Category: Power and Cooling

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It feels like Grand Central Station here…

Things have been busy (which is very good) and I feel like I’m at Grand Central station (Terminal) with the new year off to a flurry of activity ranging from my regular consulting, research and client advisory engagement projects, recent speaking appearances (San Jose and Tucson ), doing interviews with the media as well as vendor briefings.

Grand Central Station New York City - December 2008

Photo of Grand Central Station (aka Grand Central Terminal) New York City taken on my cell phone December 2008 after a great dinner at Michael Jordons (Thanks Richard and Dan)

Yup, its a busy time of the year with writing of articles, column and industry trends and perspective pieces as well as supporting the formal launch and release of my new book, "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach) not to mention trying to stay warm during the recent midwest cold weather snaps as well as snow entertainment activities such as snow plowing and sledding.

Greg snow sleeding in the back yard
Greg taking a break and snow sledding in the backyard.

Speaking of appearances, keynote and other events, topics being covered vary from server to storage, data center to disaster recovery, virtualization to data protection among others as well as other themes and topics related to "The Green and Virtual Data Center".

Some upcoming speaking and keynote engagements in various cities covering various topics include (in alphabetic order) Atlanta, Birmingham, Boston, Cancun, Cincinnati, Chicago, Dallas, Denver Las Vegas, Los Angles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Orange County, Parsippany, Providence, St Louis, and Tampa with more locations and venues to be announced for summer and fall of 2009, keep an eye on the events page for more information.

(Wow, I feel like I’m on the Curtis Preston, aka Mr. Backup starter mini-tour program ;) ).

Ok, now its time to get back to doing some other things, enjoy your winter and spring while you can, time flies fast.

Cheers
gs

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

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Green Power and Cooling Tools and Calculators

In the course of doing research and consulting work with various IT organizations, VARs, trade groups and vendors over the past couple of years, not to mention in preparing for my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (Auerbach), I have come across (see a list here) several tools, calculators and modeling or sizing utilities pertaining to power, cooling, floor-space, EH&S (PCFE) also known as green topics.

Many vendors and organizations including APC, Dell, EMC, Emerson, IBM, HP and Sun among others have various types of green and related calculators in support of PCFE, performance and related sizing activities. These and other tools differ in what information they provide as well as the level of detail and configuration information, however, the tools are also evolving. As an example, EMC blogger Mark Twomey aka Storagezilla has a new post discussing an updated version of their updated calculator that is now web based tool for PCFE and green sizing.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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Remember The Alamo

Yesterday I made a quick trip down to San Antonio Texas (SAT) to do a keynote talk about "BC/DR and Virtual Environments" along with a sprinkling of IT effieincy aka Green; consolidation, power, cooling, footprint, data management and cloud topics mixed in the discussion. The dinner event was put on by TechTarget with the local host being Mobius (not to be confused with Moby, the artist). Mobius is a Texas value added reseller (VAR) and the event took place at Morton’s near the river walk in downtown SAT. This was my second trip to SAT in about two months have done a morning seminar talk about the "Wide World of Archiving – Life beyond Compliance" back in October, also downtown SAT.

It was a great event with a lively and interesting audience who provide good feedback and conversation sharing their experiences, concerns, issues and what they are looking at or for.

Some general take away’s that I have from talking with the IT folks who were in attendance at the event include:

  • Do you homework and due diligence with regard to using VCBs for VMware backups
  • Pay attenion to the details when re-architecting and updating data protection for virtual environments
  • iSCSI and FC as well as FCoE all have different roles and places now and into the future for virtual environments
  • Concern about clouds, they are interesting, are a tiered resource to compliment other resources
  • Cloud services need to be part of BC/DR including in plans to isolate against disruptions such what occurred with Amazon and others
  • Not all servers can be consolidated due to different reasons and issues
  • Virtualization platforms (software and appliance or storage system based) can be used for replication, migration and consolidation
  • Virtual tape libraries are being adopted while tape usage continues
  • Discussion around different tiers of storage, tiered access (e.g. iSCSI, FC, FCoE, IBA, NAS, etc) and tiered data protection
  • A common theme is doing more with less, maintaining service levels and support business growth

    • Now on a different note, from technology and trends to travel.

    If you travel enough for business like I have had, you know that its not all jet set lifestyle like people think or assume, in fact many times what I get to see of a city or venue is the view from window of a car or train on the way from an airport to a venue, a hotel and sometimes a dinner event. However now and then, even on quick trips like yesterdays where I was in SAT for 15 hours, opportunities exist to get out even if its for just a moment and take in a site or two, see some of the city or area. Last night was an example of getting a chance to see something interesting when I walked the 7-8 blocks from the venue (I had gone directly from the airport to Mortons).

    Walking back to my hotel (it was a nice evening for a walk) last night, I walked around and near the river walk and low and behold, I stopped, turned and looked and there it was, the Alamo (see photo below taken from my cell phone) in all its splendor. It actually looks a lot smaller than what I thought it would look like, however it was fun to do some inadvertent site seeing before an early morning flight home.

    The Alamo
    Remember the Alamo via Greg’s Cell Phone Camera 12/10/08

    Now lets put travel into perspective here a bit.

    When I woke up yesterday morning it was 3F at home in Stillwater, by time I got to the airport it was a balmy 9F, by mid afternoon when I arrived in SAT and stood in the taxi line, it was a down right tropical in the mid 50s F. This morning when I woke up around 5:30AM for my early morning flight home, it was a cool 35F in SAT with a forecast of getting back up into the 50s (F) today while it was a pleasant 13F when I arrived back at my office early afternoon, the fun of traveling!

    Thanks to everyone who came out to last nights event and it was great to have had a chance to meet and visit with you, hopefully next time we will have more time for follow-up questions, however feel free to drop me a note. Also thanks too the Techtarget, Mobius and Mortons folks for putting a great event together, and, remember the Alamo and if you have not been there, check it and the river walk out!

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    Downloads for fall 2008 San Francisco Storage Decisions now available

    The TechTarget Storage Media Group has posted on Bitpipe the session presentations from the recent fall (November 17-19th) 2008 San Francisco Storage Decisions event. If you have never been to a Storage Decisions event, it?s a great venue for meeting with IT and storage professionals as well as vendors who also show up to show their wares and meet with the attendees. Make no mistake about it, Storage Decisions is not a vendor to vendor meet and industry network event like SNW or a vendor sponsored user group like VMworld or EMCworld, rather, its focused on the IT and storage professional and encourages speakers to be frank and candid in their discussions of technologies, techniques and even of vendors and their solutions.

    In addition to doing a keynote session Wednesday evening November 19th on ?Hot Storage Topics for Channel Professionals? at the Storage Strategies for Channel Professionals Dinner event, I also did two presentations at Storage Decisions one in the management and executive track Management and Executive Track on Green and Efficient Storage , an (updated version from what was covered in September 2008 at New York) timely theme given my new book ?The Green and Virtual Data Center? (Auerbach) along with another session in the Storage and capacity management track of  ?Clustered and Grid Storage — From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0? (also updated from September 2008)

    View the entire list of all Storage Decisions sessions here.

    A big thanks to all who came out last week in San Francisco at Storage Decisions and who attended the sessions enabling great discussion and insight both during the sessions, as well as during lunches, breaks and exhibition hours.

    Cheers gs

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

    twitter @storageio

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

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    Storage Optimization: Performance, Availability, Capacity, Effectiveness

    Storage I/O trends

    With the IT and storage industry shying away from green hype, green washing and other green noise, there is also a growing realization that the new green is about effectively boosting efficiency to improve productivity and profitability or to sustain business and IT growth during tough economic times.

    This past week while doing some presentations (I’ll post a link soon to the downloads) at the 2008 San Francisco installment of Storage Decisions event focused on storage professionals, as well as a keynote talk at the value added reseller (VAR) channel professional focused storage strategies event, a common theme was boosting productivity, improving on efficiency, stretching budgets and enabling existing personal and resources to do more with the same or less.

    During these and other presentations, keynotes, sessions and seminars both here in the U.S. as well as in Europe recently, these common themes of booting efficiency as well as the closing of the green gap, that is, the gap between industry and marketing rhetoric around green hype, green noise, green washing and issues that either do not resonate with, or, can not be funded by IT organizations compared with the disconnect of where many IT organizations issues exist which are around power, cooling, floor space or footprint as well as EH&S (Environmental health and safety) and economics.

    The green gap (here, and here, and here) is that many IT organizations around the world have not realized due to green hype around carbon footprints and related themes that in fact, boosting energy efficiency for active and on-line applications, data and workloads (e.g. doing more I/O operations per second-IOPS, transactions, files or messages processed per watt of energy) to address power, cooling, floor space are in fact a form of addressing green issues, both economic and environmental.

    Likewise for inactive or idle data, there is a bit more of a linkage that green can mean powering things off, however there is also a disconnect in that many perceive that green storage for example is only green if the storage can be powered off which while true for in-active or idle data and applications, is not true for all data and applications types.

    As mentioned already, for active workloads, green means doing more with the same or less power, cooling and floor space impact, this means doing more work per unit of energy. In that theme, for active workload, a slow, large capacity disk may in fact not be energy efficient if it impedes productivity and results in more energy to get the same amount of work done. For example, larger capacity SATA disk drives are also positioned as being the most green or energy efficiency which can be true for idle or in-active or non performance (time) sensitive applications where more data is stored in a denser footprint.

    However for active workload, lower capacity 15.5K RPM 300GB and 400GB Fibre Channel (FC) and SAS disk drives that deliver more IOPS or bandwidth per watt of energy can get more work done in the same amount of time.

    There is also a perception that FC and SAS disk drives use more power than SATA disk drives which in some cases can be true, however current generations of high performance 10K RPM and 15.5K RPM drives have very similar power draw on a raw spindle or device basis. What differs is the amount of capacity per watt for idle or inactive applications, or, the number of IOPS or amount of performance for active configurations.

    On the other hand, while not normally perceived as being green compared to tape or IPM and MAID (1st generation and MAID 2.0) solutions, along with SSD (Flash and RAM), not to mention fast SAS and FC disks or tiered storage systems that can do more IOPS or bandwidth per watt of energy are in fact green and energy efficiency for getting work done. Thus, there are two sides to optimizing storage for energy efficiency, optimizing for when doing work e.g. more miles per gallon per amount of work done, and, how little energy used when not doing work.

    Thus, a new form of being green to sustain business growth while boosting productivity is Gaining Realistic Economic Efficiency Now that as a by product helps both business bottom lines as well as the environment by doing more with less. These are themes that are addressed in my new book

    “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (Auerbach) that will be formerly launched and released for generally availability just after the 1st of the year (hopefully sooner), however you can beat the rush and order your copy now to beat the rush at Amazon and other fine venues around the world.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
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    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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    Dutch StorageExpo Recap

    Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote talk (“Storage Industry Trends and Perspectives: Beyond Hype and Green Washing”) at the Dutch StorageExpo (produced by VNU Exhibitions Europe) event in Utrecht the Netherlands which was co-located in the ultra large Jaarbeurs congress center (e.g. convention center) along with concurrent shows for Linux, Security and networking making for a huge show and exhibition, almost a mini scaled down version of cebit or VMworld or EMCworld like event.

    Dutch StorageExpo

    Congratulations and many thanks to Marloes van den Berg of VNU Exhibitions and her team who put together a fantastic and well attended event, not to mention their warm and gracious Dutch hospitality.

    European shows and events are different than those in the U.S. in that at European events, the focus is more on meeting, building and maintaining relationships and less on “Uui Gui” demos or marketing sales pitches involving complex demos and technology displays found at many U.S. events.

    Granted, their are indeed product demos and technology to look at and talk about, and rest assured, the conversations and discussions when involving technology get right to the point and often much more direct. There is also a more relaxed aspect as seen in the many booths or stands as they are called, many of which have bars that serve up coffee in the morning as well as snacks and other beverages (the Hienken in Holland is much better than what is shipped to the U.S.) over which to discuss and have conversations about various topics, issues and technolgies.

    Many of the issues being faced by the Europeans are similar to those being faced by IT organizations in North America as well as elsewhere in the world including limits or issues around power, cooling, floor-space footprints, economics, doing more with less to boost productivity and enhance efficieinecy while sustaining business growth without impacting service delivery or service levels. BC/DR, data proteciton and data security, virtualizaiton were all topics of interest and points of discussions among others.

    I had the opportunity to meet several new people both from IT organizations, vars or resellers, consultants, vendors and media along with putting a face to a name of people I had meet virtually in the past not to mention re-connect with others that I have known from the past whom it was great to have had a chance to re-connect with.

    Thanks to all of those who attended both the key note session on Wednesday afternoon as well as to those who were at Monday’s all day seminar organized by Gert Brouwer or Brouwer consultancy in Nijkerk, I really enjoyed the conversations and perspectives of everyone I had a chance to meet with this past week and look forward to future conversations.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    SSD activity continues to go virtually round and round

    Storage I/O trends

    Solid State Disk (SSD) (both FLASH and RAM based) activities and discussions continue to go round and round (pun intended) with announcements (here, here, here, here, here, and here and among others) of various improvements and evolution for technologies focused from the consumer to the small office home office (SOHO) to small medium business (SMB) to enterprise with technologies from vendors including Intel, Sandisk, Seagate and many others.

    Recent innovations are looking to address write performance issues or challenges associated with FLASH based SSD, which while better than magnetic hard disk drives (HDD), are slower than their RAM based counterparts.

    Other activity includes extending the useful life or duration of how many times a FLASH based device can be rewritten or modified before problems arise or performance degrades. Yet another activity is Sandisk introducing “virtual RPM” (vRPM) metrics to provide consumers an indication of relative revolutions per minute (RPM) of a non-rotating SSD device to make comparisons to help with shopping decisions makings. Can you say SSDs going round and round and round at least in a virtual world? Now that should make for some interesting “virtual benchmarking” discussions!

    Meanwhile industry trade groups include the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) are gathering momentum to address marketing, messaging, awareness, education as well as metrics or benchmarks among things normally done around industry trade group camp fires and camp outs.

    So, as the HDDs spin, so to does the activity in and around SSD based technologies.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
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    HP Storage Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP)

    Storage I/O trends

    HP recently announced announced their new SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) which is an appliance with software (oh, excuse me, I mean platform) for enabling various (e.g. replication, snapshots, pooling, consolidation, migration, etc) storage virtualization capabilities across different HP (e.g. MSA, EVA and in "theory" XP) or in "theory" as well, 3rd party (e.g. EMC, Dell, HDS, IBM, NetApp, Sun, etc) storage.

    Sure HP has had a similar capability via their XP series which HP OEMs from Hitachi Ltd. (who also supplies the similar/same product to HDS which HP competes with), however what?s different from the XP based solution and the SVSP is that one (SVSP) is via software running on an appliance and the other implemented via software/firmware on dedicated Hitachi based hardware (e.g. the XP). One requires an investment in the XP which for larger organizations may be practical while the other enables smaller organizations to achieve the benefits of virtualization capabilties to enable efficient IT not to mention help transition from different generations of HP MSA, EVAs to newer versions of MSAs and EVAs or even to XPs .Other benefits of solutions like the HP SVSP which also include the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) include cross storage system, or cross storage vendor based replication, snapshots, dynamic (e.g. thin) provisioning among other capabilities for block based storage access.

    While there will be comparisons of HP SVSP to the XP, those in many ways will be apples to oranges, the more applicable apples to apples comparison would be IBM SVC to HP SVSP, or, perhaps HP SVSP to EMC Invista, Fujitsu VS900, Incipient, Falconstor or ?Datacore based solutions.

    With the HP SVSP announcement, I’m suspecting that we will see the re-emergence of the storage virtualization in-band vs. out-of-band including fast-path control-path aka split path approaches being adopted by HP with the SVSP not to mention hardware vs. software and appliance based approaches as was the case a few years ago.

    This time around as the storage virtualization discussions heat up again, we should see and hear the usual points, counter points and continued talk around consolidation and driving up utilization to save money and avoid costs. However, as part of enabling and transforming into an efficient IT organization (e.g. a ?Green and Virtual Data Center?) that embodies efficient, productivity in an economical and environmental friendly manner, virtualization discussions will also re-focus on using management transparency to enable data movement or migration for load-balancing, maintenance, upgrades and technology replacement, BC/DR and other common functions to enable more work to be done in the same or less anoint of time while supporting more data and storage processing and retention needs.

    Thus similar to servers where not all servers have been, will be or can be consolidated, however most can be virtualized for management transparency for BC/DR and migration, the same holds true for storage, that is, not all storage can be consolidated for different quality of service reasons, however, most storage can be virtualized to assist with and facilatate common management functions.

    Here are some additional resources to learn more about the many faces of Storage Virtualizaiton and related topics and trends:

    Storage Virtualization: Myths, Realities and Other Considerations
    Storage virtualization: How to deploy it
    The Semantics of Storage Virtualization
    Storage Virtualization: It’s More Common Than You Think
    Choosing a storage virtualization approach
    Switch-level storage virtualization: Special report
    Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    The Green and Virtual Data Center (Auerbach)

    Cheers – gs

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

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    EPA Draft 3 of Energy Star for Computer Server Specification

    Storage I/O trends

    Today is the 2008 USA general election today pitting democratic senator Barack Obama vs. republican senator John McCain as well as several other lesser known party candidates who have made comments about the environment and going green as well as the economy, all of which have an impact on IT spending not to mention green IT and green computing.

    Today is also the day that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent out notification that Draft 3 of Energy Star for computer server specifications are available for comment (See here).

    Energy Star is not a new program for IT equipment having been around for some time on PCs and other commodity products as well as many consumer goods. The EPA has been working on several Energy Star programs pertaining to IT data centers in addition to the Server specification working with industry groups covering servers, storage, networking and facilities among others, all of which to help enable the green and virtual data center on a go forward basis.

    If you have not done so, check out the EPA Energy Star for data center programs.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    IT Belt Tightening and Stratigies for IT Economic Sustainment

    Storage I/O trends

    There’s been and will continue to be lots of talk around tightening IT budgets and spending. Here’s a link to a piece by Chris Preimesberger over at eWeek titled “How the ‘Down’ Macroeconomy Will Impact the Data Storage Sector”.

    Here’s another related piece by Marty Foltyn over on Internet News that looks at “Storage Technologies for a Slowing Economy”.

    A macro trend that Im seeing and hearing more often is that with the demise or should I say, falling out of favor of Green hype and Green washing, there is a growing realization of the practical aspects of boosting efficiency and productivity with a by-product of being environmental friendly while addressing economic issues.

    The so called Green Gap (See here, here, here, here, and here) exists between green hype and rhetoric which is now destined for the endangered species or extinction list, while core issues including power, cooling, floor space/footprint and environmental health & safety (EH&S) known as PCFE that need to be addressed are in fact covered under the broader green umbrella.

    With the growing realization that efficiency gains that can boost IT productivity to sustain and enable business and economic growth also help the environment, there is awareness that those initiatives and activities that address PCFE and related issues are in fact green and part of many organizations agendas and budgets. Consequently going green for the sake of going green may be falling out of favor or off of budgets for many, addressing PCFE related issues to sustain business and economic growth are gaining in popularity though not always associated with as being green.

    Thus in tough economic times where dollars and productivity become important, the new green will be that of efficiency and productivity with a by-product benefit being to help the environment, some of the themes in my book, The Green and Virtual Data Center (Auerbach) that you can pre-order now at Amazon.com and other venues around the world.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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    DAS, SAS, FCoE, Green Efficient Storage and I/O Podcast & FAQs

    Storage I/O trends

    Here are some links to several recent podcast and FAQs pertaining to various popular technolgies and trends.

    Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) FAQs

    Direct Attached Storage for SMB and other enviromnets that do not need networked (SAN or NAS) storage.

    Green and Energy Efficient Storage as well as FCoE and related topics

    Along with several other topics found here.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    CMG, Enabling “The Green and Virtual Data Center”

    Storage I/O trends

    Last week I was invited to by Tom Becchetti and the Minneapolis CMG folks to keynote at their session hosted at the Brocade facity in Minneapolis along with other speakers from Brocade, IBM, Teamquest and Sun.

    The theme of my talk was “The Green and Virtual Data Center and The Importance of Metrics” which can be downloaded here.

    I have been a member of CMG for many years as a former performance and capacity planning analyst when I worked in IT organizations and having presented at many CMG events around the world. While CMG has been around for many decades and has seen its share of ups and downs. With a current focus on boosting use, maximizing resource usage, improving service delivery and performance while using less energy in smaller footprints, now is the perfect opportunity for CMG to re-invent itself and show relevance as the organization that knows how to measure, watch, model and manage resource usage and service delivery effectiveness across different technology domains including servers, storage, networks, applications, operating systems and facilities. There is a golden opportunity for CMG members to step up and leverage their skills across different technology domains working with others to establish metrics, models and baselines.

    In my new book, “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (Auerbach) I include a chapter on metrics and measurement as well as many other topics and themes that tie into the notion of effective and efficient data centers need to carry out Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) which is also a chapter in the book, that includes performance and capacity planning across technology domains.

    Watch for more on this topic.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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    SAS Disk Drives Appearing in Larger Mid-Range Arrays

    Storage I/O trends

    2.5″ and 3.5″ 10,000RPM (10K) and 15,000RPM (15K) SAS disk drives have been available for entry level and SMB solutions from the likes of Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Infotrend, LSI, NetApp, Promise, Sun and Xyratex among others for some time now. HDS recently introduced a new mid-range solution the AMS 2000 that supports up to 480 3G SAS drives in place of traditional 2G or 4G Fibre Channel disk drives.

    The benefit of supporting SAS disk drives moving forward is that as volume production and adoption increases, price will decline making the drives more affordable not to mention that the controller and interface chip sets and internal adapters support both SAS and SATA disk drives removing additional cost and complexity from storage systems. Similar to how Fibre Channel disk drives replaced parallel SCSI, SSA or other propriety disk drives, and how SATA replaced parallel ATA (PATA) drives, dual ported SAS disk drives continue the cycle of replacing Fibre Channel disk drives at the entry level and mid-range and eventually finding their way into high-end and ultra-high-end storage arrays over the next couple of years as 6G SAS drives begin to appear.

    Watch for a SAS drive to appear in a storage system or server near you soon.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) Industry Group Update

    Storage I/O trends

    The Storage Bridge Bay (SBB) industry trade group continues to expand their ecosystem and partner involvement around standardized packaging of power supplies and other infrastructure components for storage systems.

    The list of vendors participating and shipping products that are SBB compliant continues to grow including Dell, EMC, IBM, LSI, Newisys and Xyratex among others who OEM or resell products from these and other SBB members.
    Learn more about SBB at their website

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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