Storage and I/O trends and perspectives comments here

Various Tips, Tools, Technology and Tradecraft Topics

Recent Data Infrastructure Tradecraft Articles, Tips, Tools, Tricks and related topics.

Via ComputerWeekly: Time to restore from backup: Do you know where your data is?
Via IDG/NetworkWorld: Ensure your data infrastructure remains available and resilient
Via IDG/NetworkWorld: Whats a data infrastructure?

Check out Scott Lowe @Scott_Lowe of VMware fame who while having a virtual networking focus has a nice roundup of related data infrastructure topics cloud, open source among others.

Want to take a break from reading or listening to tech talk, check out some of the fun videos including aerial drone (and some technology topics) at www.storageio.tv.

View more tips and articles here

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

May 8-10, 2017 – Dell EMCworld – Las Vegas

April 3-7, 2017 – Seminars – Dutch workshop seminar series – Nijkerk Netherlands

March 15, 2017 – Webinar – SNIA/BrightTalk – HyperConverged and Storage – 10AM PT

January 26 2017 – Seminar – Presenting at Wipro SDx Summit London UK

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


Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). 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. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials(CRC Press).

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

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Preparing For World Backup Day 2017 Are You Prepared

Preparing For World Backup Day 2017 Are You Prepared

In case you have forgotten, or were not aware, this coming Friday March 31 is World Backup Day 2017 (and recovery day). The annual day is a to remember to make sure you are protecting your applications, data, information, configuration settings as well as data infrastructures. While the emphasis is on Backup, that also means recovery as well as testing to make sure everything is working properly as part of on-prem and cloud data protection.

What the Vendors Have To Say

Today I received the following from Kylle over at TOUCHDOWNPR on behalf of their clients providing their perspectives on what World Backup Day means, or how to be prepared. Keep in mind these are not Server StorageIO clients (granted some have been in the past, or I know them, that is a disclosure btw), and this is in no way an endorsement of what they are saying, or advocating. Instead, this is simply passing along to you what was given to me.

Not included in this list? No worries, add your perspectives (politely) to the comments, or, drop me a note, and perhaps I will do a follow-up or addition to this.

Kylle O’Sullivan
TOUCHDOWNPR
Email: Kosullivan@touchdownpr.com
Mobile: 508-826-4482
Skype: Kylle.OSullivan

“Data loss and disruption happens far too often in the enterprise. Research by Ponemon in 2016 estimates the average cost of an unplanned outage has spiralled to nearly $9,000 a minute, causing crippling downtime as well as financial and reputational damage. Legacy backups simply aren’t equipped to provide seamless operations, with zero Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) should a disaster strike. In order to guarantee the availability of applications, synchronous replication with real-time analytics needs to be simple to setup, monitor and manage for application owners and economical to the organization. That way, making zero data loss attainable suddenly becomes a reality.” – Chuck Dubuque, VP Product Marketing, Tintri

“With today’s “always-on” business environment, data loss can destroy a company’s brand and customer trust. A multiple software-based strategy with software-defined and hyperconverged storage infrastructure is the most effective route for a flexible backup plan.  With this tactic, snapshots, replication and stretched clusters can help protect data, whether in a local data center cluster, across data centers or across the cloud. IT teams rely on these software-based policies as the backbone of their disaster recovery implementations as the human element is removed. This is possible as the software-based strategy dictates that all virtual machines are accurately, automatically and consistently replicated to the DR sites. Through this automatic and transparent approach, no administrator action is required, saving employees time, money and providing peace of mind that business can carry on despite any outage.” – Patrick Brennan, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Atlantis Computing

“It’s only a matter of time before your datacenter experiences a significant outage, if it hasn’t already, due to a wide range of causes, from something as simple as human error or power failure to criminal activity like ransomware and cyberattacks, or even more catastrophic events like hurricanes. Shifting thinking to ‘when’ as opposed to ‘if’ something like this happens is crucial; crucial to building a more flexible and resilient IT infrastructure that can withstand any kind of disruption resulting in negative impact on business performance. World Backup Day reminds us of the importance of both having a backup plan in place and as well as conducting regular reviews of current and new technology to do everything possible to keep business running without interruption. Organizations today are highly aware that they are heavily dependent on data and critical applications, and that losing even just an hour of data can greatly harm revenues and brand reputation, sometimes beyond repair. Savvy businesses are taking an all-inclusive approach to this problem that incorporates cloud-based technologies into their disaster recovery plans. And with consistent testing and automation, they are ensuring that those plans are extremely simple to execute against in even the most challenging of situations, a key element of successfully avoiding damaging downtime.” Rob Strechay, VP Product, Zerto

“Data is one of the most valuable business assets and when it comes to data protection chief among its IT challenges is the ever-growing rate of data and the associated vulnerability. Backup needs to be reliable, fast and cost efficient. Organizations are on the defensive after a disaster and being able to recover critical data within minutes is crucial. Breakthroughs in disk technologies and pricing have led to very dense arrays that are power, cost and performance efficient. Backup has been revolutionized and organizations need to ensure they are safeguarding their most valuable commodity – not just now but for the long term. Secure archive platforms are complementary and create a complete recovery strategy.”  – Geoff Barrall, COO, Nexsan

Consider the DR Options that Object Storage Adds
“Data backup and disaster recovery used to be treated as separate processes, which added complexity. But with object storage as a backup target you now have multiple options to bring backup and DR together in a single flow. You can configure a hybrid cloud and tier a portion of your data to the public cloud, or you can locate object storage nodes at different locations and use replication to provide geographic separation. So, this World Backup Day, consider how object storage has increased your options for meeting this critical need.” – Jon Toor, Cloudian CMO

Whats In Your Data Protection Toolbox

What tools, technologies do you have in your data protection toolbox? Do you only have a hammer and thus answer to every situation is that it looks like a nail? Or, do you have multiple tools, technologies combined with your various tradecraft experiences to applice different techniques?

storageio data protection toolbox

Where To Learn More

Following these links to additional related material about backup, restore, availability, data protection, BC, BR, DR along with associated topics, trends, tools, technologies as well as techniques.

Time to restore from backup: Do you know where your data is?
February 2017 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter
Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O Tradecraft Trends
Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O related Tradecraft Overview
Data Infrastructure Primer and Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
What’s a data infrastructure?
Ensure your data infrastructure remains available and resilient
Part III Until the focus expands to data protection – Taking action
Welcome to the Data Protection Diaries
Backup, Big data, Big Data Protection, CMG & More with Tom Becchetti Podcast
Six plus data center software defined management dashboards
Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
Software Defined, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage Fundamentals (www.objectstoragecenter.com)

Data Infrastructure Overview, Its Whats Inside of Data Centers
All You Need To Know about Remote Office/Branch Office Data Protection Backup (free webinar with registration)
Software Defined, Converged Infrastructure (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) resources
The SSD Place (SSD, NVM, PM, SCM, Flash, NVMe, 3D XPoint, MRAM and related topics)
The NVMe Place (NVMe related topics, trends, tools, technologies, tip resources)
Data Protection Diaries (Archive, Backup/Restore, BC, BR, DR, HA, RAID/EC/LRC, Replication, Security)
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) including SDDC, Cloud, Container and more
Various Data Infrastructure related events, webinars and other activities

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

Backup of data is important, so to is recovery which also means testing. Testing means more than just if you can read the tape, disk, SSD, USB, cloud or other medium (or location). Go a step further and verify that not only you can read the data from the medium, also if your applications or software are able to use it. Have you protected your applications (e.g. not just the data), security keys, encryption, access, dedupe and other certificates along with metadata as well as other settings? Do you have a backup or protection copy of your protection including recovery tools? What granularity of protection and recovery do you have in place, when did you test or try it recently? In other words, what this all means is be prepared, find and fix issues, as well as in the course of testing, don’t cause a disaster.

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.

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Backup, Big data, Big Data Protection, CMG & More with Tom Becchetti Podcast

server storage I/O trends

In this Server StorageIO podcast episode, I am joined by Tom Becchetti (@tbecchetti) for a Friday afternoon conversation recorded live at Meisters in Scandia Minnesota (thanks to the Meisters crew!).

Tom Becchetti

For those of you who may not know Tom, he has been in the IT, data center, data infrastructure, server and storage (as well as data protection) industry for many years (ok decades) as a customer and vendor in various roles. Not surprising our data infrastructure discussion involves server, software, storage, big data, backup, data protection, big data protection, CMG (Computer Measurement Group @mspcmg), copy data management, cloud, containers, fundamental tradecraft skills among other related topics.

Check out Tom on twitter @tbecchetti and @mspcmg as well as his new website www.storagegodfather.com. Listen to the podcast discussion here (42 minutes) as well as on iTunes.

Also available on 

Ok, nuff said for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). 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. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press).

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

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HPE Continues Buying Into Server Storage I/O Data Infrastructures

Storage I/O Data Infrastructures trends
Updated 1/16/2018

HPE expanded its Storage I/O Data Infrastructures portfolio buying into server storage I/O data infrastructure technologies announcing an all cash (e.g. no stock) acquisition of Nimble Storage (NMBL). The cash acquisition for a little over $1B USD amounts to $12.50 USD per Nimble share, double what it had traded at. As a refresh, or overview, Nimble is an all flash shared storage system leverage NAND flash solid storage device (SSD) performance. Note that Nimble also partners with Cisco and Lenovo platforms that compete with HPE servers for converged systems.

Earlier this year (keep in mind its only mid-March) HPE also announced acquisition of server storage Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) vendor Simplivity (about $650M USD cash). In another investment this year HPE joined other investors as part of scale out and software defined storage startups Hedvig latest funding round (more on that later). These acquisitions are in addition to smaller ones such as last years buying of SGI, not to mention various divestitures.

Data Infrastructures

What Are Server Storage I/O Data Infrastructures Resources

Data Infrastructures exists to support business, cloud and information technology (IT) among other applications that transform data into information or services. The fundamental role of data infrastructures is to give a platform environment for applications and data that is resilient, flexible, scalable, agile, efficient as well as cost-effective.

Technologies that make up data infrastructures include hardware, software, cloud or managed services, servers, storage, I/O and networking along with people, processes, policies along with various tools spanning legacy, software-defined virtual, containers and cloud.

HPE and Server Storage Acquisitions

HPE and its predecessor HP (e.g. before the split that resulted in HPE) was familiar with expanding its data infrastructure portfolio spanning servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software and services. These range from Compaq who acquired DEC which gave them the StorageWorks brand and product line up (e.g. recall EVA and its predecessors), Lefthand, 3PAR, IBRIX, Polyserve, Autonomy, EDS and others that I’m guessing some at HPE (along with customers and partners) might not want to remember.

In addition to their own in-house including via technology acquisition, HPE also partners for its entry-level and volume low-end MSA (Modular Storage Array) series with DotHill who was acquired by Seagate a year or so ago. In addition to the MSA, other HPE OEMs for storage include Hitachi Ltd. (e.g. parent of Hitachi Data Systems aka HDS) reselling their high-end enterprise class storage system as the XP7, as well as various other partner arrangements.

Keep in mind that HPE has a large server business from low to high-end, spanning towers to dense blades to dual, quad and cluster in box (CiB) configurations with various processor architectures. Some of these servers are used as platforms for not only HPE, also other vendors software defined storage, as well as tin wrapped software solutions, appliances and systems. HPE is also one of a handful of partners working with Microsoft to bring the software defined private (and hybrid) Azure Stack cloud stack as an appliance to market.

HPE acquisitions Dejavu or Something New?

For some people there may be a sense of Dejavu of what HPE and its predecessors have previously acquired, developed, sold and supported into the market over years (and decades in some cases). What will be interesting to see is how the 3PAR (StoreServ) and Lefthand based (StoreVirtual) as well as ConvergedSystem 250-HC product lines are realigned to make way for Nimble and Simplivity.

Likewise what will HPE do with MSA at the low-end, continue to leverage it for low-end and high-volume basic storage similar to Dell with the Netapp/Engenio powered MD series? Or will HPE try to move the Nimble down market and displace the MDS? What about in the mid-market, will Nimble be unleashed to replace StoreVirtual (e.g. Lefthand), or will they fence it in (e.g. being restricted to certain scenarios?
Will the Nimble solution be allowed to move up market into the low-end of where 3PAR has been positioned, perhaps even higher up given its all flash capabilities. Or, will there be a 3PAR everywhere approach?

Then there is Simplivity as the solution is effectively software running on an HPE server (or with other partners Cisco and Lenovo) along with a PCIe offload card (with Simplivity data services acceleration). Note that Simplivity leverages PCIe offload cards for some of their functionality, this too is familiar ground for HPE given its ASIC use by 3PAR.

Simplivity has the potential to disrupt some low to mid-range, perhaps even larger opportunities that are looking to go to a converged infrastructure (CI) or HCI deployment as part of their data infrastructure needs. One can speculate that Simplivity after repackaging will be positioned along current HPE CI and HCI solutions.

This will be interesting to watch to see if the HPE server and storage groups can converge not only from a technology point, also sales, marketing, service, and support perspective. With the Simplivity solution, HPE has an opportunity to move the industry thinking or perception that HCI is only for small environments defined by what some products can do.

What I mean by this is that HPE with its enterprise and SMB along with SME and cloud managed service provider experience as well as servers can bring hyper-scale out (and up) converged to the market. In other words, start addressing the concern I hear from larger organizations that most CI or HCI solutions (or packaging) are just for smaller environments. HPE has the servers, they have the storage from MSAs to other modules and core data infrastructure building blocks along with the robustness of the Simplivity software to enable hyper-scale out CI.

What about bulk, object, scale-out storage

HPE has a robust tape business, yes I know tape is dead, however tell that to the customers who keep buying products providing revenue along with margin to HPE (and others). Likewise HPE has VTLs as well as other solutions for addressing bulk data (e.g. big data, backups, protection copies, archives, high volume, and large quantity, what goes on tape or object). For example HPE has the StoreOnce solution.

However where is the HPE object storage story?

Otoh, does HPE its own object storage software, simply partner with others? HPE can continue to provide servers along with underlying storage for other vendors bulk, cloud and object storage systems, and where needed, meet in the channel among other arrangements.

On the other hand, this is where similar to Polyserve and Ibrix among others in the past have come into play, with HPE via its pathfinder (investment group) joining others in putting some money into Hedvig. HPE gets access to Hedvig for their scale out storage that can be used for bulk as well as other deployments including CI, HCI and CIB (e.g. something to sell HPE servers and storage with).

HPE can continue to partner with other software providers and software-defined storage stacks. Keep in mind that Milan Shetti (CTO, Data Center Infrastructure Group HPE) is no stranger to these waters given his past at Ibrix among others.

What About Hedvig

Time to get back to Hedvig which is a storage startup whose software can run on various server storage platforms, as well as in different topologies. Different topologies include in a CI or HCI, Cloud, as well as scale out with various access including block, file and object. In addition to block, file and object access, Hedvig has interesting management tools, data services, along with support for VMware, Docker, and OpenStack among others.

Recently Hedvig landed another $21.5M USD in funding bringing their total to about $52M USD. HPE via its investment arm, joins other investors (note HPE was part of the $21.5M, that was not the amount they invested) including Vertex, Atlantic Bridge, Redpoint, edbi and true ventures.

What does this mean for HPE and Hedvig among others? Tough to say however easy to imagine how Hedvig could be leveraged as a partner using HPE servers, as well as for HPE to have an addition to their bulk, scale-out, cloud and object storage portfolio.

Where to Learn More

View more material on HPE, data infrastructure and related topics with the following links.

  • Cloud and Object storage are in your future, what are some questions?
  • PCIe Server Storage I/O Network Fundamentals
  • If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?
  • Fixing the Microsoft Windows 10 1709 post upgrade restart loop
  • Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading
  • Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview
  • IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps with New York Times CTO Nick Rockwell Podcast
  • HPE Announces AMD Powered Gen 10 ProLiant DL385 For Software Defined Workloads
  • AWS Announces New S3 Cloud Storage Security Encryption Features
  • NVM Non Volatile Memory Express NVMe Place
  • Data Infrastructure Primer and Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
  • January 2017 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter
  • September and October 2016 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter
  • HP Buys one of the seven networking dwarfs and gets a bargain
  • Did HP respond to EMC and Cisco VCE with Microsoft Hyper-V bundle?
  • Give HP storage some love and short strokin
  • While HP and Dell make counter bids, exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott
  • Data Protection Fundamental Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
  • Hewlett-Packard beats Dell, pays $2.35 billion for 3PAR
  • HP Moonshot 1500 software defined capable compute servers
  • What Does Converged (CI) and Hyper converged (HCI) Mean to Storage I/O?
  • What’s a data infrastructure?
  • Ensure your data infrastructure remains available and resilient
  • Object Storage Center, The SSD place and The NVMe place

    • 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

    Generally speaking I think this is a good series of moves for HPE (and their customers) as long as they can execute in all dimensions.

    Let’s see how they execute, and by this, I mean more than simply executing or terminating staff from recently acquired or earlier acquisitions. How will HPE craft go to the market message that leverages the portfolio to compete and hold or take share from other vendors, vs. cannibalize across its own lines (e.g. revenue prevention)? With that strategy and message, how will HPE assure existing customers will be taken care, be given a definite upgrade and migration path vs. giving them a reason to go elsewhere.

    Hopefully HPE unleashes the full potential of Simplivity and Nimble along with 3PAR, XP7 where needed, along with MSA at low-end (or as part of volume scale-out with servers for software defined), to mention sever portfolio. For now, this tells me that HPE is still interested in maintaining, expanding their data infrastructure business vs. simply retrenching selling off assets. Thus this looks like HPE is interested in continuing to invest in data infrastructure technologies including buying into server, storage I/O network, hardware, software solutions, while not simply clinging to what they already have, or previously bought.

    Everything is not the same in data centers and across data infrastructure, so why have a one size fits all approach for organization as large, diverse as HPE.

    Congratulations and best wishes to the folks at Hedvig, Nimble, Simplivity.

    Now, lets see how this all plays out.

    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.

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    Software Defined Cloud Bulk Object Storage News Trends

    Cloud, Software Defined, Scale-Out, Object Storage News Trends

    Welcome to the Cloud, Big Data, Software Defined, Bulk and Object Storage News Trends page.

    This page contains various links pertaining to Software Defined, scale-out, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage News Trends and resources. Other resources pertaining to Software Defined, scale-out, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage include:

    Software defined, Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage exist to support expanding and diverse application data demands. There are various types of cloud, bulk and object storage including public services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), Google, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, Rackspace among many others. There are also solutions for hybrid and private deployment from Cisco, DDN, Dell EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Noobaa, OpenStack, Quantum, Rackspace, Scality, Seagate, Spectra, Storpool, Suse, Swift and WD among others.

    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

    Cloud products and services among others, along with associated data infrastructures including object storage, file systems, repositories and access methods are at the center of bulk, big data, big bandwidth and little data initiatives on a public, private, hybrid and community basis. After all, not everything is the same in cloud, virtual and traditional data centers or information factories from active data to in-active deep digital archiving.

    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via FujiFilm IT Summit: Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Hybrid Clouds
    Via ChannelPartnersOnline: Selling Software-Defined Storage: Not All File Systems Are the Same
    Via ITProPortal: IBM kills off its first cloud storage platform
    Via MultiChannel: After ditching cloud business, Verizon inks Virtual Network Services deal with Amazon
    Via ITBusinessEdge: Time to Rein in Cloud Storage
    Via BusinessInsider: Kodiak Data Brings Enterprise Storage and Database Services to the Cloud Era with StorageCloud
    Via SerchCloudStorge: Ctera Networks’ file-sharing services gain intelligent cache
    Via StorageIOblog: Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

    cloud object storage

    The following resources provide additional information about big data, bulk, software defined, cloud and object storage.

    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via CloudComputingAdmin: Cloud Storage Decision Making
    Via Wservernews: Cloud storage considerations
    Via PRNewsWire: Scality Accelerates Multi-Cloud Adoption with New Open-Source Release
    Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Top 10 Tips for Software-Defined Storage Deployment
    Via MultiChannel: Verizon Digital Media Services now offers integrated Microsoft Azure Storage
    Via BroadCstingCable: Quantum’s New StorNext 6 Delivers Unparalleled Combination of Best-in-Class 4K Performance and Advanced Data Management
    Via ShootOnLine: Morro Data Accelerates Media Collaboration With Cache and Sync Appliance
    Via TechCrunch: Backblaze drops download pricing for its B2 storage platform by 60%
    Via PRNewsWire: FileCloud Online Launches an All-In-One File Share, Sync and Backup SaaS Offering in a Challenge to Dropbox and Box

    cloud object storage

    Via HITInfrastructure: Benefits of Object Storage to Health IT Infrastructure
    Via ITBusinessedge: Growing Diversity of Cloud Storage Solutions
    Via Telecompaper: Interoute launches storage zones in Switzerland
    Via TradeCalls:
    Object Storage Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022
    Via OpenStack: Creating object storage container causes user to be logged out, OpenStack Dashboard (Horizon)
    Via RethinkResearch: Nokia claims a 40% cut in cloud DVR Capex, using new Skim Storage
    Via Cloudwards: A Beginner’s Guide on How Cloud Backup With Microsoft Azure Works
    Via ITProPortal: Lack of understanding of data inhibits move to the cloud

    cloud object storage

    Via InfoStor:Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
    Via StreetInsider: IBM Announces New Pricing Model for Cloud Storage and NetApp Object Storage Partnership

    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via ComputerWeekly: Storage 101: Object storage vs block vs file
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via Yahoo Finance: SwiftStack Joins Google Cloud Technology Partner Program
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look

    Via StorageIOblog: HPE Continues Buying Into Server Storage I/O Data Infrastructures
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via TheStack:Google to launch nine new data centres over three new cloud regions
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via DigitalJournal:Global Business Cloud Storage market 2017 share, Segmentation and Industrial Overview forecasts to 2022
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via NextPlatform:How Microsoft Fell Hard for FPGAs
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via NextPlatform:Google Courts Enterprise For Cloud Platform

    cloud object storage

    Via IBM RedBooks: Cloud Object Storage as a
    Service – IBM Cloud Object Storage from Theory to Practice
    Via VentureBeat: Microsoft confirms Azure storage issues around the world
    Via Microsoft Azure: Azure status history
    Via NextPlatform: Windows Server Comes To ARM Chips, But Only For Azure
    Via NextPlatform: ARM And AMD X86 Server Chips Get Mainstream Lift From Microsoft
    Via ITBusinessEdge: Google Expands Enterprise Cloud Service Footprint
    Via ChannelWorld: Google announces three new cloud regions, contract discounts
    Via AWS: AWS Service Health Status
    Via AWS (S3 Feb 28 2017 Port mortem): Summary of the Amazon S3 Service Disruption
    Via SearchCloudStorage: Open source object storage startup OpenIO adds hardware

    cloud object storage

    Via InfoStor: Comments on Cloud Storage Pros and Cons
    Via CRN: StorageCraft Acquires Exablox
    Via TVtechglobal: Signiant CEO: The media industry isnt just one monolithic thing
    Via Computerweekly: Using the cloud as a storage tier
    Via SearchCloudStorage: OpenIO joins object storage cloud scrum
    Via CRN: Dell Partners With Scality On High-Density Object Storage
    Via BroadwayWorld: The World’s Smallest Object Storage Solution, ‘Ceph on Olive’, is Released
    Via SmartDataCollective: Why You Should Be Securing Big Data In The Cloud?
    Via Geekwire: Feds certify Amazon and Microsoft clouds to handle sensitive government data
    Via NewsFactor: SoftNAS Introduces File Services for NetApp StorageGRID
    Via Redmondmag: AWS Cloud Storage Service Turns 10
    Via DropBox Blog: Scaling to exabytes and beyond
    Via Computerworld: Dropbox quits Amazon cloud, takes back 500 PB of data
    Via HPCwire: Seagate Sets Sights on Broader HPC Market

    cloud object storage

    Via Channelnomics.com: Why Samsung’s Joyent buyout could frame its future
    Via GeekyGadgets: Google Drive Cloud Storage Is Now A Little Easier To Organize Thanks To New Tools
    Via ZDnet: Google doubles Cloud Compute local SSD capacity: Now it’s 3TB per VM
    Via AndroidPolice: Barracuda Is Shutting Down The Copy Cloud Storage Service On May 1st
    Via StorageSoup: EMC expands Elastic Cloud (object) Storage
    Via Cloud Review: Access Multiple Cloud Apps from a Unified Interface
    Via CyberSecurity: Cybersecurity and Accessible Storage Trends
    Via eWeek: Cloud Storage Spending Poised for Increase in 2016
    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via BioScienceTechnology: Six Reasons to Add Object Storage to Your Genomics Lexicon
    Via TechCrunch: Backblaze’s Low-Cost Cloud Storage Service Comes Out Of Beta
    Via CloudComputingAdmin: Cloud Storage Decision Making
    COSbench for cloud and object storage (Various): White Paper (CMU), PDF overview presentation, Get the bits (software) from Github
    Via AWS Blogs: AWS Storage Update – New Lower Cost S3 Storage Option & Glacier Price Reduction
    Via Techcrunch: IBM Acquires Cleversafe To Accelerate Hybrid Cloud Storage Strategy

    cloud object storage

    Via Techcrunch: Developers Can Now Import Data To Google Cloud Storage By Mailing In Their Hard Drives, Tapes And USB Flash Drives
    Via vCloud: VMware vCloud Air Object Storage
    Via SearchStorage: SwiftStack adds new features to object storage software solution
    Via TheVarGuy: Vendor consortium create Ceph advisory board
    Via OpenStack: Whats new in OpenStack Liberty
    Via Microsoft Azure: File access cloud storage in addition to blobs and object storage
    Via AWS: AWS Storage Update – New Lower Cost S3 Storage Option & Glacier Price Reduction
    Via VMware Blogs: Showcasing VMware vCloud Air Object Storage powered by EMC at EMC World!
    Via Venturebeat: Backblaze launches B2 object storage service at 1/4 of the cost of Amazon S3
    Via Techcrunch: Wuala, The Secure P2P Cloud Storage Service Acquired By LaCie, To Shut Down
    Via ChannelworldIN: 13 firms join to open up Ethernet, object-storage to everyone
    Via ITportal: The elephant in the room: The trust deficit issue with public clouds
    Via VCpost: Dropbox latest update: Cloud storage service provider now lets you drag and drop URLs with files
    Via NetworkAsia: HP’s new converged appliance offers a path to hybrid cloud
    Via Techtimes: Google Files For Patent To Search Your Desktop Files, Apps And Cloud Storage

    cloud object storage

    Via CloudTweaks: Questions To Ask Every Cloud Storage Provider
    Via MarketWatch: Linux Foundation Brings Together Industry Leaders to Advance Cloud Object Storage Technologies
    Via CBR: New Kinetic platform targets open source object storage
    Via Techcrunch: Seagate, Toshiba, Scality And Others Launch Kinetic Open Storage Platform For Smart, Low-Overhead Cloud Object Storage
    Via StorageIOblog: July 2015 Newsletter Focus on Content Solution Platforms
    Via ITnewsline: Hitachi Data Systems Announces New Enhancements to the Hitachi Content Platform Portfolio
    Via ITbusinessnet: Caringo Provides Only Software-Based Web-Scale Object Storage for Symantec Enterprise Vault
    Via ITbusinessnet: Caringo Provides Only Software-Based Web-Scale Object Storage for Symantec Enterprise Vault
    Via TopTechNews: Dropbox Adds USB Keys To Boost Security
    Via ZDnet: SUSE brings its management software to the cloud
    Via Forbes: Jumptuit Roadmap Video: A New Search Bar For Your Data At Facebook, Google and Dropbox
    Via Forbes: Panzura Global File System — Disrupting the Storage Industry
    Via TalkinCloud: Barracuda Launches Cloud Storage and Share Service CudaDrive
    Via ITnews: Researchers debut rival to AWS cloud storage
    Via NetworkAsia.net: HP launches new scale-out and scale-up Compute portfolios

    cloud object storage

    Via Server StorageIO: May / June 2015 Newsletter Focus on server storage packaging
    Via Server StorageIO: April 2015 Newsletter Focus on Cloud and Object storage
    Via StudioDaily.com: At NAB, Vendors and Users Both Got Serious About 4K Workflow
    Via OpenSource.com: The unofficial guide to OpenStack Summit Vancouver
    Via InsideHPC: Deploying Hadoop on Lustre Storage: Lessons Learned and Best Practices
    Via Yahoo Engineering Blog: Yahoo Cloud Object Store – Object Storage at Exabyte Scale
    Via the Platform: Inside The Ceph Exascale Storage At Yahoo
    Via Swift Summit: Taking the Mystery out of Erasure Codes: A Swift Implementation
    Via GovTech: Storage Costs Cloud Police Cam Issue
    Via BostonHerald: Booting Up: Storage costs cloud police cam issue
    Via StorageIOblog: S3motion Buckets Containers Objects AWS S3 Cloud and EMCcode (with podcast)
    Via StorageIOblog: If focused on cost you might miss other cloud storage benefits
    Via ComputerWorld: Amazon offers network file storage in the cloud
    Via ComputerWeekly: HGST marries helium HDDs and Himalaya in object storage Active Archive
    Via GoogleCloudPlatform Blog: GCS Nearline Online storage at Offline price

    cloud object storage

    Via MarketWatch: Global Data Center Provider CyrusOne Announces Direct Connectivity to Google Cloud Platform
    Via PRNewsWire: Quantum Announces New Archive Solutions Designed To Reduce Unstructured Data Storage Costs
    Via Enterprise Storage Forum: Lustre buying guide
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS S3 Cross Region Replication storage enhancements
    Via StreetInsider: Western Digital (WDC) to Acquire Object Storage Software Amplidata
    Via Enterprise Storage Forum: Dell Invests in Object Storage Startup Exablox
    Via Enterprise Storage Forum: Introducing s3motion (S3 and object access docker based appliance)
    Via Computerworld: Quantum enhances their cloud and object storage management with new StorNext software version
    Via HealthIndustry: 2014 IDC MarketScape perspectives
    Via MarketWired: ScaleOut Software Releases Version 5.2 of Its In-Memory Computing Platform
    Via CRN: HP Inks Global Reseller Agreement With Object Storage Startup Scality
    Via NetApp: NetApp Introduces Software-Defined Object Storage for the Hybrid Cloud
    Via ZDnet: NetApp intros software-defined object storage for hybrid cloud adoption
    Via SearchCloudStorage: Are more than five nines of availability really possible?

    cloud object storage

    Via SearchCloudStorage: How do primary storage clouds and cloud for backup differ?
    Via SearchCloudStorage: What should I consider when using SSD cloud?
    Via SearchCloudStorage: Given outages, are you concerned with the security of the cloud?
    Via SearchCloudStorage: Is the cost of cloud storage really cheaper than traditional storage?
    Via HostReview: Panzura Collaborates With Microsoft Azure To Transform Cloud Storage Into A Globally Distributed NAS
    Via ITBusinessNet: Caringo Awarded Patent for Erasure Coding, Replication in Storage Cluster
    Via PRWeb: Western Digital Capital Makes Strategic Investment in Amplidata
    Via ITwire: Dovecot in for the long haul
    Via InfoStor: Top Tips for Object Storage
    Via Enterprise Storage ForumObject Storage Buying Guide
    Via Enterprise Networking Planet: Cloud Gateways 101
    Via eWeek: HP Unveils Smaller, Less Costly Helion Cloud Platform
    Via PCadvisor: CA Technologies, AWS and Riverbed bring mainframe Cloud to big four banks
    Via CMS wire: The Enterprise Cloud is Finally Moving Beyond Storage
    Via Edtech: Microsoft 365’s Massive Cloud Storage Is ‘Icing on Cake’ to University’s Upgrade

    cloud object storage

    Via CRN: Quantum Acquires Symform, Plans To Bring Cloud-Based Backups To Enterprise
    Via BusinessWire: OpenStack Object Storage (Swift) Adds Storage Policies for Enterprise Users and Cloud Operators
    Via SearchStorage: EMC ViPR and Data Services (including Object storage)
    Via Enterprise Storage Forum: Cloud Appliance Buying Guide
    Via Datacenter Dynamics: Verizon, Amplidata and Cloud Object Storage
    Via ZDnet: IBM drops SoftLayer cloud storage costs closer to its rivals
    Via YellowBricks: How long will VSAN rebuilding take with large drives? via Duncan Epping (@DuncanYB) and his Yellow-Bricks site. Note that VMware VSAN uses one of many different forms of object storage (e.g. its not S3 or Swift or CDMI) rather a means for storing VMware vSphere entities and items (e.g. various types of objects)
    Via Computerweekly: Object storage: An architecture for the petabyte era? Via Simon Robinson (@simonrob451) appearing at
    Via MarketWatch: Western Digital/HGST announce alternative to Seagate Kinetic HDD for object storage
    Via EMC: EMC Announces Elastic Cloud Storage Appliance via EMC
    Via TechCrunch: RedHat acquires InkTank provider of Ceph services
    Via CompueterWeekly: DataDirect Networks (DDN) WOS enhancements

    cloud object storage

    Hybrid Clouds: Bridging the Gap Between Public and Private Environments (Recorded for Playback: BrightTalk Webinar)
    Book review: Rethinking Enterprise Storage and Hybrid Clouds by Microsoft/Storsimple and Marc Farley aka (@Gofarley (or what ever name he is currently using ;))
    Goodbye 2013, hello 2014 predictions present and future
    Enterprises should just ignore OpenStack via Virtualizedgeek aka Keith Townsend (@virtualizedgeek)
    OpenStack Swift Object Storage for the Cloud Grows via The Var Guy (@thevarguy) aka Christopher Tozzi
    For Seagate Kinetic to fly…it’s gonna take an ecosystem (Via @Seagate The Storage Effect Blog)
    Object-defined storage (it’s not about object storage) (Via Enrico Signoretti @Juku)
    Seagate Kinetic Cloud and Object Storage I/O platform
    Why You Should Consider Object Storage (Via 21CIT)
    Object Storage Is in Your Future, Even if You Use Files (Via 21CIT)
    The Right Storage Option Is Important for Big Data Success (Via FedTech)
    Hybrid cloud storage with an object storage back end(Via Marc Farley aka @MicroFarley at Microsoft Technet Blogs)
    cloud object storage

    Via SearchStorage: EMC ViPR aimed at service providers, enterprise storage (Video)
    EMC ViPR virtual physical object and software defined storage
    EMC ViPR software defined object storage part II
    EMC ViPR software defined object storage part III
    The rise of cloud-integrated storage and EMC’s ViPR (Via Marc Farley of Microsoft aka @MicroFarley)
    ViPR: Under the covers (Via Chad Sakacc of EMC aka @sakacc)
    Introducing EMC ViPR (Via Chuck Hollis aka @Chuckhollis of EMC)
    EMC Tells their SDS story (e.g. ViPR) (Via the Solutions Architect aka Michael Letschin aka @mletschin)
    Object Paucity (Via Martin Glassborow aka @storagebod)
    Object Storage: You can call it NAS 2.0! (Via Enrico Signoretti aka @esignoretti)
    Object storage is the platform, gateways are the solution (Via Enrico Signoretti aka @esignorettii)
    Files Vs. Objects: the difference is in the value (Via Enrico Signoretti aka @esignorettii)
    Conversation with Justin Stottlemyer of Shutterfly and object storage discussion (Pod cast)

    cloud object storage

    Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview
    Ceph Day Amsterdam 2012 (Object and cloud storage)
    Ceph Day in Amsterdam and Sage Weil on Object Storage (Podcast)
    Mr. Backup (Curtis Preston) goes back to Ceph School (Video and Podcast)
    AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions

    cloud object storage

    Where to learn more

    The following resources provide additional information about big data, bulk, software defined, cloud and object storage.

    Click here to view (and hear) more content including cloud and object storage fundamentals.
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via InfoStor: Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via Server StorageIO: April 2015 Newsletter Focus on Cloud and Object storage
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS S3 Cross Region Replication storage enhancements
    Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview
    AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions

    Videos and podcasts at storageio.tv also available via Applie iTunes.

    Human Face of Big Data
    Human Face of Big Data (Book review)

    Seven Databases in Seven weeks
    Seven Databases in Seven Weeks (Book review)

    Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), as well as tips can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    Wrap up and summary

    Object and cloud storage are in your future, the questions are when, where, with what and how among others. Watch for more content and links to be added here as well as on the main object storage center page including posts, presentations, pod casts, perspectives along with services and product solutions profiles.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (vSAN and vCloud). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

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