Category: little data

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As the platters spin, HDD’s for cloud, virtual and traditional storage environments

HDDs for cloud, virtual and traditional storage environments

Storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

As the platters spin is a follow-up to a recent series of posts on Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) along with some posts about How Many IOPS HDD’s can do.

HDD and storage trends and directions include among others

HDD’s will continue to be declared dead into the next decade, just as they have been for over a decade, meanwhile they are being enhanced, continued to be used in evolving roles.

hdd and ssd

SSD will continue to coexist with HDD, either as separate or converged HHDD’s. Where, where and how they are used will also continue to evolve. High IO (IOPS) or low latency activity will continue to move to some form of nand flash SSD (PCM around the corner), while storage capacity including some of which has been on tape stays on disk. Instead of more HDD capacity in a server, it moves to a SAN or NAS or to a cloud or service provider. This includes for backup/restore, BC, DR, archive and online reference or what some call active archives.

The need for storage spindle speed and more

The need for faster revolutions per minute (RPM’s) performance of drives (e.g. platter spin speed) is being replaced by SSD and more robust smaller form factor (SFF) drives. For example, some of today’s 2.5” SFF 10,000 RPM (e.g. 10K) SAS HDD’s can do as well or better than their larger 3.5” 15K predecessors can for both IOPS and bandwidth. This is also an example where the RPM speed of a drive may not be the only determination for performance as it has been in the past.


Performance comparison of four different drive types, click to view larger image.

The need for storage space capacity and areal density

In terms of storage enhancements, watch for the appearance of Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) enabled HDD’s to help further boost the space capacity in the same footprint. Using SMR HDD manufactures can put more bits (e.g. areal density) into the same physical space on a platter.


Traditional vs. SMR to increase storage areal density capacity

The generic idea with SMR is to increase areal density (how many bits can be safely stored per square inch) of data placed on spinning disk platter media. In the above image on the left is a representative example of how traditional magnetic disk media lays down tracks next to each other. With traditional magnetic recording approaches, the tracks are placed as close together as possible for the write heads to safely write data.

With new recording formats such as SMR along with improvements to read/write heads, the tracks can be more closely grouped together in an overlapping way. This overlapping way (used in a generic sense) is like how the shingles on a roof overlap, hence Shingled Magnetic Recording. Other magnetic recording or storage enhancements in the works include Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording (HAMR) and Helium filed drives. Thus, there is still plenty of bits and bytes room for growth in HDD’s well into the next decade to co-exist and complement SSD’s.

DIF and AF (Advanced Format), or software defining the drives

Another evolving storage feature that ties into HDD’s is Data Integrity Feature (DIF) that has a couple of different types. Depending on which type of DIF (0, 1, 2, and 3) is used; there can be added data integrity checks from the application to the storage medium or drive beyond normal functionality. Here is something to keep in mind, as there are different types or levels of DIF, when somebody says they support or need DIF, ask them which type or level as well as why.

Are you familiar with Advanced Format (AF)? If not you should be. Traditionally outside of special formats for some operating systems or controllers, that standard open system data storage block, page or sector has been 512 bytes. This has served well in the past, however; with the advent of TByte and larger sized drives, a new mechanism is needed. The need is to support both larger average data allocation sizes from operating systems and storage systems, as well as to cut the overhead of managing all the small sectors. Operating systems and file systems have added new partitioning features such as GUID Partition Table (GPT) to support 1TB and larger SSD, HDD and storage system LUN’s.

These enhancements are enabling larger devices to be used in place of traditional Master Boot Record (MBR) or other operating system partition and allocation schemes. The next step, however, is to teach operating systems, file systems, and hypervisors along with their associated tools or drives how to work with 4,096 byte or 4 Kbyte sectors. The advantage will be to cut the overhead of tracking all of those smaller sectors or file system extents and clusters. Today many HDD’s support AF however by default may have 512-byte emulation mode enabled due to lack of operating system or other support.

Intelligent Power Management, moving beyond drive spin down

Intelligent Power Management (IPM) is a collection of techniques that can be applied to vary the amount of energy consumed by a drive, controller or processor to do its work. These include in the case of an HDD slowing the spin rate of platters, however, keep in mind that mass in motion tends to stay in motion. This means that HDD’s once up and spinning do not need as much relative power as they function like a flywheel. Where their power draw comes in is during reading and write, in part to the movement of reading/write heads, however also for running the processors and electronics that control the device. Another big power consumer is when drives spin up, thus if they can be kept moving, however at a lower rate, along with disabling energy used by read/write heads and their electronics, you can see a drop in power consumption. Btw, a current generation 3.5” 4TB 6Gbs SATA HDD consumes about 6-7 watts of power while in active use, or less when in idle mode. Likewise a current generation high performance 2.5” 1.2TB HDD consumes about 4.8 watts of energy, a far cry from the 12-16 plus watts of energy some use as HDD fud.

Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD) and Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSDHD)

Hybrid HDD’s (HHDD’s) also known as Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD) have been around for a while and if you have read my earlier posts, you know that I have been a user and fan of them for several years. However one of the drawbacks of the HHDD’s has been lack of write acceleration, (e.g. they only optimize for reads) with some models. Current and emerging HDDD’s are appearing with a mix of nand flash SLC (used in earlier versions), MLC and eMLC along with DRAM while enabling write optimization. There are also more drive options available as HHDD’s from different manufactures both for desktop and enterprise class scenarios.

The challenge with HHDD’s is that many vendors either do not understand how they fit and compliment their tiering or storage management software tools or simply do not see the value proposition. I have had vendors and others tell me that the HHDD’s don’t make sense as they are too simple, how can they be a fit without requiring tiering software, controllers, SSD and HDD’s to be viable?

Storage I/O trends

I also see a trend similar to when the desktop high-capacity SATA drives appeared for enterprise-class storage systems in the early 2000s. Some of the same people did not see where or how a desktop class product or technology could ever be used in an enterprise solution.

Hmm, hey wait a minute, I seem to recall similar thinking when SCSI drives appeared in the early 90s, funny how some things do not change, DejaVu anybody?

Does that mean HHDD’s will be used everywhere?

Not necessarily, however, there will be places where they make sense, others where either an HDD or SSD will be more practical.

Networking with your server and storage

Drive native interfaces near-term will remain as 6Gbs (going to 12Gbs) SAS and SATA with some FC (you might still find a parallel SCSI drive out there). Likewise, with bridges or interface cards, those drives may appear as USB or something else.

What about SCSI over PCIe, will that catch on as a drive interface? Tough to say however I am sure we can find some people who will gladly try to convince you of that. FC based drives operating at 4Gbs FC (4GFC) are still being used for some environments however most activity is shifting over to SAS and SATA. SAS and SATA are switching over from 3Gbs to 6Gbs with 12Gbs SAS on the roadmaps.

So which drive is best for you?

That depends; do you need bandwidth or IOPS, low latency or high capacity, small low profile thin form factor or feature functions? Do you need a hybrid or all SSD or a self-encrypting device (SED) also known as Instant Secure Erase (ISE), these are among your various options.

Disk drives

Why the storage diversity?

Simple, some are legacy soon to be replaced and disposed of while others are newer. I also have a collection so to speak that get used for various testing, research, learning and trying things out. Click here and here to read about some of the ways I use various drives in my VMware environment including creating Raw Device Mapped (RDM) local SAS and SATA devices.

Other capabilities and functionality existing or being added to HDD’s include RAID and data copy assist; securely erase, self-encrypting, vibration dampening among other abilities for supporting dense data environments.

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Do not judge a drive only by its interface, space capacity, cost or RPM alone. Look under the cover a bit to see what is inside in terms of functionality, performance, and reliability among other options to fit your needs. After all, in the data center or information factory not everything is the same.

From a marketing and fun to talk about new technology perspective, HDD’s might be dead for some. The reality is that they are very much alive in physical, virtual and cloud environments, granted their role is changing.

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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Can we get a side of context with them IOPS server storage metrics?

Can we get a side of context with them server storage metrics?

Whats the best server storage I/O network metric or benchmark? It depends as there needs to be some context with them IOPS and other server storage I/O metrics that matter.

There is an old saying that the best I/O (Input/Output) is the one that you do not have to do.

In the meantime, let’s get a side of some context with them IOPS from vendors, marketers and their pundits who are tossing them around for server, storage and IO metrics that matter.

Expanding the conversation, the need for more context

The good news is that people are beginning to discuss storage beyond space capacity and cost per GByte, TByte or PByte for both DRAM or nand flash Solid State Devices (SSD), Hard Disk Drives (HDD) along with Hybrid HDD (HHDD) and Solid State Hybrid Drive (SSHD) based solutions. This applies to traditional enterprise or SMB IT data center with physical, virtual or cloud based infrastructures.

hdd and ssd iops

This is good because it expands the conversation beyond just cost for space capacity into other aspects including performance (IOPS, latency, bandwidth) for various workload scenarios along with availability, energy effective and management.

Adding a side of context

The catch is that IOPS while part of the equation are just one aspect of performance and by themselves without context, may have little meaning if not misleading in some situations.

Granted it can be entertaining, fun to talk about or simply make good press copy for a million IOPS. IOPS vary in size depending on the type of work being done, not to mention reads or writes, random and sequential which also have a bearing on data throughout or bandwidth (Mbytes per second) along with response time. Not to mention block, file, object or blob as well as table.

However, are those million IOP’s applicable to your environment or needs?

Likewise, what do those million or more IOPS represent about type of work being done? For example, are they small 64 byte or large 64 Kbyte sized, random or sequential, cached reads or lazy writes (deferred or buffered) on a SSD or HDD?

How about the response time or latency for achieving them IOPS?

In other words, what is the context of those metrics and why do they matter?

storage i/o iops
Click on image to view more metrics that matter including IOP’s for HDD and SSD’s

Metrics that matter give context for example IO sizes closer to what your real needs are, reads and writes, mixed workloads, random or sequential, sustained or bursty, in other words, real world reflective.

As with any benchmark take them with a grain (or more) of salt, they key is use them as an indicator then align to your needs. The tool or technology should work for you, not the other way around.

Here are some examples of context that can be added to help make IOP’s and other metrics matter:

  • What is the IOP size, are they 512 byte (or smaller) vs. 4K bytes (or larger)?
  • Are they reads, writes, random, sequential or mixed and what percentage?
  • How was the storage configured including RAID, replication, erasure or dispersal codes?
  • Then there is the latency or response time and IO queue depths for the given number of IOPS.
  • Let us not forget if the storage systems (and servers) were busy with other work or not.
  • If there is a cost per IOP, is that list price or discount (hint, if discount start negotiations from there)
  • What was the number of threads or workers, along with how many servers?
  • What tool was used, its configuration, as well as raw or cooked (aka file system) IO?
  • Was the IOP’s number with one worker or multiple workers on a single or multiple servers?
  • Did the IOP’s number come from a single storage system or total of multiple systems?
  • Fast storage needs fast serves and networks, what was their configuration?
  • Was the performance a short burst, or long sustained period?
  • What was the size of the test data used; did it all fit into cache?
  • Were short stroking for IOPS or long stroking for bandwidth techniques used?
  • Data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques (thin provisioned, compression or dedupe) used?
  • Were write data committed synchronously to storage, or deferred (aka lazy writes used)?

The above are just a sampling and not all may be relevant to your particular needs, however they help to put IOP’s into more contexts. Another consideration around IOPS are the configuration of the environment, from an actual running application using some measurement tool, or are they generated from a workload tool such as IOmeter, IOrate, VDbench among others.

Sure, there are more contexts and information that would be interesting as well, however learning to walk before running will help prevent falling down.

Storage I/O trends

Does size or age of vendors make a difference when it comes to context?

Some vendors are doing a good job of going for out of this world record-setting marketing hero numbers.

Meanwhile other vendors are doing a good job of adding context to their IOP or response time or bandwidth among other metrics that matter. There is a mix of startup and established that give context with their IOP’s or other metrics, likewise size or age does not seem to matter for those who lack context.

Some vendors may not offer metrics or information publicly, so fine, go under NDA to learn more and see if the results are applicable to your environments.

Likewise, if they do not want to provide the context, then ask some tough yet fair questions to decide if their solution is applicable for your needs.

Storage I/O trends

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

What this means is let us start putting and asking for metrics that matter such as IOP’s with context.

If you have a great IOP metric, if you want it to matter than include some context such as what size (e.g. 4K, 8K, 16K, 32K, etc.), percentage of reads vs. writes, latency or response time, random or sequential.

IMHO the most interesting or applicable metrics that matter are those relevant to your environment and application. For example if your main application that needs SSD does about 75% reads (random) and 25% writes (sequential) with an average size of 32K, while fun to hear about, how relevant is a million 64 byte read IOPS? Likewise when looking at IOPS, pay attention to the latency, particular if SSD or performance is your main concern.

Get in the habit of asking or telling vendors or their surrogates to provide some context with them metrics if you want them to matter.

So how about some context around them IOP’s (or latency and bandwidth or availability for that matter)?

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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Part II: EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements

Storage I/O trends

This is the second part of a two-part series on recent EMC backup and data protection announcements. Read part I here.

What about the products, what’s new?

In addition to articulating their strategy for modernizing data protection (covered in part I here), EMC announced enhancements to Avamar, Data Domain, Mozy and Networker.

Data protection storage systems (e.g. Data Domain)

Building off of previously announced Backup Recovery Solutions (BRS) including Data Domain operating system storage software enhancements, EMC is adding more application and software integration along with new platform (systems) support.

Data Domain (e.g. Protection Storage) enhancements include:

  • Application integration with Oracle, SAP HANA for big data backup and archiving
  • New Data Domain protection storage system models
  • Data in place upgrades of storage controllers
  • Extended Retention now available on added models
  • SAP HANA Studio backup integration via NFS
  • Boost for Oracle RMAN, native SAP tools and replication integration
  • Support for backing up and protecting Oracle Exadata
  • SAP (non HANA) support both on SAP and Oracle

Data in place upgrades of controllers for 4200 series models on up (previously available on some larger models). This means that controllers can be upgraded with data remaining in place as opposed to a lengthy data migration.

Extended Retention facility is a zero cost license that enables more disk drive shelves to be attached to supported Data Domain systems. Thus there is a not a license fee, however you do pay for the storage shelves and drives to increase the available storage capacity. Note that this feature increases the storage capacity by adding more disk drives and does not increase the performance of the Data Domain system. Extended Retention has been available in the past however is now supported via more platform models. The extra storage capacity is essentially placed into a different tier that an archive policy can then migrate data into.

Boost for accelerating data movement to and from Data Domain systems is only available using Fibre Channel. When asked about FC over Ethernet (FCoE) or iSCSI EMC indicated its customers are not asking for this ability yet. This has me wondering if it is that the current customer focus is around FC, or if those customers are not yet ready for iSCSI or FCoE, or, if there were iSCSI or FCoE support, more customers would ask for it?

With the new Data Domain protection storage systems EMC is claiming up to:

  • 4x faster performance than earlier models
  • 10x more scalable and 3x more backup/archive streams
  • 38 percent lower cost per GB based on holding price points and applying improvements


EMC Data Domain data protection storage platform family


Data Domain supporting both backup and archive

Expanding Data Domain from backup to archive

EMC continues to evolve the Data Domain platform from just being a backup target platform with dedupe and replication to a multi-function, multi-role solution. In other words, one platform with many uses. This is an example of using one tool or technology for different purposes such as backup and archiving, however with separate polices. Here is a link to a video where I discuss using common tools for backup and archiving, however with separate polices. In the above figure EMC Data Domain is shown as being used for backup along with storage tiering and archiving (file, email, Sharepoint, content management and databases among other workloads).


EMC Data Domain supporting different functions and workloads

Also shown are various tools from other vendors such as Commvault Simpana that can be used as both a backup or archiving tool with Data Domain as a target. Likewise Dell products acquired via the Quest acquisition are shown along with those from IBM (e.g. Tivoli), FileTek among others. Note that if you are a competitor of EMC or simply a fan of other technology you might come to the conclusion that the above may not be different from others. Then again others who are not articulating their version or vision of something like the above figure probably should be also stating the obvious vs. arguing they did it first.

Data source integration (aka data protection software tools)

It seems like just yesterday that EMC acquired Avamar (2006) and NetWorker aka Legato (2003), not to mention Mozy (2007) or Dantz (Retrospect, since divested) in 2004. With the exception of Dantz (Retrospect) which is now back in the hands of its original developers, EMC continues to enhance and evolve Avamar, Mozy and NetWorker including with this announcement.

General Avamar 7 and Networker 8.1 enhancements include:

  • Deeper integration with primary storage and protection storage tiers
  • Optimization for VMware vSphere virtual server environments
  • Improved visibility and control for data protection of enterprise applications

Additional Avamar 7 enhancements include:

  • More Data Domain integration and leveraging as a repository (since Avamar 6)
  • NAS file systems with NDMP accelerator access (EMC Isilon & Celera, NetApp)
  • Data Domain Boost enhancements for faster backup / recovery
  • Application integration with IBM (DB2 and Notes), Microsoft (Exchange, Hyper-V images, Sharepoint, SQL Server), Oracle, SAP, Sybase, VMware images

Note that Avamar dat is still used mainly for ROBO and desktop, laptop type backup scenarios that do not yet support Data Domain. Also see Mozy enhancements below).

Avamar supports VMware vSphere virtual server environments using granular change block tracking (CBT) technology as well as image level backup and recovery with vSphere plugins. This includes an Instant Access recovery when images are stored on Data Domain storage.

Instant Access enables a VM that has been protected using Avamar image level technology on Data Domain to be booted via an NFS VMware Dat. VMware sees the VM and is able to power it on and boot directly from the Data Domain via the NFS Dat. Once the VM is active, it can be Storage vMotion to a production storage VMware Dat while active (e.g. running) for recovery on the fly capabilities.


Instant Access to a VM on Data Domain storage

EMC NetWorker 8.1 enhancements include:

  • Enhanced visibility and control for owners of data
  • Collaborative protection for Oracle environments
  • Synchronize backup and data protection between DBA and Backup admin’s
  • Oracle DBAs use native tools (e.g. RMAN)
  • Backup admin implements organizations SLA’s (e.g. using Networker)
  • Deeper integration with EMC primary storage (e.g. VMAX, VNX, etc)
  • Isilon integration support
  • Snapshot management (VMAX, VNX, RecoverPoint)
  • Automation and wizards for integration, discovery, simplified management
  • Policy-based management, fast recovery from snapshots
  • Integrating snapshots into and as part of data protection strategy. Note that this is more than basic snapshot management as there is also the ability to roll over a snapshot into a Data Domain protection storage tier.
  • Deeper integration with Data Domain protection storage tier
  • Data Domain Boost over Fibre Channel for faster backups and restores
  • Data Domain Virtual Synthetics to cut impact of full backups
  • Integration with Avamar for managing image level backup recovery (Avamar services embedded as part of NetWorker)
  • vSphere Web Client enabling self-service recovery of VMware images
  • Newly created VMs inherit backup polices automatically

Mozy is being positioned for enterprise remote office branch office (ROBO) or distributed private cloud where Avamar, NetWorker or Data Domain solutions are not as applicable. EMC has mentioned that they have over 800 enterprises using Mozy for desktop, laptop, ROBO and mobile data protection. Note that this is a different target market than the Mozy consumer product focused which also addresses smaller SMBs and SOHOs (Small Office Home Offices).

EMC Mozy enhancements to be more enterprise grade:

  • Simplified management services and integration
  • Active Directory (AD) for Microsoft environments
  • New storage pools (multiple types of pools) vs. dedicated storage per client
  • Keyless activation for faster provisioning of backup clients

Note that EMC enhanced earlier this year Data Protection Advisor (DPA) with version 6.0.

What does this all mean?

Storage I/O trends

Data protection and backup discussions often focus around tape summit resources or cloud arguments, although this is changing. What is changing is growing awareness and discussion around how data protection storage mediums, systems and services are used along with the associated software management tools.

Some will say backup is broke often pointing a finger at a media or medium (e.g. tape and disk) about what is wrong. Granted in some environments the target medium (or media) destination is an easy culprit to point a finger to as the problem (e.g. the usual tape sucks or is dead) mantra. However, for many environments while there can be issues, it is more often than not the media, medium, device or target storage system that is broke, instead how it is being used or abused.

This means revisiting how tools are used along with media or storage systems allocated, used and retained with respect to different threat risk scenarios. After all, not everything is the same in the data center or information factory.

Thus modernizing data protection is more than swapping media or mediums including types of storage system from one to another. It is also more than swapping out one backup or data protection tool for another. Modernizing data protection means rethinking what different applications and data need to be protected against various threat risks.

Storage I/O trends

What this has to do with today’s announcement is that EMC is among others in the industry moving towards a holistic data protection modernizing thought model.

In my opinion what you are seeing out of EMC and some others is taking that step back and expanding the data protection conversation to revisit, rethink why, how, where, when and by whom applications and information get protected.

This announcement also ties into finding and removing costs vs. simply cutting cost at the cost of something elsewhere (e.g. service levels, performance, availability). In other words, finding and removing complexities or overhead associated with data protection while making it more effective.

Some closing points, thoughts and more links:

There is no such thing as a data or information recession
People and data are living longer while getting larger
Not everything is the same in the data center or information factory
Rethink data protection including when, why, how, where, with what and by whom
There is little data, big data, very big data and big fast data
Data protection modernization is more than playing buzzword bingo
Avoid using new technology in old ways
Data footprint reduction (DFR) can be help counter changing data life-cycle patterns
EMC continues to leverage Avamar while keeping Networker relevant
Data Domain evolving for both backup and archiving as an example of tool for multiple uses

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

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

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

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EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements (Part I)

Storage I/O trends

A couple of months ago at EMCworld there were announcements around ViPR, Pivotal along with trust and clouds among other topics. During the recent EMCworld event there were some questions among attendees what about backup and data protection announcements (or lack there of)?

Modernizing Data Protection

Today EMC announced enhancements to its Backup Recovery Solutions (BRS) portfolio (@EMCBackup) that continue to enable information and applications data protection modernizing including Avamar, Data Domain, Mozy and Networker.

Keep in mind you can’t go forward if you can’t go back, which means if you do not have good data protection to go to, you can’t go forward with your information.

EMC Modern Data Protection Announcements

As part of their Backup to the Future event, EMC announced the following:

  • New generation of data protection products and technologies
  • Data Domain systems: enhanced application integration for backup and archive
  • Data protection suite tools Avamar 7 and Networker 8.1
  • Enhanced Cloud backup capabilities for the Mozy service
  • Paradigm shift as part of data protection modernizing including revisiting why, when, where, how, with what and by whom data protection is accomplished.

What did EMC announce for data protection modernization?

While much of the EMC data protection announcement is around product, there is also the aspect of rethinking data protection. This means looking at data protection modernization beyond swapping out media (e.g. tape for disk, disk for cloud) or one backup software tool for another. Instead, revisiting why data protection needs to be accomplished, by whom, how to remove complexity and cost, enable agility and flexibility. This also means enabling data protection to be used or consumed as a service in traditional, virtual and private or hybrid cloud environments.

EMC uses as an example (what they refer to as Accidental Architecture) of how there are different group and areas of focus, along with silos associated with data protection. These groups span virtual, applications, database, server, storage among others.

The results are silos that need to be transformed in part using new technology in new ways, as well as addressing a barrier to IT convergence (people and processes). The theme behind EMC data protection strategy is to enable the needs and requirements of various groups (servers, applications, database, compliance, storage, BC and DR) while removing complexity.

Moving from Silos of data protection to a converged service enabled model

Three data protection and backup focus areas

This sets the stage for the three components for enabling a converged data protection model that can be consumed or used as a service in traditional, virtual and private cloud environments.


EMC three components of modernized data protection (EMC Future Backup)

The three main components (and their associated solutions) of EMC BRS strategy are:

  • Data management services: Policy and storage management, SLA, SLO, monitoring, discovery and analysis. This is where tools such as EMC Data Protection Advisor (aka via WysDM acquisition) fit among others for coordination or orchestration, setting and managing polices along with other activities.
  • Data source integration: Applications, Database, File systems, Operating System, Hypervisors and primary storage systems. This is where data movement tools such as Avamar and Networker among others fit along with interfaces to application tools such as Oracle RMAN.
  • Protection storage: Targets, destination storage system with media or mediums optimized for protecting and preserving data along with enabling data footprint reduction (DFR). DFR includes functionality such as compression and dedupe among others. Example of data protection storage is EMC Data Domain.

Read more about product items announced and what this all means here in the second of this two-part series.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers gs

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

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

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HDS Mid Summer Storage and Converged Compute Enhancements

Storage I/O trends

Converged Compute, SSD Storage and Clouds

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) announced today several enhancements to their data storage and unified compute portfolio as part of their Maximize I.T. initiative.

Setting the context

As part of setting the stage for this announcement, HDS has presented the following strategy vision as part their vision for IT transformation and cloud computing.

https://hds.com/solutions/it-strategies/maximize-it.html?WT.ac=us_hp_flash_r11

What was announced

This announcement builds on earlier ones around HDS Unified Storage (HUS) primary storage using nand flash MLC Solid State Devices (SSD) and Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s), along with unified block and file (NAS), as well Unified Compute Platform (UCP) also known as converged compute, networking, storage and software. These enhancements follow recent updates to the HDS Content Platform (HCP) for object, file and content storage.

There are three main focus areas of the announcement:

  • Flash SSD storage enhancements for HUS
  • Unified with enhanced file (aka BlueArc based)
  • Enhanced unified compute (UCP)

HDS Flash SSD acceleration

The question should not be if SSD is in your future, rather when, where, with what and how much will be needed.

As part of this announcement, HDS is releasing an all flash SSD based HUS enterprise storage system. Similar to what other vendors have done, HDS is attaching flash SSD storage to their HUS systems in place of HDD’s. Hitachi has developed their own SSD module announced in 2012 (read more here). The HDS SSD module use Multi Level Cell (MLC) nand flash chips (dies) that now supports 1.6TB of storage space capacity unit. This is different from other vendors who either use nand flash SSD drive form factor devices (e.g. Intel, Micron, Samsung, SANdisk, Seagate, STEC (now WD), WD among others) or, PCIe form factor cards (e.g. FusionIO, Intel, LSI, Micron, Virident among others) or, attach a third-party external SSD device (e.g. IBM/TMS, Violin, Whiptail etc.).

Like some other vendors, HDS has also done more than simply attach a SSD (drive, PCIe card, or external device) to their storage systems calling it an integrated solution. What this means is that HDS has implemented software or firmware changes into their storage systems to manage durability and extend flash duty cycles caused by program erase (P/E) cycle wear. In addition HDS has implemented performance optimization in their storage systems to leverage the faster SSD modules, after all, faster storage media or devices need fast storage systems or controllers.

While the new all flash storage system can be initially bought with just SSD, similar to other hybrid storage solutions, hard disk drives (HDD’s) can also be installed. For enabling full performance at low latency, HDS is addressing both the flash SSD modules as well as the storage systems they attach to including back-end, front-end and caching in-between.

The release enables 500,000 or half a million IOPS (no IOP size, reads or writes, random or sequential. Future firmware (non-disrupted) to enable higher performance that HDS is claiming will be 1,000,000 IOPS at under a millisecond) were indicated.

In addition to future performance improvements, HDS is also indicating increased storage space capacity of its MLC flash SSD modules (1.6TB today). Using 12 modules (1.6TB each), 154TB of flash SSD can be placed in a single rack.

HDS File and Network Attached Storage (NAS)

HUS unified NAS file system and gateway (BlueArc based) enhancements include:

  • New platforms leveraging faster processors (both Intel and Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA’s))
  • Common management and software tools from 3000 to new 4000 series
  • Bandwidth doubled with faster connections and more memory
  • Four 10GbE NAS serving ports (front-end)
  • Four 8Gb Fibre Channel ports (back-end)
  • FPGA leveraged for off-loading some dedupe functions (faster performance)

HDS Unified Complete Platform (UCP)

As part of this announcement, HDS is enhancing the Unified Compute Platform (UCP) offerings. HDS re-entered the compute market in 2012 joining other vendors offering unified compute, storage and networking solutions. The HDS converged data infrastructure competes with AMD (Seamicro) SM15000, Dell vStart and VRTX (for lower end market), EMC and VCE vBlock, NetApp FlexPod along with those from HP (or Moonshot micro servers), IBM Puresystems, Oracle and others.

UCP Pro for VMware vSphere

  • Turnkey converged solution (Compute, Networking, Storage, Software)
  • Includes VMware vSphere pre-installed (OEM from VMware)
  • Flexible compute blade options
  • Three storage system options (HUS, HUS VM and VSP)
  • Cisco and Brocade IP networking
  • UCP Director 3.0 with enhanced automation and orchestration software

UCP Select for Microsoft Private Cloud

  • Supports Hyper-V 3.0 server virtualization
  • Live migration with DR and resynch
  • Microsoft Fast Track certified

UCP Select for Oracle RAC

  • HDS Flash SSD storage
  • SMP x86 compute for performance
  • 2x improvements for IOPS less than 1 millisecond
  • Common management with HiCommand suite
  • Integrated with Oracle RMAN and OVM

UCP Select for SAP HANA

  • Scale out to 8TBs memory (DRAM)
  • Tier 1 storage system certified for SAP HANA DR
  • Leverages SAP HANA SAP storage connector API

What this all means?

Storage I/O trends

With these announcements HDS is extending its storage centric hardware, software and services solution portfolio for block, file and object access across different usage tiers (systems, applications, mediums). HDS is also expanding their converged unified compute platforms to stay competitive with others including Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, NEC, NetApp and Oracle among others. For environments with HDS storage looking for converged solutions to support VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle or SAP HANA these UCP systems are worth checking out as part of evaluating vendor offerings. Likewise for those who have HDS storage exploring SSD offerings, these announcements give opportunities to enable consolidation as do the unified file (NAS) offerings.

Note that now HDS does not have a public formalized message or story around PCIe flash cards, however they have relationships with various vendors as part of their UCP offerings.

Overall a good set of incremental enhancements for HDS to stay competitive and leverage their field proven capabilities including management software tools.

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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June 2013 Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

StorageIO News Letter Image
June 2013 News letter

Welcome to the June 2013 edition of the StorageIO Update. In this edition coverage includes data center infrastructure management (DCIM), metrics that matter, industry trends, IBM buying Softlayer for Cloud, IaaS and managed services. Other items include backup and data protection topics for SMBs, as well as big data storage topics. Also the EPA has announced a review session for Energy Star for Data Center storage that you can give your comments. Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter.

Click on the following links to view the June 2013 edition as (HTML sent via Email) version, or PDF versions.

Visit the news letter page to view previous editions of the StorageIO Update.

You can subscribe to the news letter by clicking here.

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update news letter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Ok Nuff said, for now

Cheers
Gs

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

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

Posted on

IBM buys Softlayer, for software defined infrastructures and clouds?

Storage I/O trends

IBM today announced that they are acquiring privately held Dallas Texas-based Softlayer and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider.

IBM is referring to this as Cloud without Compromise (read more about clouds, conversations and confidence here).

It’s about the management, flexibly, scale up, out and down, agility and valueware.

Is this IBM’s new software defined data center (SDDC) or software defined infrastructure (SDI) or software defined management (SDM), software defined cloud (SDC) or software defined storage (SDS) play?

This is more than a software defined marketing or software defined buzzword announcement.
buzzword bingo

If your view of software define ties into the theme of leveraging, unleashing resources, enablement, flexibility, agility of hardware, software or services, then you may see Softlayer as part of a software defined infrastructure.

On the other hand, if your views or opinions of what is or is not software defined align with a specific vendor, product, protocol, model or punditry then you may not agree, particular if it is in opposition to anything IBM.

Cloud building blocks

During today’s announcement briefing call with analysts there was a noticeable absence of software defined buzz talk which given its hype and usage lately, was a refreshing welcome relief. So with that, lets set the software defined conversation aside (for now).

Cloud image

Who is Softlayer, why is IBM interested in them?

Softlayer provide software and services to support both SMB, SME and other environments with bare metal (think traditional hosted servers), along with multi-tenant (shared) cloud virtual public and private cloud service offerings.

Softlayer supports various applications, environments from little data processing to big data analytics to little data processing, from social to mobile to legacy. This includes those app’s or environments that were born in the cloud, or legacy environments looking to leverage cloud in a complimentary way.

Some more information about Softlayer includes:

  • Privately held IaaS firm founded in 2005
  • Estimated revenue run rate of around $400 million with 21,000 customers
  • Mix of SMB, SME and Web-based or born in the cloud customers
  • Over 100,000 devices under management
  • Provides a common modularized management framework set of tools
  • Mix of customers from Web startups to global enterprise
  • Presence in 13 data centers across the US, Asia and Europe
  • Automation, interoperability, large number of API access and supported
  • Flexibility, control and agility for physical (bare metal) and cloud or virtual
  • Public, private and data center to data center
  • Designed for scale, durability and resiliency without complexity
  • Part of OpenStack ecosystem both leveraging and supporting it
  • Ability for customers to use OpenStack, Cloudstack, Citrix, VMware, Microsoft and others
  • Can be white or private labeled for use as a service by VARs

Storage I/O trends

What IBM is planning for Softlayer

Softlayer will report into IBM Global Technology Services (GTS) complimenting existing capabilities which includes ten cloud computing centers on five continents. IBM has created a new Cloud Services Division and expects cloud revenues could be $7 billion annually by the end of 2015. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is estimated to hit about $3.8 Billion by end of 2013. Note that in 2012 AWS target available market was estimated to be about $11 Billion which should become larger moving forward. Rackspace by comparison had recent earning announcements on May 8 2013 of $362 Million with most that being hosting vs. cloud services. That works out to an annualized estimated run rate of $1.448 Billion (or better depending on growth).

I mention AWS and Rackspace to illustrate the growth potential for IBM and Softlayer to discuss the needs of both cloud services customers such as those who use AWS (among other providers), as well as bare metal or hosting or dedicated servers such as with Rackspace among others.

Storage I/O trends

What is not clear at this time is if IBM is combing traditional hosting, managed services, new offerings, products and services in that $7 billion number. In other words if the $7 billion represents what the revenues of the new Cloud Services Division independent of other GTS or legacy offerings as well as excluding hardware, software products from STG (Systems Technology Group) among others, that would be impressive and a challenge to the likes of AWS.

IBM has indicated that it will leverage its existing Systems Technology Group (STG) portfolio of servers and storage extending the capabilities of Softlayer. While currently x86 based, one could expect IBM to leverage and add support for their Power systems line of processors and servers, Puresystems, as well as storage such as XIV or V7000 among others for tier 1 needs.

Some more notes:

  • Ties into IBM Smart Cloud initiatives, model and paradigm
  • This deal is expected to close 3Q 2013, terms or price were not disclosed.
  • Will enable Softlayer to be leveraged on a larger, broader basis by IBM
  • Gives IBM increased access to SMB, SME and web customers than in the past
  • Software and development to stay part of Softlayer
  • Provides IBM an extra jumpstart play for supporting and leveraging OpenStack
  • Compatible and supports Cloustack and Citrix who are also IBM partners
  • Also compatible and supports VMware who is also an IBM partner

Storage I/O trends

Some other thoughts and perspectives

This is a good and big move for IBM to add value and leverage their current portfolios of both services, as well as products and technologies. However it is more than just adding value or finding new routes to markets for those goods and services, it’s also about enablement IBM has long been in the services including managed services, out or in sourcing and hosting business. This can be seen as another incremental evolution of those offerings to both existing IBM enterprise customers, as well to reach new, emerging along with SMB or SME’s that tend to grow up and become larger consumers of information and data infrastructure services.

Further this helps to add some product and meaning around the IBM Smart Cloud initiatives and programs (not that there was not before) giving customers, partners and resellers something tangible to see, feel, look at, touch and gain experience not to mention confidence with clouds.

On the other hand, is IBM signaling that they want more of the growing business that AWS has been realizing, not to mention Microsoft Azure, Rackspace, Centurylink/Savvis, Verizon/Terremark, CSC, HP Cloud, Cloudsigma, Bluehost among many others (if I missed you or your favorite provider, feel free to add it to the comments section). This also gets IBM added Devops exposure something that Softlayer practices, as well as a Openstack play, not to mention cloud, software defined, virtual, big data, little data, analytics and many other buzzword bingo terms.

Congratulations to both IBM and the Softlayer folks, now lets see some execution to watch how this unfolds.

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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Web chat Thur May 30th: Hot Storage Trends for 2013 (and beyond)

Storage I/O trends

Join me on Thursday May 30, 2013 at Noon ET (9AM PT) for a live web chat at the 21st Century IT (21cit) site (click here to register, sign-up, or view earlier posts). This will be an online web chat format interactive conversation so if you are not able to attend, you can visit at your convenience to view and give your questions along with comments. I have done several of these web chats with 21cit as well as other venues that are a lot of fun and engaging (time flies by fast).

For those not familiar, 21cIT is part of the Desum/UBM family of sites including Internet Evolution, SMB Authority, and Enterprise Efficiency among others that I do article posts, videos and live chats for.


Sponsored by NetApp

I like these types of sites in that while they have a sponsor, the content is generally kept separate between those of editors and contributors like myself and the vendor supplied material. In other words I coordinate with the site editors on what topics I feel like writing (or doing videos) about that align with the given sites focus and themes as opposed to following and advertorial calendar script.

During this industry trends perspective web chat, one of the topics and themes planned for discussion include software defined storage (SDS). View a recent video blog post I did here about SDS. In addition to SDS, Solid State Devices (SSD) including nand flash, cloud, virtualization, object, backup and data protection, performance, management tools among others are topics that will be put out on the virtual discussion table.

Storage I/O trends

Following are some examples of recent and earlier industry trends perspectives posts that I have done over at 21cit:

Video: And Now, Software-Defined Storage!
There are many different views on what is or is not “software-defined” with products, protocols, preferences and even press releases. Check out the video and comments here.

Big Data and the Boston Marathon Investigation
How the human face of big-data will help investigators piece together all the evidence in the Boston bombing tragedy and bring those responsible to justice. Check out the post and comments here.

Don’t Use New Technologies in Old Ways
You can add new technologies to your data center infrastructure, but you won’t get the full benefit unless you update your approach with people, processes, and policies. Check out the post and comments here.

Don’t Let Clouds Scare You, Be Prepared
The idea of moving to cloud computing and cloud services can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be so if you prepare as you would for implementing any other IT tool. Check out the post and comments here.

Storage and IO trends for 2013 (& Beyond)
Efficiency, new media, data protection, and management are some of the keywords for the storage sector in 2013. Check out these and other trends, predictions along with comments here.

SSD and Real Estate: Location, Location, Location
You might be surprised how many similarities between buying real estate and buying SSDs.
Location matters and it’s not if, rather when, where, why and how you will be using SSD including nand flash in the future, read more and view comments here.

Everything Is Not Equal in the Data center, Part 3
Here are steps you can take to give the right type of backup and protection to data and solutions, depending on the risks and scenarios they face. The result? Savings and efficiencies. Read more and view comments here.

Everything Is Not Equal in the Data center, Part 2
Your data center’s operations can be affected at various levels, by multiple factors, in a number of degrees. And, therefore, each scenario requires different responses. Read more and view comments here.

Everything Is Not Equal in the Data center, Part 1
It pays to check your data center Different components need different levels of security, storage, and availability. Read more and view comments here.

Data Protection Modernizing: More Than Buzzword Bingo
IT professionals and solution providers should put technologies such as disk based backup, dedupe, cloud, and data protection management tools as assets and resources to make sure they receive necessary funding and buy in. Read more and view comments here.

Don’t Take Your Server & Storage IO Pathing Software for Granted
Path managers are valuable resources. They will become even more useful as companies continue to carry out cloud and virtualization solutions. Read more and view comments here.

SSD Is in Your Future: Where, When & With What Are the Questions
During EMC World 2012, EMC (as have other vendors) made many announcements around flash solid-state devices (SSDs), underscoring the importance of SSDs to organizations future storage needs. Read more here about why SSD is in your future along with view comments.

Changing Life cycles and Data Footprint Reduction (DFR), Part 2
In the second part of this series, the ABCDs (Archive, Backup modernize, Compression, Dedupe and data management, storage tiering) of data footprint reduction, as well as SLOs, RTOs, and RPOs are discussed. Read more and view comments here.

Changing Life cycles and Data Footprint Reduction (DFR), Part 1
Web 2.0 and related data needs to stay online and readily accessible, creating storage challenges for many organizations that want to cut their data footprint. Read more and view comments here.

No Such Thing as an Information Recession
Data, even older information, must be protected and made accessible cost-effectively. Not to mention that people and data are living longer as well as getting larger. Read more and view comments here.

Storage I/O trends

These real-time, industry trends perspective interactive chats at 21cit are open forum format (however be polite and civil) as well as non vendor sales or marketing pitches. If you have specific questions you ‘d like to ask or points of view to express, click here and post them in the chat room at any time (before, during or after).

Mark your calendar for this event live Thursday, May 30, at noon ET or visit after the fact.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

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

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

Posted on

May 2013 Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

StorageIO News Letter Image
May 2013 News letter

Welcome to the May 2013 edition of the StorageIO Update. This edition has announcement analysis of EMC ViPR, Software Defined Storage (including a video here), server, storage and I/O metrics that matter for example how many IOPS can a HDD do (it depends). SSD including nand flash remains a popular topic, both in terms of industry adoption and customer deployment. Also included are my perspectives on the SSD vendor FusionIO CEO leaving in a flash. Speaking of nand flash, have you thought about how some RAID implementations and configurations can extend the life along with durability of SSD’s? More on this soon, however check out this video to give you some perspectives.

Click on the following links to view the May 2013 edition as (HTML sent via Email) version, or PDF versions.

Visit the news letter page to view previous editions of the StorageIO Update.

You can subscribe to the news letter by clicking here.

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update news letter, let me know your comments and feedback.

Ok Nuff said, for now

Cheers
Gs

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

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

Posted on

How many I/O iops can flash SSD or HDD do?

How many i/o iops can flash ssd or hdd do with vmware?

sddc data infrastructure Storage I/O ssd trends

Updated 2/10/2018

A common question I run across is how many I/O iopsS can flash SSD or HDD storage device or system do or give.

The answer is or should be it depends.

This is the first of a two-part series looking at storage performance, and in context specifically around drive or device (e.g. mediums) characteristics across HDD, HHDD and SSD that can be found in cloud, virtual, and legacy environments. In this first part the focus is around putting some context around drive or device performance with the second part looking at some workload characteristics (e.g. benchmarks).

What about cloud, tape summit resources, storage systems or appliance?

Lets leave those for a different discussion at another time.

Getting started

Part of my interest in tools, metrics that matter, measurements, analyst, forecasting ties back to having been a server, storage and IO performance and capacity planning analyst when I worked in IT. Another aspect ties back to also having been a sys admin as well as business applications developer when on the IT customer side of things. This was followed by switching over to the vendor world involved with among other things competitive positioning, customer design configuration, validation, simulation and benchmarking HDD and SSD based solutions (e.g. life before becoming an analyst and advisory consultant).

Btw, if you happen to be interested in learn more about server, storage and IO performance and capacity planning, check out my first book Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) that has a bit of information on it. There is also coverage of metrics and planning in my two other books The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press). I have some copies of Resilient Storage Networks available at a special reader or viewer rate (essentially shipping and handling). If interested drop me a note and can fill you in on the details.

There are many rules of thumb (RUT) when it comes to metrics that matter such as IOPS, some that are older while others may be guess or measured in different ways. However the answer is that it depends on many things ranging from if a standalone hard disk drive (HDD), Hybrid HDD (HHDD), Solid State Device (SSD) or if attached to a storage system, appliance, or RAID adapter card among others.

Taking a step back, the big picture

hdd image
Various HDD, HHDD and SSD’s

Server, storage and I/O performance and benchmark fundamentals

Even if just looking at a HDD, there are many variables ranging from the rotational speed or Revolutions Per Minute (RPM), interface including 1.5Gb, 3.0Gb, 6Gb or 12Gb SAS or SATA or 4Gb Fibre Channel. If simply using a RUT or number based on RPM can cause issues particular with 2.5 vs. 3.5 or enterprise and desktop. For example, some current generation 10K 2.5 HDD can deliver the same or better performance than an older generation 3.5 15K. Other drive factors (see this link for HDD fundamentals) including physical size such as 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch small form factor (SFF), enterprise or desktop or consumer, amount of drive level cache (DRAM). Space capacity of a drive can also have an impact such as if all or just a portion of a large or small capacity devices is used. Not to mention what the drive is attached to ranging from in internal SAS or SATA drive bay, USB port, or a HBA or RAID adapter card or in a storage system.

disk iops
HDD fundamentals

How about benchmark and performance for marketing or comparison tricks including delayed, deferred or asynchronous writes vs. synchronous or actually committed data to devices? Lets not forget about short stroking (only using a portion of a drive for better IOP’s) or even long stroking (to get better bandwidth leveraging spiral transfers) among others.

Almost forgot, there are also thick, standard, thin and ultra thin drives in 2.5 and 3.5 inch form factors. What’s the difference? The number of platters and read write heads. Look at the following image showing various thickness 2.5 inch drives that have various numbers of platters to increase space capacity in a given density. Want to take a wild guess as to which one has the most space capacity in a given footprint? Also want to guess which type I use for removable disk based archives along with for onsite disk based backup targets (compliments my offsite cloud backups)?

types of disks
Thick, thin and ultra thin devices

Beyond physical and configuration items, then there are logical configuration including the type of workload, large or small IOPS, random, sequential, reads, writes or mixed (various random, sequential, read, write, large and small IO). Other considerations include file system or raw device, number of workers or concurrent IO threads, size of the target storage space area to decide impact of any locality of reference or buffering. Some other items include how long the test or workload simulation ran for, was the device new or worn in before use among other items.

Tools and the performance toolbox

Then there are the various tools for generating IO’s or workloads along with recording metrics such as reads, writes, response time and other information. Some examples (mix of free or for fee) include Bonnie, Iometer, Iorate, IOzone, Vdbench, TPC, SPC, Microsoft ESRP, SPEC and netmist, Swifttest, Vmark, DVDstore and PCmark 7 among many others. Some are focused just on the storage system and IO path while others are application specific thus exercising servers, storage and IO paths.

performance tools
Server, storage and IO performance toolbox

Having used Iometer since the late 90s, it has its place and is popular given its ease of use. Iometer is also long in the tooth and has its limits including not much if any new development, never the less, I have it in the toolbox. I also have Futremark PCmark 7 (full version) which turns out has some interesting abilities to do more than exercise an entire Windows PC. For example PCmark can use a secondary drive for doing IO to.

PCmark can be handy for spinning up with VMware (or other tools) lots of virtual Windows systems pointing to a NAS or other shared storage device doing real world type activity. Something that could be handy for testing or stressing virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) along with other storage systems, servers and solutions. I also have Vdbench among others tools in the toolbox including Iorate which was used to drive the workloads shown below.

What I look for in a tool are how extensible are the scripting capabilities to define various workloads along with capabilities of the test engine. A nice GUI is handy which makes Iometer popular and yes there are script capabilities with Iometer. That is also where Iometer is long in the tooth compared to some of the newer generation of tools that have more emphasis on extensibility vs. ease of use interfaces. This also assumes knowing what workloads to generate vs. simply kicking off some IOPs using default settings to see what happens.

Another handy tool is for recording what’s going on with a running system including IO’s, reads, writes, bandwidth or transfers, random and sequential among other things. This is where when needed I turn to something like HiMon from HyperIO, if you have not tried it, get in touch with Tom West over at HyperIO and tell him StorageIO sent you to get a demo or trial. HiMon is what I used for doing start, stop and boot among other testing being able to see IO’s at the Windows file system level (or below) including very early in the boot or shutdown phase.

Here is a link to some other things I did awhile back with HiMon to profile some Windows and VDI activity test profiling.

What’s the best tool or benchmark or workload generator?

The one that meets your needs, usually your applications or something as close as possible to it.

disk iops
Various 2.5 and 3.5 inch HDD, HHDD, SSD with different performance

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

That depends, however continue reading part II of this series to see some results for various types of drives and workloads.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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FusionIO (FIO) SSD vendor CEO out in a flash, whats up with that?

Storage I/O trends

FusionIO (FIO) who recently bought Nexgen to expand their reach from just a server centric to a more broad flash focus has seen their CEO and founder David Flynn race out the door. Not surprisingly, wall street who does not like to be surprised were surprised just a week or two after the most recent earning announcements reacted with a sell off of the FIO stock.

Here is the conundrum, those who were or are fans of Flynn, FIO and their approach along with server centric in your face approach may not be happy with this move.

On the other hand, those were not fans of Flynn, FIO and their approach of getting in your face of having others do so if you did not fall into their ranks may be happy with this move.

One question is was Flynn shown the door and left before it could hit his backside on the way out, or, did he see something and pulled the rip cord on his golden parachute, or some other or combination?

With the recent Nexgen acquisition which could be seen as a move by FIO (and their board of directors) to make more attractive either for an acquisition. Or, to transition from a server-side centric approach to a broader focus.

If the former, perhaps Flynn sees or saw the writing on the wall on who those suitors might or would be and decided to take his money now and run joining the serial entrepreneur ranks now.

Otoh, perhaps Flynn was just too focused with a singular focus and passion on the server space thus not able or interested in transitioning to a broader focus, which might also have involved eating a bit of crow. By eating a bit of crow, I mean given some of the in your face and it’s the FIO way or the highway approach of server only flash.

With Nexgen to be successful that would involve aligning more with the larger vendors and other startups who offer broader portfolios, something that was targeted and mud or fud thrown at by FIO, something that some CEOs or others can have challenges with. It should also be noted that FIO has brought in new employees with experience in broader marketers, not to mention industry veterans like John Spiers of Nexgen.

Candidly, I am not sure which of the above is the scenario, however, for those involved with FIO as employees, partners, customers and shareholders I hope some clarity arrives soon for them. Whether that clarity is via an acquisition (who is one of many questions), or a launching as FIO 2.0 or something similar with a focus on bring more capabilities to customers, increasing their touch points selling more products, hardware, software as opposed to leaving those for others (e.g. their competitors).

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

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

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

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EMC ViPR software defined object storage part III

Storage I/O trends

This is part III in a series of posts pertaining to EMC ViPR software defined storage and object storage. You can read part I here and part II here.

EMCworld

More on the object opportunity

Other object access includes OpenStack storage part Swift, AWS S3 HTTP and REST API access. This also includes ViPR supporting EMC Atmos, VNX and Isilon arrays as southbound persistent storage in addition.

object storage
Object (and cloud) storage access example

EMC is claiming that over 250 VNX systems can be abstracted to support scaling with stability (performance, availability, capacity, economics) using ViPR. Third party storage will be supported along with software such as OpenStack Swift, Ceph and others running on commodity hardware. Note that EMC has some history with object storage and access including Centera and Atmos. Visit the micro site I have setup called www.objectstoragecenter.com and watch for more content to be updated and added there.

More on the ViPR control plane and controller

ViPR differs from some others in that it does not sit in the data path all the time (e.g. between application servers and storage systems or cloud services) to cut potential for bottlenecks.

ViPR architecture

Organizations that can use ViPR include enterprise, SMB, CSP or MSP and hosting sites. ViPR can be used in a control mode to leverage underlying storage systems, appliances and services intelligence and functionality. This means ViPR can be used to complement as oppose to treat southbound or target storage systems and services as dumb disks or JBOD.

On the other hand, ViPR will also have a suite of data services such as snapshot, replication, data migration, movement, tiering to add value for when those do not exist. Customers will be free to choose how they want to use and deploy ViPR. For example leveraging underlying storage functionality (e.g. lightweight model), or in a more familiar storage virtualization model heavy lifting model. In the heavy lifting model more work is done by the virtualization or abstraction software to create an added value, however can be a concern for bottlenecks depending how deployed.

Service categories

Software defined, storage hypervisor, virtual storage or storage virtualization?

Most storage virtualization, storage hypervisors and virtual storage solutions that are hardware or software based (e.g. software defined) implemented what is referred to as in band. With in band the storage virtualization software or hardware sits between the applications (northbound) and storage systems or services (southbound).

While this approach can be easier to carry out along with add value add services, it can also introduce scaling bottlenecks depending on implementations. Examples of in band storage virtualization includes Actifio, DataCore, EMC VMAX with third-party storage, HDS with third-party storage, IBM SVC (and their V7000 Storwize storage system based on it) and NetApp Vseries among others. An advantage of in band approaches is that there should not need to be any host or server-side software requirements and SAN transparency.

There is another approach called out-of-band that has been tried. However pure out-of-band requires a management system along with agents, drivers, shims, plugins or other software resident on host application servers.

fast path control path
Example of generic fast path control path model

ViPR takes a different approach, one that was seen a few years ago with EMC Invista called fast path, control path that for the most part stays out of the data path. While this is like out-of-band, there should not be a need for any host server-side (e.g. northbound) software. By being a fast path control path, the virtualization or abstraction and management functions stay out of the way for data being moved or work being done.

Hmm, kind of like how management should be, there to help when needed, out-of-the-way not causing overhead other times ;).

Is EMC the first (even with Invista) to leverage fast path control path?

Actually up until about a year or so ago, or shortly after HP acquired 3PAR they had a solution called Storage Virtualization Services Platform (SVPS) that was OEMd from LSI (e.g. StorAge). Unfortunately, HP decided to retire that as opposed to extend its capabilities for file and object access (northbound) as well as different southbound targets or destination services.

Whats this northbound and southbound stuff?

Simply put, think in terms of a vertical stack with host servers (PMs or VMs) on the top with applications (and hypervisors or other tools such as databases) on top of them (e.g. north).

software defined storage
Northbound servers, southbound storage systems and cloud services

Think of storage systems, appliances, cloud services or other target destinations on the bottom (or south). ViPR sits in between providing storage services and management to the northbound servers leveraging the southbound storage.

What host servers can VIPR support for serving storage?

VIPR is being designed to be server agnostic (e.g. virtual or physical), along with operating system agnostic. In addition VIPR is being positioned as capable of serving northbound (e.g. up to application servers) block, file or object as well as accessing southbound (e.g. targets) block, file and object storage systems, file systems or services.

Note that a difference between earlier similar solutions from EMC have been either block based (e.g. Invista, VPLEX, VMAX with third-party storage), or file based. Also note that this means VIPR is not just for VMware or virtual server environments and that it can exist in legacy, virtual or cloud environments.

ViPR image

Likewise VIPR is intended to be application agnostic supporting little data, big data, very big data ( VBD) along with Hadoop or other specialized processing. Note that while VIPR will support HDFS in addition to NFS and CIFS file based access, Hadoop will not be running on or in the VIPR controllers as that would live or run elsewhere.

How will VIPR be deployed and licensed?

EMC has indicated that the VIPR controller will be delivered as software that installs into a virtual appliance (e.g. VMware) running as a virtual machine (VM) guest. It is not clear when support will exist for other hypervisors (e.g. Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix/XEN, KVM or if VMware vSphere with vCenter or simply on ESXi free version). As of the announcement pre briefing, EMC had not yet finalized pricing and licensing details. General availability is expected in the second half of calendar 2013.

Keep in mind that the VIPR controller (software) runs as a VM that can be hosted on a clustered hypervisor for HA. In addition, multiple VIPR controllers can exist in a cluster to further enhance HA.

Some questions to be addressed among others include:

  • How and where are IOs intercepted?
  • Who can have access to the APIs, what is the process, is there a developers program, SDK along with resources?
  • What network topologies are supported local and remote?
  • What happens when JBOD is used and no advanced data services exist?
  • What are the characteristics of the object access functionality?
  • What if any specific switches or data path devices and tools are needed?
  • How does a host server know to talk with its target and ViPR controller know when to intercept for handling?
  • Will SNIA CDMI be added and when as part of the object access and data services capabilities?
  • Are programmatic bindings available for the object access along with support for other APIs including IOS?
  • What are the performance characteristics including latency under load as well as during a failure or fault scenario?
  • How will EMC place Vplex and its caching model on a local and wide area basis vs. ViPR or will we see those two create some work together, if so, what will that be?

Bottom line (for now):

Good move for EMC, now let us see how they execute including driving adoption of their open APIs, something they have had success in the past with Centera and other solutions. Likewise, let us see what other storage vendors become supported or add support along with how pricing and licensing are rolled out. EMC will also have to articulate when and where to use ViPR vs. VPLEX along with other storage systems or management tools.

Additional related material:
Are you using or considering implementation of a storage hypervisor?
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
Cloud conversations: Public, Private, Hybrid what about Community Clouds?
Cloud, virtualization, storage and networking in an election year
Does software cut or move place of vendor lock-in?
Don’t Use New Technologies in Old Ways
EMC VPLEX: Virtual Storage Redefined or Respun?
How many degrees separate you and your information?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Many faces of storage hypervisor, virtual storage or storage virtualization
People, Not Tech, Prevent IT Convergence
Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
Server and Storage Virtualization Life beyond Consolidation
Should Everything Be Virtualized?
The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
Two companies on parallel tracks moving like trains offset by time: EMC and NetApp
Unified storage systems showdown: NetApp FAS vs. EMC VNX
backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving
VMware buys virsto, what about storage hypervisor’s?
Who is responsible for vendor lockin?

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

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

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

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EMC ViPR software defined object storage part II

Storage I/O trends

This is part II in a series of posts pertaining to EMC ViPR software defined storage and object storage. You can read part I here and part III here.

EMCworld

Some questions and discussion topics pertaining to ViPR:

Whom is ViPR for?

Organizations that need to scale with stability across EMC, third-party or open storage software stacks and commodity hardware. This applies to large and small enterprise, cloud service providers, managed service providers, virtual and cloud environments/

What this means for EMC hardware/platform/systems?

They can continue to be used as is, or work with ViPR or other deployment modes.

Does this mean EMC storage systems are nearing their end of life?

IMHO for the most part not yet, granted there will be some scenarios where new products will be used vs. others, or existing ones used in new ways for different things.

As has been the case for years if not decades, some products will survive, continue to evolve and find new roles, kind of like different data storage mediums (e.g. ssd, disk, tape, etc).

How does ViPR work?

ViPR functions as a control plane across the data and storage infrastructure supporting both north and southbound. northbound refers to use from or up to application servers (physical machines PM and virtual machines VMs). southbound refers target or destination storage systems. Storage systems can be traditional EMC or third-party (NetApp mentioned as part of first release), appliances, just a bunch of disks (JBOD) or cloud services.

Some general features and functions:

  • Provisioning and allocation (with automation)
  • Data and storage migration or tiering
  • Leverage scripts, templates and workbooks
  • Support service categories and catalogs
  • Discovery, registration of storage systems
  • Create of storage resource pools for host systems
  • Metering, measuring, reporting, charge or show back
  • Alerts, alarms and notification
  • Self-service portal for access and provisioning

ViPR data plane (adding data services and value when needed)

Another part is the data plane for implementing data services and access. For block and file when not needed, ViPR steps out-of-the-way leveraging the underlying storage systems or services.

object storage
Object storage access

When needed, the ViPR data plane can step in to add added services and functionality along with support object based access for little data and big data. For example, Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) services can support northbound analytic software applications running on servers accessing storage managed by ViPR.

Continue reading in part III of this series here including how ViPR works, who it is for and more analysis.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

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

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

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EMC ViPR virtual physical object and software defined storage (SDS)

Storage I/O trends

Introducing EMC ViPR

This is the first in a three part series, read part II here, and part III here.

During the recent EMCworld event in Las Vegas among other things, EMC announced ViPR (read announcement here) . Note that this ViPR is not the same EMC Viper project from a few years ago that was focused on data footprint reduction (DFR) including dedupe. ViPR has been in the works for a couple of years taking a step back rethinking how storage is can be used going forward.

EMCworld

ViPR is not a technology creation developed in a vacuum instead includes customer feedback, wants and needs. Its core themes are extensible, open and scalable.

EMCworld

On the other hand, ViPR addresses plenty of buzzword bingo themes including:

  • Agility, flexibility, multi-tenancy, orchestration
  • Virtual appliance and control plane
  • Data services and storage management
  • IT as a Service (ITaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
  • Scaling with stability without compromise
  • Software defined storage
  • Public, private, hybrid cloud
  • Big data and little data
  • Block, file and object storage
  • Control plane and data plane
  • Storage hypervisor, virtualization and virtual storage
  • Heterogeneous (third-party) storage support
  • Open API and automation
  • Self-service portals, service catalogs

Buzzword bingo

Note that this is essentially announcing the ViPR product and program initiative with general availability slated for second half of 2013.

What is ViPR addressing?

IT and data infrastructure (server, storage, IO and networking hardware, software) challenges for traditional, virtual and cloud environments.

  • Data growth, after all, there is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, moved, processed, stored and retained for longer periods of time. Then again, people and data are both getting larger and living longer, for both little data and big data along with very big data.

  • Overhead and complexities associated with managing and using an expanding, homogenous (same vendor, perhaps different products) or heterogeneous (different vendors and products) data infrastructure across cloud, virtual and physical, legacy and emerging. This includes add, changes or moves, updates and upgrades, retirement and replacement along with disposition, not to mention protecting data in an expanding footprint.

    • road to cloud

  • Operations and service management, fault and alarm notification, resolution and remediation, rapid provisioning, removing complexity and cost of doing things vs. simply cutting cost and compromising service.

EMC ViPR

What is this software defined storage stuff?

There is the buzzword aspect, and then there is the solution and business opportunity.

First the buzzword aspect and bandwagon:

  • Software defined marketing (SDM) Leveraging software defined buzzwords.
  • Software defined data centers (SDDC) Leveraging software to derive more value from hardware while enabling agility, flexibility, and scalability and removing complexity. Think the Cloud and Virtual Data Center models including those from VMware among others.
  • Software defined networking (SDN) Rather than explain, simply look at Nicira that VMware bought in 2012.
  • Software defined storage (SDS) Storage software that is independent of any specific hardware, which might be a bit broad, however it is also narrower than saying anything involving software.
  • Software defined BS (SDBS) Something that usually happens as a result when marketers and others jump on a bandwagon, in this case software defined marketing.

Note that not everything involved with software defined is BS, only some of the marketing spins and overuse. The downside to the software defined marketing and SDBS is the usual reaction of skepticism, cynicism and dismissal, so let us leave the software defined discussion here for now.

software defined storage

An example of software defined storage can be storage virtualization, virtual storage and storage hypervisors that are hardware independent. Note that when I say hardware independent, that also means being able to support different vendors systems. Now if you want to have some fun with the software defined storage diehards or purist, tell them that all hardware needs software and all software needs hardware, even if virtual. Further hardware is defined by its software, however lets leave sleeping dogs lay where they rest (at least for now ;)).

Storage hypervisors were a 2012 popular buzzword bingo topic with plenty of industry adoption and some customer deployment. While 2012 saw plenty of SDM buzz including SDC, SDN 2013 is already seeing an increase including software defined servers, and software defined storage.

Regardless of what you view of software defined storage, storage hypervisor, storage virtualization and virtual storage is, the primary focus and goal should be addressing business and application needs. Unfortunately, some of the discussions or debates about what is or is not software defined and related themes lose focus of what should be the core goal of enabling business and applications.

Continue reading in part II of this series here including how ViPR works, who it is for and more analysis.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

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

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