Category: metrics

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2012 industry trends perspectives and commentary (predictions)

2011 is almost over, so its wrap up time of the year as well as getting ready for 2012.

Here is a link to a post of the top 25 new posts that appeared on StorageIOblog in 2011.

As a companion to the above, here is a link to the all time top 25 posts from StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Im still finalizing my 2012 and 2013 predictions and perspectives which is a work in progress, however here is a synopsis:

  • Addressing storage woes at the source: Time to start treating the source of data management and protection including backup challenges instead of or in addition to addressing downstream target destination topics.
  • Big data and big bandwidth meet big backup: 2011 was a buzz with big data and big bandwidth so 2012 will see realization that big backup needs to be addressed. Also in 2012 there will be continued realization that many have been doing big data and big bandwidth thus also big backups for many years if not decades before the current big buzzword became popular.
  • Little data does not get left out of the discussion even though younger brother big data gets all of the press and praise. Little data may not be the shining diva it once was, however the revenue annuity stream will keep many software, tools, server and storage vendors afloat while customers continue to rely on the little data darling to run their business.
  • Cloud confusion finds clarity on the horizon: Granted there will be plenty of more cloud fud and hype, cloud washing and cleaning going around, however 2012 and beyond will also find organizations realizing where and how to use different types of clouds (public, private, hybrid) too meet various needs from SaaS and AaaS to PaaS to IaaS and other variations of XaaS. Part of the clarification that will help remove the confusion will be that there are many different types of cloud architectures, products, stacks, solutions, services and products to address various needs. Another part of the clarification will be discussion of what needs to be added to clouds to make them more viable for both new, as well as old or existing applications. This means organizations will determine what they need to do to move their existing applications to some form of a cloud model while understanding how clouds coexist and compliment what they are currently doing. Cloud conversations will also shift from low cost or for free focus expanding to discussions around value, trust, quality of service (QoS), SLOs, SLAs, security, reliability and related themes.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • Cloud and virtualization stack battles: The golden rule of virtualization and clouds is that who ever controls the management and software stacks controls the gold. Hence, watch for more positioning around management and enablement stacks as well as solutions to see who gains control of the gold.
  • Data protection modernization: Building off of first point above, data protection modernization the past several years has been focused on treating the symptoms of downstream problems at the target or destination. This has involved swapping out or moving media around, applying data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques downstream to give near term tactical relief as has been the cause with backup, restore, BC and DR for many years. Now the focus will start to expand to how to address the source of the problem with is an expanding data footprint upstream or at the source using different data footprint reduction tools and techniques. This also means using different metrics including keeping performance and response time in perspective as part of reduction rates vs. ratios while leveraging different techniques and tools from the data footprint reduction tool box. In other words, its time to stop swapping out media like changing tires that keep going flat on a car, find and fix the problem, change the way data is protected (and when) to cut the impact down stream. This will not happen overnight, however with virtualization and cloud activities underway, now is a good time to start modernizing data protection.
  • End to End (E2E) management tools: Continue focus around E2E tools and capabilities to gain situational awareness across different technology layers.
  • FCoE and Fibre Channel continue to mature: One sure sign that Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is continuing to evolve, mature and gain initial traction is the increase in activity declaring it dead or dumb or similar things. FCoE is still in its infancy while Fibre Channel (FC) is in the process of transitioning to 16Gb with a roadmap that will enable it to continue for many more years. As FCoE continues to ramp up over next several years (remember, FC took several years to get where it is today), continued FC enhancements will give options for those wishing to stick with it while gaining confidence with FCoE, iSCSI, SAS and NAS.
  • Hard drive shortages drive revenues and profits: Some have declared that the recent HDD shortages due to Thailand flooding will cause Solid State Devices (SSD) using flash memory to dramatically grow in adoption and deployment. I think that both single level cell (SLC) and multi level cell (MLC) flash SSDs will continue to grow in deployments counted in units shipped as well as revenues and hopefully also margin or profits. However I also think that with the HDD shortage and continued demand, vendors will use the opportunity to stabilize some of their pricing meaning less discounting while managing the inventory which should mean more margin or profits in a quarter or too. What will be interesting to watch will be if SSD vendors drop the margin in an effort to increase units shipped and deployed to show market revenue and adoption growth while HDD margins rise.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • QoS, SLA/SLOs part of cloud conversations: Low cost or cost avoidance will continue to be the focus of some cloud conversations. However with metrics and measurements to make informed decisions, discussions will expand to QoS, SLO, SLAs, security, mean time to restore or return information, privacy, trust and value also enter into the picture. In other words, clouds are growing up and maturing for some, while their existing capabilities become discovered by others.
  • Clouds are a shared responsibility model: The cloud blame game when something goes wrong will continue, however there will also be a realization that as with any technology or tool, there is a shared responsibility. This means that customers accept responsibility for how they will use a tool, technologies or service, the provider assumes responsibility, and both parties have a collective responsibility.
  • Return on innovation is the new ROI: For years, no make that decades a popular buzz term is return on investment the companion of total cost of ownership. Both ROI and TCO as you know and like (or hate) will continue to be used, however for situations that are difficult to monitize, a new variation exists. That new variation is return on innovation which is the measure of intangible benefits derived from how hard products are used to derive value for or of soft products and services delivered.
  • Solid State Devices (SSD) confidence: One of the barriers to flash SSD adoption has been cost per capacity with another being confidence in reliability and data consistency over time (aka duty cycle wear and tear). Many enterprise class solutions have used single level cell (SLC) flash SSD which has better endurance, duty cycle or wear handing capabilities however that benefit comes at the cost of a higher price per capacity. Consequently vendors are pushing multi level cell (MLC) flash SSD that reduces the cost per capacity, however needs extra controller and firmware functionality to manage the wear leaving and duty cycle. In some ways, MLC flash is to SSD memory what SATA high-capacity desktop drives were to HDDs in the enterprise storage space about 8 to 9 years ago. What I mean by that is that more cost high performance disk drives were the norm, then lower cost higher capacity SATA drives appeared resulting in enhancements to make them more enterprise capable while boosting the confidence of customers to use the technology. Same thing is happening with flash SSD in that SLC is more expensive and for many has a higher confidence, while MLC is lower cost, higher capacity and gaining the enhancements to take on a role for flash SSD similar to what high-capacity SATA did in the HDD space. In addition to confidence with SSD, new packaging variations will continue to evolve as well.
  • Virtualization beyond consolidation: The current wave of consolidation of desktop using VDI, server and storage aggregation will continue, however a trend that has grown for a couple of years now that will take more prominence in 2012 and 2013 is realization that not everything can be consolidated, however many things can be virtualized. This means for some applications the focus will not be how many VMs to run per PM, rather, how a PM can be more effectively used to boost performance and agility for some applications during part of the day, while being used for other things at different times. For example a high performance database that normally would not be consolidated would be virtualized to enable agility for maintenance, BC, DR load balancing and placed on a fast PM with lots of fast memory, CPU and IO capabilities dedicated to it. However during off hours when little to no database activity is occurring, then other VMs would be moved onto that PM then moved off before the next busy cycle.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

  • Will applications be ready to leverage cloud: Some applications and functionality can more easily be moved to cloud environments vs. others. A question that organizations will start to ask is what prevents their applications or business functionality from going to or using cloud resources in addition to asking cloud providers what new capabilities will they extend to support old environments.
  • Zombie list grows: More items will be declared dead meaning that they are either still alive, or have reached stability to the point where some want to see them dead so that their preferred technology or topic can take root.
  • Some other topics and trends include continued growing awareness that metrics and measurements matter for cloud, virtualization, data and storage networking. This also means a growing awareness that there are more metrics that matter for storage than cost per GByte or Tbyte that include IOPS, latency or response time, bandwidth, IO size, random and sequential along with availability. 2012 and 2013 will see continued respect being given to NAS at both the high end as well as low end of the market from enterprise down to consumer space. Speaking of consumer and SOHO (Small Office Home Office), now that SMB has generally been given respect or at least attention by many vendors, the new frontier will be to move further down market to the lower end of the SMB which is SOHO, just above consumer space. Of course some vendors have already closed the gap (or at least on paper, power point, web ex or you tube video) from consumer to enterprise. Of course Buzzword bingo will continue to be a popular game.
  • Oh, btw, DevOps will also appear in your vocabulary if it has not already.

Watch for more on these and other topics in the weeks and months to come and if you and to read more now, then get a copy of Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking. Also check out the top 25 new post of 2011 as well as some of the all time most popular posts at StorageIOblog.com that can also be seen on various other venues that pickup the full RSS feed or archive feed. Also check out the StorageIO news letter for more industry trends perspectives and commentary.

Ok, nuff said for now

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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Top 2011 cloud virtualization storage and networking posts

Im in the process of wrapping up 2011 and getting ready for 2012, here is a list of the top 25 new posts from this past year at StorageIOblog.

Looking back, here is a post about industry trends, thoughts and perspective predictions for 2010 and 2011 (preview 2012 and 2013 thoughts and perspectives here).

Here are the top 25 new blog posts from 2011

Check out the companion posts of the top 25 all time posts here as well as 2012 and 2013 predictions preview here.

Ok, nuff said for now

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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Fall (December) 2011 StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Fall (December) 2011 News letter

Welcome to the Fall (December) 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) news letter. This follows the Summer 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

 

Click on the following links to view the Fall (December) 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the news letter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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What industry pundits love and loathe about data storage

Drew Robb has a good article about what IT industry pundits including vendors, analysts, and advisors loath including comments from myself.

In the article Drew asks: What do you really love about storage and what are your pet peeves?

One of my comments and perspectives is that I like Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) in addition to traditional Hard Disk Drives (HDD) along with Solid State Devices (SSDs). As much as I like HHDDs, I also believe that with any technology, they are not the best solution for everything, however they can also be used in many ways than being seen. Here is the fifth installment of a series on HHDDs that I have done since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

Seagate Momentus XT
HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

Molly Rector VP of marketing at tape summit resources vendor Spectra Logic mentioned that what she does not like is companies that base their business plan on patent law trolling. I would have expected something different along the lines of countering or correcting people that say tape sucks, tape is dead, or that tape is the cause problem of anything wrong with storage thus clearing the air or putting up a fight that tape summit resources. Go figure…

Another of my comments involved clouds of which there are plenty of conversations taking place. I do like clouds (I even recently wrote a book involving them) however Im a fan of using them where applicable to coexist and enhance other IT resources. Dont be scared of clouds, however be ready, do your homework, listen, learn, do proof of concepts to decide best practices, when, where, what and how to use them.

Speaking of clouds, click here to read about who is responsible for cloud data loss and cast your vote, along with viewing what do you think about IT clouds in general here.

Mike Karp (aka twitter @storagewonk ) an analyst with Ptak Noel mentions that midrange environments dont get respect from big (or even startup) vendors.

I would take that a step further by saying compared to six or so years ago, SMB are getting night and day better respect along with attention by most vendors, however what is lacking is respect of the SOHO sector (e.g. lower end of SMB down to or just above consumer).

Granted some that have traditional sold into those sectors such as server vendors including Dell and HP get it or at least see the potential along with traditional enterprise vendor EMC via its Iomega . Yet I still see many vendors including startups in general discounting, shrugging off or sneering at the SOHO space similar to those who dissed or did not respect the SMB space several years ago. Similar to the SMB space, SOHO requires different products, packaging, pricing and routes to market via channel or etail mechanisms which means change for some vendors. Those vendors who embraced the SMB and realized what needed to change to adapt to those markets will also stand to do better with the SOHO.

Here is the reason that I think SOHO needs respect.

Simple, SOHOs grow up to become SMBs, SMBs grow up to become SMEs, SMEs grow up to become enterprises and not to mention that the amount of data being generated, moved, processed and stored continues to grow. The net result is that SMBs along with SOHO storage demands will continue to grow and for those vendors who can adjust to support those markets will also stand to gain new customers that in turn can become plans for other solution offerings.

Cloud conversations

Not surprising Eran Farajun of Asigra which has been doing cloud backups decades before they were known as clouds loves backup (and restores). However I am surprised that Eran did not jump on the its time to modernize and re architect data protection theme. Oh well, will have to have a chat with Eran on that sometime.

What was surprising were comments from Panzura who has a good distributed (e.g. read also cloud) file system that can be used for various things including online reference data. Panzura has a solution that normally I would not even think about in the context of being pulled into a Datadomain or dedupe appliance type discussion (e.g tape sucks or other similar themes). So it is odd that they are playing to the tape sucks camp and theme vs. playing to where the technology can really shine which IMHO is in the global, distributed, scale out and cloud file system space. Oh well, I guess you go with what you know or has worked in the past to get some attention.

Molly Rector of Spectra also mentioned that she likes High Performance Computing, surprised that she did not throw in high productivity computing as well in conjunction with big data, big bandwidth, green, dedupe, power, disk, tape and related buzzword bingo terms.

Also there are some comments from myself about cost cutting.

While I see the need for organizations to cut costs during tough economic times, Im not a fan of simply cutting cost for the sake of cost cutting as opposed to finding and removing complexity that in turn remove costs of doing work. In other words, Im a fan of finding and removing waste, becoming more effective and productive along with removing the cost of doing a particular piece of work. This in the end meets the aim of bean counters to cut costs, however can be done in a way that does not degrade service levels or customer service experience. For example instead of looking to cut backup costs, do you know where the real costs of doing data protection exist (hint swapping out media is treating the symptoms) and if so, what can be done to streamline those from the source of the problem downstream to the target (e.g. media or medium). In other words, redesign, review, modernize how data protection is done, leverage data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques including archive, compression, consolidation, data management, dedupe and other technologies in effective and creative ways, after all, return on innovation is the new ROI.

Checkout Drews article here to read more on the above topics and themes.

Ok, nuff said for now

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)

Seagate recently announced the next generation Momentus XT Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) with a capacity of 750GB in a 2.5 inch form factor and MSRP of $245.00 USD including integrated NAND flash solid state device (SSD). As a refresher, the Momentus XT is a HHDD in that it includes a 4GB nand flash SSD integrated with a 500GB (or larger) 7,200 RPM hard disk drive (HDD) in a single 2.5 inch package.

Seagate Momentus XT
HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

This is the fifth installment of a series that I have done since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

Whats is new with the new generation.
Besides extra storage space capacity up to 750GB (was 500GB), there is twice as much single level cell (SLC) nand flash memory (8GB vs. 4GB in previous generation) along with an enhanced interface using 6Gb per second SATA that supports native command queuing (NCQ) for better performance. Note that NCQ was available on the previous generation Momentus XT that used a 3Gb SATA interface. Other enhancements include a larger block or sector size of 4096 bytes vs. traditional 512 bytes on previous generation storage devices.

This bigger sector size results in less overhead with managing data blocks on large capacity storage devices. Also new are caching enhancements are FAST Factor Flash Management, FAST Factor Boot and Adaptive Memory Technology. Not to be confused with EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering the other FAST; Seagate FAST is technology that exists inside the storage drive itself. FAST Factor boot enables systems to boot and be productive with speeds similar to SSD or several times faster than traditional HDDs.

The FAST Factor Flash Management provides the integrated intelligence to maximize use of the nand flash or SSD capabilities along with spinning HDD to boot performance, keep up compatibility with different systems and their operating systems. In addition to performance and interoperability, data integrity and SSD flash endurance are also enhanced for investment protection. The Adaptive Memory technology is a self learning algorithm to give SSD like performance for often used applications and data to close the storage capacity too performance gap that has increased along with data center bottlenecks.

Some questions and discussion comments:

When to use SSD vs. HDD vs. HHDD?
If you need the full speed of SSD to boost performance across all data access and cost is not an issue for available capacity that is where you should be focused. However if you are looking for lowest total cost of storage capacity with no need for performance, than lower cost high capacity HDDs should be on your shopping list. On the other hand, if you want a mix of performance and capacity at an effective price, than HHDDs should be considered.

Why the price jump compared to first generation HHDD?
IMHO, it has a lot to do with current market conditions, supply and demand.

With recent floods in Thailand and forecasted HDD and other technology shortages, the lay of supply and demand applies. This means that the supply may be constrained for some products causing demand to rise for others. Your particular vendor or supplier may have inventory however will be less likely to heavily discount while there are shortages or market opportunities to keep prices high. There are already examples of this if you check around on various sites to compare prices now vs. a few months ago. Granted it is the holiday shopping season for both people as well as organizations spending the last of their available budgets so more demand for available supplies.

What kind of performance or productivity have I seen with HHDDs?
While I have not yet tested and compared the second generation or new devices, I can attest to the performance improvements resulting in better productivity over the past year using Seagate Momentus XT HHDDs compared to traditional HDDs. Here is a post that you can follow to see some boot performance comparisons as part of some virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) sizing testing I did earlier this year that included both HHDD and HDD.

HHDD desktop 1

HDD desktop 1

HHDD desktop 2

Avg. IOPS

334

69 to 113

186 to 353

Avg. MByte sec

5.36

1.58 to 2.13

2.76 to 5.2

Percent IOPS read

94

80 to 88

92

Percent MBs read

87

63 to 77

84

Mbytes read

530

201 to 245

504

Mbytes written

128

60 to 141

100

Avg. read latency

2.24ms

8.2 to 9.5ms

1.3ms

Avg. write latency

10.41ms

20.5 to 14.96ms

8.6ms

Boot duration

120 seconds

120 to 240 sec

120

Click here to read the entire post about the above table

When will I jump on the SSD bandwagon?
Great question, I have actually been on the SSD train for several decades using them, selling them, covering, analyzing and consulting around them along with other storage mediums including HDD, HHDD, cloud and tape. I have some SSDs and will eventually put them into my laptops, workstations and servers as primary storage when the opportunity makes sense.

Will HHDDs help backup and other data protection tasks?
Yes, in fact I initially used my Momentus XTs as backup or data protection targets along with for moving large amounts of data between systems faster than what my network could support.

Why not use a SSD?
If you need the performance and can afford the price, go SSD!

On the other hand, if you are looking to add a small 64GB, 128GB or even 256GB SSD while retaining a larger capacity, slower and lower cost HDD, an HHDD should be considered as an option. By using an HHDD instead of both a SSD and HDD, you will cut the need of figuring out how to install both in space constrained laptops, desktop or workstations. In addition, you will cut the need to either manually move data between the different devices or avoid having to acquire software or drivers to do that for you.

How much does the new Seagate Momentus XT HHDD cost?
Manufactures Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is listed at $245 for a 750GB version.

Does the Momentus XT HHDD need any special drivers, adapters or software?
No, they are plug and play. There is no need for caching or performance acceleration drivers, utilities or other software. Likewise no needs for tiering or data movement tools.

How do you install an HHDD into an existing system?
Similar to installing a new HDD to replace an existing one if you are familiar with that process. If not, it goes like this (or uses your own preferred approach).

  • Attach a new HHDD to an existing system using a cable
  • Utilize a disk clone or image tool to make a copy of the existing HDD to HHDD
  • Note that the system may not be able to be used during the copy, so plan ahead.
  • After the clone or image copy is made, shutdown system, remove existing HDD and replace it with the HHDD that was connected to the system during the copy (remember to remove the copy cable).
  • Reboot the system to verify all is well, note that it will take a few reboots before the HHDD will start to learn your data and files along with how they are used.
  • Regarding your old HDD, save it, put it in a safe place and use it as a disaster recovery (DR) backup. For example if you have a safe deposit box or somewhere else safe, put it there for when you will need it in the future.


Seagate Momentus XT and USB to SATA cable

Can an HHDD fit into an existing slot in a laptop, workstation or server?
Yes. In fact, unlike a HDD and SSD combination, that requires multiple slots or forcing one device to be external, HHDDs like the Momentus XT simply use the space where your current HDD is installed.

How do you move data to it?
Beyond the first installation described above, the HHDD appears as just another local device meaning you can move data to or from it like any other HDD, SSD or CD.

Do you need automated tiering software?
No, not unless you need it for some other reason or if you want to use an HHDD as the lower cost, larger capacity option as a companion to a smaller SSD.

Do I have any of the new or second generation HHDDs?
Not yet, maybe soon and I will do another momentus moment point when that time arrives. For the time being, I will continue to use the first generation Momentus XT HHDDs

Bottom line (for now), If you are considering a large capacity, HDDs check out the HHDDs for an added performance boost including faster boot times as well as accessing other data quicker.

On the other hand if you want an SSD however your budget restricts you to a smaller capacity version, look into how an HHDD can be a viable option for some of your needs.

Ok, nuff said

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage

Solid state devices (SSD) are a popular topic gaining both industry adoption and customer deployment to speed up storage performance. Here is a link to a recent conversation that I had with John Hillard to discuss industry trends and perspectives pertaining to using SSD to boost performance and productivity for SMB and other environments.

I/O consolidation from Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) www.storageio.com/book3.html

SSDs can be a great way for organizations to do IO consolidation to reduce costs in place of using many hard disk drives (HDDs) grouped together to achieve a certain level of performance. By consolidating the IOs off of many HDDs that often end up being under utilized from a space capacity basis, organizations can boost performance for applications while reducing, or reusing HDD based storage capacity for other purposes including growth.

Here is some related material and comments:
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?
SSD and Storage System Performance
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) getting too big?
Solid state devices and the hosting industry
Achieving Energy Efficiency using FLASH SSD
Using SSD flash drives to boost performance

Four ways to use SSD storage
4 trends that shape how agencies handle storage
Giving storage its due

You can read a transcript of the conversation and listen to the pod cast here, or download the MP3 audio here.

Ok, nuff said about SSD (for now)

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations

Here is a link to a series cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations posts that Im doing over at IT-Toolbox. Each post in the series covers various topics along with a frequently asked question that I encounter pertaining to clouds, virtualization and storage networking.

Here is some related material:
The blame game: Does cloud storage result in data loss?
What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products
Clouds and Data Loss: Time for CDP (Commonsense Data Protection)?
Poll: What Do You Think of IT Clouds?
Clouds are like Electricity: Dont be Scared
Cloud conversations: Loss of data access vs. data loss
Server and Storage Virtualization – Life beyond Consolidation
Should Everything Be Virtualized?

Check out the cloud, virtualization and storage networking conversations series here.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Congratulations to IBM for releasing XIV SPC results

Over the past several years I have done an annual post about IBM and their XIV storage system and this is the fourth in what has become a series. You can read the first one here, the second one here, and last years here and here after the announcement of the IBM V7000.

IBM XIV Gen3
IBM recently announced the generation 3 or Gen3 version of XIV along with releasing for the first time public performance comparison benchmarks using storage performance council (SPC) throughout SPC2 workload.

The XIV Gen3 is positioned by IBM as having up to four (4) times the performance of earlier generations of the storage system. In terms of speeds and feeds, the Gen3 XIV supports up to 180 2TB SAS hard disk drives (HDD) that provides up to 161TB of usable storage space capacity. For connectivity, the Gen3 XIV supports up to 24 8Gb Fibre Channel (8GFC) or for iSCSI 22 1Gb Ethernet (1 GbE) ports with a total of up to 360GBytes of system cache. In addition to the large cache to boost performance, other enhancements include leveraging multi core processors along with an internal InfiniBand  network to connect nodes replacing the former 1 GbE interconnect. Note, InfiniBand is only used to interconnect the various nodes in the XIV cluster and is not used for attachment to applications servers which is handled via iSCSI and Fibre Channel.

IBM and SPC storage performance history
IBM has a strong history if not leading the industry with benchmarking and workload simulation of their storage systems including Storage Performance Council (SPC) among others. The exception for IBM over the past couple of years has been the lack of SPC benchmarks for XIV. Last year when IBM released their new V7000 storage system benchmarks include SPC were available close to if not at the product launch. I have in the past commented about IBMs lack of SPC benchmarks for XIV to confirm their marketing claims given their history of publishing results for all of their other storage systems. Now that IBM has recently released SPC2 results for the XIV it is only fitting then that I compliment them for doing so.

Benchmark brouhaha
Performance workload simulation results can often lead to applies and oranges comparisons or benchmark brouhaha battles or storage performance games. For example a few years back NetApp submitted a SPC performance result on behalf of their competitor EMC. Now to be clear on something, Im not saying that SPC is the best or definitive benchmark or comparison tool for storage or other purpose as it is not. However it is representative and most storage vendors have released some SPC results for their storage systems in addition to TPC and Microsoft ESRP among others. SPC2 is focused on streaming such as video, backup or other throughput centric applications where SPC1 is centered around IOPS or transactional activity. The metrics for SPC2 are Megabytes per second (MBps) for large file processing (LFP), large database query (LDQ) and video on demand delivery (VOD) for a given price and protection level.

What is the best benchmark?
Simple, your own application in as close to as actual workload activity as possible. If that is not possible, then some simulation or workload simulation that closets resembles your needs.

Does this mean that XIV is still relevant?
Yes

Does this mean that XIV G3 should be used for every environment?
Generally speaking no. However its performance enhancements should allow it to be considered for more applications than in the past. Plus with the public comparisons now available, that should help to silence questions (including those from me) about what the systems can really do vs. marketing claims.

How does XIV compare to some other IBM storage systems using SPC2 comparisons?

System
SPC2 MBps
Cost per SPC2
Storage GBytes
Price tested
Discount
Protection
DS5300
5,634.17
$74.13
16,383
417,648
0%
R5
V7000
3,132.87
$71.32
29,914
$223,422
38-39%
R5
XIV G3
7,467.99
$152.34
154,619
1,137,641
63-64%
Mirror
DS8800
9,705.74
$270.38
71,537
2,624,257
40-50%
R5

In the above comparisons, the DS5300 (NetApp/Engenio based) is a dual controller (4GB of cache per controller) with 128 x 146.8GB 15K HDDs configured as RAID 5 with no discount applied to the price submitted. The V7000 system which is based on the IBM SVC along with other enhancements consists of dual controllers each with 8GB of cache and 120 x 10K 300GB HDDs configured as RAID 5 with just under a 40% discount off list price for system tested. For the XIV Gen3 system tested, discount off list price for the submission is about 63% with 15 nodes and a total of 360GB of cache and 180 2TB 7.2K SAS HDDs configured as mirrors. The DS8800 system with dual controllers has a 256GB of cache, 768 x 146GB 15K HDDs configured in RAID5 with a discount between 40 to 50% off of list.

What the various metrics do not show is the benefit of various features and functionality which should be considered to your particular needs. Likewise, if your applications are not centered around bandwidth or throughput, then the above performance comparisons would not be relevant. Also note that the systems above have various discount prices as submitted which can be a hint to a smart shopper where to begin negotiations at. You can also do some analysis of the various systems based on their performance, configuration, physical footprint, functionality and cost plus the links below take you to the complete reports with more information.

DS8800 SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

XIV SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

DS5300 SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

V7000 SPC2 executive summary and full disclosure report

Bottom line, benchmarks and performance comparisons are just that, a comparison that may or may not be relevant to your particular needs. Consequently they should be used as a tool combined with other information to see how a particular solution might be a fit for your specific needs. The best benchmark however is your own application running as close to possible realistic workload to get a representative perspective of a systems capabilities.

Ok, nuff said
Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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What am I hearing and seeing while out and about

It has been a busy fall 2011 which started out with VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas just before the labor day weekend.

At the CXI party in Vegas during VMworld standing with the NEXUS vMonstoerLas Vegas Strip from CXI party during VMworld with Karen of Arcola
Scenes from the CXI party (@cxi) at VMworld 2011

Besides activity in support of the launch of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), I have been busy with various client research, consulting and advisory projects. In addition to Las Vegas for VMworld, out and about travel activities for attending conferences and presenting seminars have included visits in Minneapolis (local), Nijkerk Holland and Denver (in the same week) and Orlando (SNW). Upcoming out and about events are scheduled for Los Angles, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle and a couple of trips to San Jose area before the brief thanksgiving holiday break.

My Sunday virtual office in Nijkerk before a busy weekMy Sunday virtual office in Nijkerk before a busy week
Beer and Bitter ballens on the left, coffee machine in Nijkerk on the right

Day one of two day seminar in Nijkerk

Instead of automobiles lined up a trainstation, its bicycles in NijkerkWaiting in Nijkerk for 6:30AM train to Schiphol and on to Denver
Bicycles lined up at the Nijkerk train station, waiting for the 6:30 train to Schiphol

Changing trains in Amsfort on way to SchipholBoarding Delta A333 AMS to MSP then on to DEN
Changing trains on way to Schiphol to board flight to MSP and then to DEN

Climbing out of Denver on way back to MSP, it was a long yet fun weekEvening clouds enroute from DEN to MSP
After Denver back to MSP for a few days before SNW in Orlando

While being out and about I have had the chance to meet and visit with many different people. Here are some questions and comments that I have heard while out and about:

  • What comes after cloud?
  • Are there standards for clouds and virtualization?
  • Should cost savings be the justification for going to cloud, virtual or dynamic environments?
  • How is big data different than traditional stream and flat file analytics and processing using tools such as SAS (Statistical Analysis Software)?
  • Is big data only about map reduce and hadoop?
  • Are clouds any less secure or safe for storage and applications?
  • Do clouds and virtualization removing complexity and simplify infrastructures?
  • Are cloud storage services cheaper than buying and managing your own?
  • Is object based storage a requirement for public or private cloud?
  • Do solution bundles such as EMC vBlock and NetApp FlexPods reduce complexity?
  • Why is FCoE taking so long to be adopted and is it dead?
  • Should cost savings be the basis for deciding to do a VDI or virtualization project?
  • What is the best benchmark or comparison for making storage decisions?

In addition, there continues to be plenty of cloud confusion, FUD and hype around public, private, hybrid along with AaaS, SaaS, PaaS and IaaS among other XaaS. The myth that virtualization of servers, storage and workstations is only for consolidation continues. However there are more people beginning to see the next wave of life beyond consolidation where the focus expands to flexibility, agility and speed of deployment for non aggregated workloads and applications. Another popular myth that is changing is that data footprint reduction (DFR) is only about dedupe and backup. What is changing is an awareness that DFR spans all types of storage and data from primary to secondary leveraging different techniques including archive, backup modernization, compression, consolidation, data management and dedupe along with thin provisioning among other techniques.

Archiving for email, database and file systems needs to be rescued from being perceived as only for compliance purposes. If you want or need to reduce your data footprint impact (DFR), optimize your storage for performance or capacity, enable backup, BC and DR to be performed faster, achieve Green IT and efficiency objectives, expand your awareness around archiving. While discussing archiving, focus is often on the target or data storage medium such as disk, tape, optical or cloud along with DFR techniques such as compression and dedupe or functionally including ediscovery and WORM. The other aspects of archive that need to be looked at include policies, retention, application and software plugins for Exchange, SQL, Sharepoint, Sybase, Oracle, SAP, VMware and others.

Boot storms continue to be a common theme for apply solid state devices (SSD) in support of virtual desktop inititiaves (VDI). There is however a growing awareness and discussions around shutdown storms, day to day maintenance including virus scans in addition to applications that increase the number of writes. Consequently the discussions around VDI are expanding to include both reads and writes as well as reduced latency for storage and networks.

Some other general observations, thoughts and comments:

  • Getting into Holland as a visitor is easier than returning to the U.S. as a citizen
  • Airport security screening is more thorough and professional in Europe than in the U.S.
  • Hops add latency to beer (when you drink it) and to networks (time delay)
  • Fast tape drives need disk storage to enable streaming for reads and writes
  • SSD is keeping HDDs alive, HDDs are keeping tape alive and all there roles are evolving while the technologies continue to evolve.
  • Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) are gaining in awareness and deployments in workstations as well as laptops.
  • Confusion exists around what are flat layer 2 networks for LANs and Sans
  • Click here to view additional comments and perspectives

Ok, nuff said for now

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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SNW Fall 2011 revisited and SNIA Emerald program

A couple of weeks ago I traveled down to Orlando Florida for a few days to attend the fall 2011 SNW (Storage Networking World) produced in conjunction by IDG Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

SNIA and SNW

While at the Orlando event, SNIA executive director Leo Legar asked me how many SNWs I had attended and my responses was on which continent?

My answer was part in fun however also serious as I have been attending SNWs (in addition to other SNIA events) for over ten years in both North and South America as well as in Europe including presenting SNIA tutorials and SNW sessions.

SNW is always good for meeting up with old friends and acquaintances along with meeting new ones including twitter tweeps (hashtag #snwusa #snw2011 @sniacloud @snwusa) and the recent event was no exception. Granted SNW is smaller than it was during its peak in the mid 2000s however it was great to go for a couple of days of meetings, checking out the expo hall and some sessions as well as getting out and about meeting people involved with servers, storage, networking, virtualization, cloud, hardware, software and services.

SNW remains as its name implies (Storage Networking World) an event around networking as in conversations, learning, knowledge exchange, information gathering and meetings not to mention the hands on lab. I found the two days I was there adequate to get the meetings and other activities I had planned, along with time for impromptu meetings. ANother observation was that during the peak of the large mega SNW events, while there were more meetings, they were also much shorter along the lines of speed dating vs. those a couple of weeks ago where there was time to have quality conversations.

Some of the news at the recent SNW event, involved SNIA and their Green Storage Initiative (GSI) announcing the availability of the Emerald program Green IT storage energy metrics that have been in the works for several years. The SNIA Emerald program consists of specifications, taxonomies, metrics and measurements standards to gauge various types of storage power or energy usage to gauge its effectiveness. In other words, yes, Green IT and Green storage are still alive, they just are not as trendy to talk about as they were a few years ago which a shift in focus towards productivity, effective use and supporting growth to help close the green gap and missed IT as well as business opportunities.

Also during the recent SNW event, I did a book signing event sponsored by SNIA. If you have not done so, check out the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) who arranged for several of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking to be given away. Book signings are fun in that I get to meet lots of people and hear what they are doing, encountering, looking for, have done, concerned or excited about. It was handy having SNIA CSI material available at the table as I was signing books and visiting with people to be able to give them information about things such as CDMI not to mention hearing what they were doing or looking for. Note to SNIA, if we do this again, lets make sure to have someone from the CSI at the table to join in the fun and conversations as there were some good ones. Learn more about the activities of the SNIA CSI including their Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI) here.

SNIA Cloud Storage Initiaive CSI

Thanks again to SNIA for arranging the book signing event and for those who were not able to get a copy of my new book before they ran out, my publisher CRC Press Taylor and Francis has arranged a special SNIA and SNW discount code. To take advantage of the SNIA and SNW discount code, go to the CRC Press web site (here) and apply the discount code KVK01 during checkout for catalog item K12375 (ISBN: 9781439851739).

30 percent discount code for Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking Book

Thanks again to Wayne Adams (@wma01606), Leo Legar and Michael Meleedy among others who arranged for a fantastic fall 2011 SNW event along with everyone who participated in the book signing event and other conversations while in Orlando and to those who were involved virtually via twitter.

Ok, nuff said for now

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

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Commentary on Clouds, Storage, Networking, Green IT and other topics

Rather than doing a bunch of separate posts, here is a collection of different perspectives and commentary on various IT and data storage industry activity.

Various comments and perspectives

In this link are comments and perspectives regarding thin provisioning including how it works as well as when to use it for optimizing storage space capacity. Speaking of server and storage capacity, here in this link are comments on what server and storage would be needed to support an SMB office of 50 people (or more, or less) along with how to back it up.

For those interested or in need of managing data and other records in this link are comments on preparing yourself for regulatory scrutiny.

Storage networking interface or protocol debates (battles) can be interesting, in this link, see the role of iSCSI SANs for data storage environments. Lets not forget about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) which is discussed in this link and here in this link. Here in this link are comments about how integrated rackem, stackem and package bundles stack up. To support increased continued demand for managed service providers (MSP), cloud and hosted services providers are continuing to invest in their infrastructures, so read some comments here. While technology plays a role particular as it matures, there is another barrier to leveraging converged solutions and that is organizational, read some perspectives and thoughts here.

Storage optimization including data footprint reduction (DFR) can be used to cut costs as well as support growth. In this link see tips on reducing storage costs and additional perspectives in this link to do more with what you have. Here in this link are some wit and wisdom comments on the world of disaster recovery solutions. Meanwhile in this link are perspectives for choosing the right business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) consultant. In this link are comments on BC and DR including planning for virtualization and life beyond consolidation. Are disk based dedupe and virtual tape summit resources libraries a hold over for old backup, or a gateway to the future, see some perspectives on those topics and technologies in this link.

Here are some more comments on DR and BC leveraging the cloud while perspectives on various size organizations looking at clouds for backup in this piece here. What is the right local, cloud or hybrid backup for SMBs, check out some commentary here while viewing some perspectives on cloud disaster recovery here. Not to be forgotten, laptop data protection can also be a major headache however there are also many cures discussed in this piece here.

The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Green Storage Initiative (GSI) debut their Emerald power efficiency measurement specification recently, read some perspectives and comments in this link here. While we are on the topic of data center efficiency and effectiveness, here in this link are perspectives on micro servers or mini blade systems. Solution bundles also known as data center in a box or SAN in a CAN have been popular with solutions from EMC (vBlocks) and NetApp (FlexPods) among others, read perspectives on them in this link.

Buzzword bingo

What would a conversation involving data storage and IT (particularly buzzword bingo) be without comments about Big Data and Big Bandwidth which you can read here.

Want to watch some videos, from Spring 2011 SNW, check out starting around the 15:00 to 55:00 time scale in this video from the Cube where various topics are discussed. Interested in how to scale data storage with clustered or scale up and out solutions, check out this video here or if you want to see some perspectives on data de duplication watch this clip.

Various comments and perspectives

Here is a video discussing SMBs as the current sweet spot for server virtualization with comments on the SMB virtualization dark side also discussed here. Meanwhile here are comments regarding EMC Flashy announcements from earlier this year on the Cube. Check out this video where I was a guest of Cali Lewis and John MacArthur on the Cube from the Dell Storage Forum discussing a range of topics as well as having some fun. Check out these videos and perspectives from VMworld 2011.

Whats your take on choosing the best SMB NAS? Here are some of my perspectives on choosing a SMB NAS storage system. Meanwhile here are some perspectives on enterprise class storage features finding their way into SMB NAS storage systems.

Meanwhile industry leaders EMC and NetApp have been busy enhancing their NAS storage solutions that you can read comments here.

Are you familiar with the Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA)? Here are some comments about OVA and other server virtualization topics.

Whats your take on Thunderbolt the new interconnect Apple is using in place of USB, here are my thoughts. Meanwhile various other tips and Ask the Expert (AtE) and discussion can be found here.

Check out the above links, as well view more perspectives, comments and news here, here, here, here and here.

Ok, nuff said for now

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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The blame game: Does cloud storage result in data loss?

I recently came across a piece by Carl Brooks over at IT Tech News Daily that caught my eye, title was Cloud Storage Often Results in Data Loss. The piece has an effective title (good for search engine: SEO optimization) as it stood out from many others I saw on that particular day.

Industry Trend: Cloud storage

What caught my eye on Carls piece is that it reads as if the facts based on a quick survey point to clouds resulting in data loss, as opposed to being an opinion that some cloud usage can result in data loss.

Data loss

My opinion is that if not used properly including ignoring best practices, any form of data storage medium or media could result or be blamed for data loss. For some people they have lost data as a result of using cloud storage services just as other people have lost data or access to information on other storage mediums and solutions. For example, data has been lost on tape, Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), Solid State Devices (SSD), Hybrid HDDs (HHDD), RAID and non RAID, local and remote and even optical based storage systems large and small. In some cases, there have been errors or problems with the medium or media, in other cases storage systems have lost access to, or lost data due to hardware, firmware, software, or configuration including due to human error among other issues.

Data loss

Technology failure: Not if, rather when and how to decrease impact
Any technology regardless of what it is or who it is from along with its architecture design and implementation can fail. It is not if, rather when and how gracefully along with what safeguards to decrease the impact, in addition to containing or isolating faults differentiates various products or solutions. How they automatically repair and self heal to keep running or support accessibility and maintain data integrity are important as is how those options are used. Granted a failure may not be technology related per say, rather something associated with human intervention, configuration, change management (or lack thereof) along with accidental or intentional activities.

Walking the talk
I have used public cloud storage services for several years including SaaS and AaaS as well as IaaS (See more XaaS here) and knock on wood, have not lost any data yet, loss of access sure, however not data being lost.

I follow my advice and best practices when selecting cloud providers looking for good value, service level agreements (SLAs) and service level objectives (SLOs) over low cost or for free services.

In the several years of using cloud based storage and services there has been some loss of access, however no loss of data. Those service disruptions or loss of access to data and services ranged from a few minutes to a little over an hour. In those scenarios, if I could not have waited for cloud storage to become accessible, I could have accessed a local copy if it were available.

Had a major disruption occurred where it would have been several days before I could gain access to that information, or if it were actually lost, I have a data insurance policy. That data insurance policy is part of my business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) strategy. My BC and DR strategy is a multi layered approach combining local, offline and offsite as along with online cloud data protection and archiving.

Assuming my cloud storage service could get data back to a given point (RPO) in a given amount of time (RTO), I have some options. One option is to wait for the service or information to become available again assuming a local copy is no longer valid or available. Another option is to start restoration from a master gold copy and then roll forward changes from the cloud services as that information becomes available. In other words, I am using cloud storage as another resource that is for both protecting what is local, as well as complimenting how I locally protect things.

Minimize or cut data loss or loss of access
Anything important should be protected locally and remotely meaning leveraging cloud and a master or gold backup copy.

To cut the cost of protecting information, I also leverage archives, which mean not all data gets protected the same. Important data is protected more often reducing RPO exposure and speed up RTO during restoration. Other data that is not as important is protected, however on a different frequency with other retention cycles, in other words, tiered data protection. By implementing tiered data protection, best practices, and various technologies including data footprint reduction (DFR) such as archive, compression, dedupe in addition to local disk to disk (D2D), disk to disk to cloud (D2D2C), along with routine copies to offline media (removable HDDs or RHDDs) that go offsite,  Im able to stretch my data protection budget further. Not only is my data protection budget stretched further, I have more options to speed up RTO and better detail for recovery and enhanced RPOs.

If you are looking to avoid losing data, or loss of access, it is a simple equation in no particular order:

  • Strategy and design
  • Best practices and processes
  • Various technologies
  • Quality products
  • Robust service delivery
  • Configuration and implementation
  • SLO and SLA management metrics
  • People skill set and knowledge
  • Usage guidelines or terms of service (ToS)

Unfortunately, clouds like other technologies or solutions get a bad reputation or blamed when something goes wrong. Sometimes it is the technology or service that fails, other times it is a combination of errors that resulted in loss of access or lost data. With clouds as has been the case with other storage mediums and systems in the past, when something goes wrong and if it has been hyped, chances are it will become a target for blame or finger pointing vs. determining what went wrong so that it does not occur again. For example cloud storage has been hyped as easy to use, don’t worry, just put your data there, you can get out of the business of managing storage as the cloud will do that magically for you behind the scenes.

The reality is that while cloud storage solutions can offload functions, someone is still responsible for making decisions on its usage and configuration that impact availability. What separates various providers is their ability to design in best practices, isolate and contain faults quickly, have resiliency integrated as part of a solution along with various SLAs aligned to what the service level you are expecting in an easy to use manner.

Does that mean the more you pay the more reliable and resilient a solution should be?
No, not necessarily, as there can still be risks including how the solution is used.

Does that mean low cost or for free solutions have the most risk?
No, not necessarily as it comes down to how you use or design around those options. In other words, while cloud storage services remove or mask complexity, it still comes down to how you are going to use a given service.

Shared responsibility for cloud (and non cloud) storage data protection
Anything important enough that you cannot afford to lose, or have quick access to should be protected in different locations and on various mediums. In other words, balance your risk. Cloud storage service provider toned to take responsibility to meet service expectations for a given SLA and SLOs that you agree to pay for (unless free).

As the customer you have the responsibility of following best practices supplied by the service provider including reading the ToS. Part of the responsibility as a customer or consumer is to understand what are the ToS, SLA and SLOs for a given level of service that you are using. As a customer or consumer, this means doing your homework to be ready as a smart educated buyer or consumer of cloud storage services.

If you are a vendor or value added reseller (VAR), your opportunity is to help customers with the acquisition process to make informed decision. For VARs and solution providers, this can mean up selling customers to a higher level of service by making them aware of the risk and reward benefits as opposed to focus on cost. After all, if a order taker at McDonalds can ask Would you like to super size your order, why cant you as a vendor or solution provider also have a value oriented up sell message.

Additional related links to read more and sources of information:

Choosing the Right Local/Cloud Hybrid Backup for SMBs
E2E Awareness and insight for IT environments
Poll: What Do You Think of IT Clouds?
Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products
What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Cloud conversations: Loss of data access vs. data loss
Clouds and Data Loss: Time for CDP (Commonsense Data Protection)?
Clouds are like Electricity: Dont be scared
Wit and wisdom for BC and DR
Criteria for choosing the right business continuity or disaster recovery consultant
Local and Cloud Hybrid Backup for SMBs
Is cloud disaster recovery appropriate for SMBs?
Laptop data protection: A major headache with many cures
Disaster recovery in the cloud explained
Backup in the cloud: Large enterprises wary, others climbing on board
Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011)
Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A Corporate Insurance Policy

Poll:  Who is responsible for cloud storage data loss?

Taking action, what you should (or not) do
Dont be scared of clouds, however do your homework, be ready, look before you leap and follow best practices. Look into the service level agreements (SLAs) associated with a given cloud storage product or service. Follow best practices about how you or someone else will protect what data is put into the cloud.

For critical data or information, consider having a copy of that data in the cloud as well as at or in another place, which could be in a different cloud or local or offsite and offline. Keep in mind the theme for critical information and data is not if, rather when so what can be done to decrease the risk or impact of something happening, in other words, be ready.

Data put into the cloud can be lost, or, loss of access to it can occur for some amount of time just as happens with using non cloud storage such as tape, disk or ssd. What impacts or minimizes your risk of using traditional local or remote as well as cloud storage are the best practices, how configured, protected, secured and managed. Another consideration is the type and quality of the storage product or cloud service can have a big impact. Sure, a quality product or service can fail; however, you can also design and configure to decrease those impacts.

Wrap up
Bottom line, do not be scared of cloud storage, however be ready, do your homework, review best practices, understand benefits and caveats, risk and reward. For those who want to learn more about cloud storage (public, private and hybrid) along with data protection, data management, data footprint reduction among other related topics and best practices, I happen to know of some good resources. Those resources in addition to the links provided above are titled Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) that you can learn more about here as well as find at Amazon among other venues. Also, check out Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A Corporate Insurance Policy by Preston De Guise (aka twitter @backupbear ) which is a great resource for protecting data.

Ok, nuff said for now

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Trick or treat: 2011 IT Zombie technology poll

Warning: Do not be scared, however be ready for some trick and treat fun, it is after all, the Halloween season.

I like new emerging technologies and trends along with Zombie technologies, you know, those technologies that have been declared dead yet are still being enhanced, sold and used.

Zombie technologies as a name may be new for some, while others will have a realization of experiencing something from the past, technologies being declared deceased yet still alive and being used. Zombie technologies are those that have been declared dead, yet still alive enabling productivity for customers that use them and often profits for the vendors who sell them.

Zombie technologies

Some people consider a technology or trend dead once it hits the peak of hype as that can signal a time to jump to the next bandwagon or shiny new technology (or toy).

Others will see a technology as being dead when it is on the down slope of the hype curve towards the trough of disillusionment citing that as enough cause for being deceased.

Yet others will declare something dead while it matures working its way through the trough of disillusionment evolving from market adoption to customer deployment eventually onto the plateau of productivity (or profitability).

Then there are those who see something as being dead once it finally is retired from productive use, or profitable for sale.

Of course then there are those who just like to call anything new or other than what they like or that is outside of their comfort zone as being dead. In other words, if your focus or area of interest is tied to new products, technology trends and their promotion, rest assured you better be where the resources are being applied and view other things as being dead and thus probably not a fan of Zombie technologies (or at least publicly).

On the other hand, if your area of focus is on leveraging technologies and products in a productive way, including selling things that are profitable without a lot of marketing effort, your view of what is dead or not will be different. For example if you are risk averse letting someone else be on the leading bleeding edge (unless you have a dual redundant HA blood bank attached to your environment) your view of what is dead or not will be much different from those promoting the newest trend.

Funny thing about being declared dead, often it is not the technology, implementation, research and development or customer acquisitions, rather simply a lack of promotion, marketing and general awareness. Take tape for example which has been a multi decade member of the Zombie technology list. Recently vendors banded together investing or spending on marketing awareness reaching out to say tape is alive. Guess what, lo and behold, there was a flurry of tape activity in venues that normally might not be talking about tape. Funny how marketing resources can bring something back from the dead including Zombie technologies to become popular or cool to discuss again.

With the 2011 Halloween season among us, it is time to take a look this years list of Zombie technologies. Keep in mind that being named a Zombie technology is actually an honor in that it usually means someone wants to see it dead so that his or her preferred product or technology can take it place.

Here are 2011 Zombie technologies.

Backup: Far from being dead, its focus is changing and evolving with a broader emphasis on data protection. While many technologies associated with backup have been declared dead along with some backup software tools, the reality is that it is time or modernizes how backups and data protection are performed. Thus, backup is on the Zombie technology list and will live on, like it or not until it is exorcised from, your environment replaced with a modern resilient and flexible protected data infrastructure.

Big Data: While not declared dead yet, it will be soon by some creative marketer trying to come up with something new. On the other hand, there are those who have done big data analytics across different Zombie platforms for decades which of course is a badge of honor. As for some of the other newer or shiny technologies, they will have to wait to join the big data Zombies.

Cloud: Granted clouds are still on the hype cycle, some argue that it has reached its peak in terms of hype and now heading down into the trough of disillusionment, which of course some see as meaning dead. In my opinion cloud, hype has or is close to peaking, real work is occurring which means a gradual shift from industry adoption to customer deployment. Put a different way, clouds will be on the Zombie technology list of a couple of decades or more. Also, keep in mind that being on the Zombie technology list is an honor indicating shift towards adoption and less on promotion or awareness fan fare.

Data centers: With the advent of the cloud, data centers or habitats for technology have been declared dead, yet there is continued activity in expanding or building new ones all the time. Even the cloud relies on data centers for housing the physical resources including servers, storage, networks and other components that make up a Green and Virtual Data Center or Cloud environment. Needless to day, data centers will stay on the zombie list for some time.

Disk Drives: Hard disk drives (HDD) have been declared dead for many years and more recently due to popularity of SSDs have lost their sex appeal. Ironically, if tape is dead at the hands of HDDs, then how can HDDs be dead, unless of course they are on the Zombie technology list. What is happening is like tape, HDDs role are changing as the technology continues to evolve and will be around for another decade or so.

Fibre Channel (FC): This is a perennial favorite having been declared dead on a consistent basis over three decades now going back to the early 90s. While there are challengers as there have been in the past, FC is far from dead as a technology with 16 Gb (16GFC) now rolling out and a transition path for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). My take is that FC will be on the zombie list for several more years until finally retired.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): This is a new entrant and one uniquely qualified for being declared dead as it is still in its infancy. Like its peer FC which was also declared dead a couple of decades ago, FCoE is just getting started and looks to be on the Zombie list for a couple of decades into the future.

Green IT: I have heard that Green IT is dead, after all, it was hyped before the cloud era which has been declared dead by some, yet there remains a Green gap or disconnect between messaging and issues thus missed opportunities. For a dead trend, SNIA recently released their Emerald program which consists of various metrics and measurements (remember, zombies like metrics to munch on) for gauging energy effectiveness for data storage. The hype cycle of Green IT and Green storage may be dead, however Green IT in the context of a shift in focus to increased productivity using the same or less energy is underway. Thus Green IT and Green storage are on the Zombie list.

iPhone: With the advent of Droid and other smart phones, I have heard iPhones declared dead, granted some older versions are. However while the Apple cofounder Steve Jobs has passed on (RIP), I suspect we will be seeing and hearing more about the iPhone for a few years more if not longer.

IBM Mainframe: When it comes to information technology (IT), the king of the Zombie list is the venerable IBM mainframe aka zSeries. The IBM mainframe has been declared dead for over 30 years if not longer and will be on the zombie list for another decade or so. After all, IBM keeps investing in the technology as people buy them not to mention IBM built a new factory to assemble them in.

NAS: Congratulations to Network Attached Storage (NAS) including Network File System (NFS) and Windows Common Internet File System (CIFS) aka Samba or SMB for making the Zombie technology list. This means of course that NAS in general is no longer considered an upstart or immature technology; rather it is being used and enhanced in many different directions.

PC: The personal computer was touted as killing off some of its Zombie technology list members including the IBM mainframe. With the advent of tablets, smart phones, virtual desktops infrastructures (VDI), the PC has been declared dead. My take is that while the IBM mainframe may eventually drop of the Zombie list in another decade or two if it finds something to do in retirement, the PC will be on the list for many years to come. Granted, the PC could live on even longer in the form of a virtual server where the majority of guest virtual machines (VMs) are in support of Windows based PC systems.

Printers: How long have we heard that printers are dead? The day that printers are dead is the day that the HP board of directors should really consider selling off that division.

RAID: Its been over twenty years since the first RAID white paper and early products appeared. Back in the 90s RAID was a popular buzzword and bandwagon topic however, people have moved on to new things. RAID has been on the Zombie technology list for several years now while it continues to find itself being deployed at the high end of the market down into consumer products. The technology continues to evolve in both hardware as well as software implementations on a local and distributed basis. Look for RAID to be on the Zombie list for at least the next couple of decades while it continues to evolve, after all, there is still room for RAID 7, RAID 8, RAID 9 not to mention moving into hexadecimal or double digit variants.

SAN: Storage Area Networks (SANs) have been declared dead and thus on the Zombie technology list before, and will be mentioned again well into the next decade. While the various technologies will continue to evolve, networking your servers to storage will also expand into different directions.

tape summit resources: Magnetic tape has been on the Zombie technology list almost as long as the IBM mainframe and it is hard to predict which one will last longer. My opinion is that tape will outlast the IBM mainframe, as it will be needed to retrieve the instructions on how to de install those Zombie monsters. Tape has seen resurgence in vendors spending some marketing resources and to no surprise, there has been an increase in coverage about it being alive, even at Google. Rest assured, tape is very safe on the Zombie technology list for another decade or more.

Windows: Similar to the PC, Microsoft Windows has been touted in the past as causing other platforms to be dead, however has been added to the Zombie list for many years now. Given that Windows is the most commonly virtualized platform or guest VM, I think we will be hearing about Windows on the Zombie list for a few decades more. There are particular versions of Windows as with any technology that have gone into maintenance or sustainment mode or even discontinued.

Poll: What are the most popular Zombie technologies?

Keep in mind that a Zombie technology is one that is still in use, being developed or enhanced, sold usually at a profit and used typically in a productive way. In some cases, a declared dead or Zombie technology may only be just in its infancy getting started having either just climbed over the peak of hype or coming out of the trough of disillusionment. In other instance, the Zombie technology has been around for a long time yet continues to be used (or abused).

Note: Zombie voting rules apply which means vote early, vote often, and of course vote for those who cannot include those that are dead (real or virtual).

Ok, nuff said, enough fun, lets get back to work, at least for now

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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Trick or treat: Have you seen any IT Frankenstacks

Given that it is Halloween season, time for some fun.

Over the past couple of weeks various product and solution services announcements have been made that result in various articles, columns, blogs and commentary in support of them.

Ever wonder which if any of those products could actually be stitched together to work in a production environment without increasing the overall cost and complexity that they sometimes promote as their individual value proposition? Granted, many can and do work quite well when introduced into heterogeneous or existing environments with good interoperability. However what about those that look good on paper or in a webex or you tube video on their own, however may be challenged to be pieced together to work with others?

Reading product announcements

Hence in the spirit of halloween, the vision of a Frankenstack appeared.

A Frankenstack is a fictional environment where you piece various technologies from announcements or what you see or hear about in different venues into a solution.

Part of being a Frankenstack is that the various pieces may look interesting on their own, good luck trying to put them together on paper let alone in a real environment.

While I have not yet attempted to piece together any Frankenstacks lately, I can visualize various ones.

Stacking or combining different technologies, will they work together?

A Frankenstack could be based on what a vendor, VAR, or solution provider proposes or talks about.

A Frankenstack could also also be what a analyst, blogger, consultant, editor, pundit or writer pieces together in a story or recommendation.

Some Frankenstacks may be more synergistic and interoperable than others perhaps even working in a real customer environment.

Of course even if the pieces could be deployed, would you be able to afford them let alone support them (interoperability aside) without adding complexity?

You see a Frankenstack might look good on paper or on a slide deck, webex or via some other venue, however will it actually work or apply to your environment or are they just fun to talk about?

Dont get me wrong, I like hearing about new technology and products as much as anyone else, however lets have some fun with Frankenstacks and keep in perspective do they help or add complexity to your environment.

Ok, enough fun for now, let me know what you see or can put together in terms of Frankenstacks.

Keep in mind they dont actually have to work as that is what qualifies them for trick or treat and Frankenstack status.

Enjoy your Halloween season, do not be afraid, however be ready for some tricks and treats, its that time of the year.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved