Its Award Season: Time for 2014 top VMware and virtualization blog voting
It’s that time of the year again for award season including with the recently wrapped up 2014 Winter Olympic (and benchmarking games), the academy awards and many others. That also means it is time again for the annual top VMware, Virtualization, Storage and related blogs voting now taking place until March 17th over at Eric Siebert (aka @ericsiebert) vsphere-land.com site that then appears on his vLaunchPad site. There is plenty of new school, as well as some old school and a few current or future school theme blogs represented with some being more VMware specific while others are cloud, virtual, server, storage, networking, development or other related themes.
Click on the above image to cast your vote
My StorageIOblog.com has been on the vLaunchPad site for a few years now as well as having syndicated content that also appears via some of the other venues listed there.
Thus as this is a peoples choice process, I’m asking if you can take a few moments and cast your vote here (thank you in advance) which I hope includes StorageIOblog.com as part of the top ten, in addition to being nominated in the Storage, Podcast and Independent blogger categories.
In addition to mine, you will also find many of my fellow VMware vExperts among others at the vLaunchpad site so check them out as well.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Welcome to the February 2014 edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics. Its winter here in North America and specifically in the Stillwater Minnesota to say that there is plenty of snow and cold would be an understatement. However in a few months instead of dealing with -20F or -40F wind chills, it will be 100F head index, thus the saying of if you don’t like the weather, either leave or wait a bit as it will change.
In case you missed the December 2013 StorageIO holiday greeting which was in place of the normal newsletter you can view that here. In the absence of the regular December and January StorageIO Update newsletters, this is a larger edition to get caught up. However not to worry as there is more content and items in the wings for March.
2013 wrapped up with a flurry of industry activity including some acquisitions (Avago buying LSI and Seagate acquiring Xyratex among others). Likewise 2014 so far is continuing the momentum living up to the mantra that while there may be economic challenges, there is no such thing as a data or information recession.
Watch for future posts, commentary, perspectives and other information down the road (and in the not so distant future) pertaining to information and data infrastructure topics, themes and trends across cloud, virtual, legacy server, storage, networking, hardware and software. Also check out our backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving (Under the resources section on StorageIO.com) for various presentation, book chapter downloads and other content.
Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter and keep in mind, at least here in North America spring is just around the corner with summer not to far off either.
Ok, nuff said (for now)
Cheers gs
Industry trends tips, commentary, articles and blog posts What is being seen, heard and talked about while out and about
The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.
Recent StorageIO comments and perspectives in the news
SearchSMBStorage: Comments on Lenovo EMC Iomega new SMB NAS products ChannelProSMB: Comments on what the future holds for HDDs NetworkAsia: Comments on WORM disk and tape SeaarchSolidStateStorage: Comments on SSD industry activity and OCZ bankruptcy EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on software defined storage Ironmountain: Comments on storage efficiency in small businesses PC Today: Comments on best practices PC Today: Commnets on How to recover lost data PC Today: Comments on Virtualization 101, understand context which virtualization is used PC Today: Comments on going paperless PC Today: Optimize Now – Comments on optimize to improve IT productivity Processor: Comments on Know Which Emerging Technologies Could Make An Impact Processor: Comments on Backup Problems – What To Do Before & After Issues Arise Processor: Comments on Know When & When Not To Replace Servers Processor: Comments on Enterprise Backup Solutions Buying Tips Processor: Comments on Server Trends, Technologies Reshape The Industry
Recent StorageIO tips and articles in various venues
Information Security Buzz: How Secure Is Your Data Storage? SearchStorage: Bridging the gap: Choosing storage-over-distance network technology SearchEnterpriseWAN: Wide area network resiliency best practices StateTech: 5 Tips for Factoring Software into Disaster Recovery Plans BizTech: How to Turn Storage Networks into Better Performers InfoStor: The Many Variations of RAID Storage
Recent StorageIOblog posts and perspectives
Server Storage I/O Network Benchmark Winter Olympic Games – Click to read more
Removing complexity and cost to drive return on innovation – Click to read more
StorageIO data infrastructure links page updated (1,200+ entries) – Click to read more
IoD, IoT, IoE, IoS, IoP, IoU and IoX are in your future – Click to read more
Goodbye 2013, hello 2014, predictions past, present and future – Click to read more
Small Medium Business (SMB) IT gains respect, what about SOHO? – Click to read more
Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays 2013 from StorageIO – Click to read more
Server virtualization nested and tiered hypervisors – Click to read more
Remember to check out our objectstoragecenter.com page where you will find a growing collection of information and links on cloud and object storage themes, technologies and trends from various sources.
StorageIO activities (out and about)
Seminars, symposium, conferences, webinars Live in person and recorded recent and upcoming events
The StorageIO calendar continues to evolve, here are some recent and upcoming activities.
March 13, 2014
BrightTalk
Business Resiliency (BR), Business Continuity (BC) and Disaster Recovery (DR) Management
Webinar 9AM PT
March 12, 2014
BrightTalk
Hybrid Clouds – Bridging the Gap between public and private environments
Webinar 9AM PT
February 18, 2014
BrightTalk
Networking with your Servers and Storage – Cloud, virtual and physical environments
Click here to view other upcoming along with earlier event activities. Watch for more 2014 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.
Vendors, VAR’s and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.
Thank you to the current StorageIoblog.com site sponsor advertisers
Druva (End Point Data Protection)
EMC (EMC Community Network) Unitrends (Enterprise backup solution and management tools) Veeam (VMware and Hyper-V virtual server backup and data protection tools).
Contact StorageIO to learn about sponsorship and other partnership opportunities.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Server Storage I/O Network Benchmark Winter Olympic Games
It is time for the 2014 Winter Olympic games in Sochi Russia where competitors including some athletes come together in what has become a mix of sporting and entertainment engaging activities.
Games of inches and seconds, performance and skill
Some of these activities including real Olympic game events are heavier on sports appeal, some with artistic and others pure entertainment with a mix of beauty, braun and maybe even a beast or two. Then there are those events that have been around since the last ice age, while others being post global warming era.
Hence some have been around longer than others showing a mix of old, new in terms of the sports, athletes not to mention technology and their outfits.
I mean how about some of the new snow boarding and things on skis being done, can you image if they brought in as a new "X" sport roller derby on the short speed skating track sponsored by Red Bull or Bud light? Wait, that sounds like the Red Bull Crashed Ice event (check this out if not familiar with) think motto cross, hockey, down hill on ice. How about getting some of the south African long distance sprinters to learn how to speed skate, talk about moving some gold metal as in medals back to the african continent! On the other hand, the current powers to be would lodge protest, change the benchmark or rules to stay in power, hmm, sound familiar with IT?
Ok, enough of the fun stuff (for now), let’s get back on track here (catch that pun?).
Metrics that matter, winners and losers
Since these are the Olympics, lets also remember that there still awards for personal and team winners (along with second and third place), after all, if all Olympians were winners, there would be no losers and if no losers, how could there be a winner?
Who or what decides the winners vs. losers involves metrics that matter, something that also applies to servers, storage I/O networking hardware, software and services.
In the case of the Olympics, some of the sports or events are based on speed or how fast (e.g. time) something is done, or how much is accumulated or done in that amount of time while in other events the metrics that matter may be more of a mystery based on judging that maybe subjective.
The technologies to record times, scores, movements and other things that go into scoring have certainly improved, as have the ability for fans to engage and vote their choice, or opposition via social media venues from twitter to face book among others.
What about server storage I/O networking benchmarks
There could easily be an Information Technology (IT) or data infrastructure benchmarking Olympics with events such as faster server (physical, virtual or cloud, personal or consortium team), storage, I/O and networking across hardware, software or services. Of course there would be different approaches favored by the various teams with disputes, protests and other things sometimes seen during Olympic games. One of the challenges however is what would be the metrics that matter particularly to the various marketing groups of each organization or their joint consortium?
Just like with sports, which of the various industry trade groups or consortiums would be the ruling party or voice for a particular event specifying the competition criteria, scoring and other things. What happens when there is a break away group that launches their own competing approach yet when it comes time for the IT benchmarking Olympics, which of the various bodies does the Olympic committee defer to? In case you are not familiar with in sports there are various groups and sub-groups who can decide the participants for various supports perhaps independent of an overall group, sound like IT?
Let the games begin
So then the fun starts, however which of the events are relevant to your needs or interest, sure some are fun or entertaining while others are not practical. Some you can do yourself, while others are just fun to watch, both the thrill of victory and agony of defeat.
This is similar to IT industry benchmarking and specmanship competitions, some of which is more relevant than others, then there are those that are entertaining.
Likewise some benchmarks or workload claims can be reproduced to confirm the results or claims, while others remain more like the results of figure skating judges.
Hence some of the benchmark games are more entertaining, however for those who are not aware or informed, they may turn out to be more misinformation or lead to poor decision-making.
Consequently benchmarks and metrics that matter are those that most closely aging with what your environment is or will be doing.
If your environment is going to be running a particularly simulation or script, than so be it, otoh, look for comparisons that are reflective.
On the other hand, if you can’t find something that is applicable, then look at tools and results that have meaning along with relevance, not to mention that provide clarity and repeatable. Being repeatable means that you can get access to the tools, scripts or scenario (preferably free) to run in your own environment.
There is a long list of benchmarks and workload simulation tools, as well as traces available, some for free, some for fee that apply to components, subsystems or complete application systems from server, storage I/O networking applications and hardware. These include those for Email such as Microsoft Exchange related, SQL databases, , LoginVSI for VDI, VMmark for VMware, Hadoop and HDFS related for big data among many others (see more here).
Apples to Apples vs. Apple pie vs. Orange Jello
Something else that matters are apples to apples vs. apples to oranges or worse, apple pie to orange Jello.
This means knowing or gaining insight into the pieces as we as how they behave under different conditions as well as the entire system for a baseline (e.g normal) vs. abnormal.
Hence its winter server storage I/O networking benchmark games with the first event having been earlier this week with team Brocade taking on Cisco. Here is a link to a post by Tony Bourke (@tbourke) that provides some interesting perspectives and interactions, along with a link here to the Brocade sponsored report done by Evaluator Group.
In this match-up, Team Brocade (with HP servers, Brocade switches and an unnamed 16GFC SSD storage system) take on Team Cisco and their UCS (also an un-named 16GFC SSD system that I wonder if Cisco even knows whose’s it was?). Ironic that it was almost six years to the date that there was a similar winter benchmark wonder event when NetApp submitted an SPC result for EMC (read more about that cold day here).
The Brocade FC (using HP servers and somebody’s SSD storage) vs. Cisco FCoE using UCS (and somebody else’s storage) comparison is actually quite entertaining, granted it can also be educational on what to do or not do, focus on or include among others things. The report also raises many questions that seem more wondering why somebody won in an ice figuring skating event vs. the winner of a men’s or women’s hockey game.
Take metrics and benchmarks with a grain of salt however look for transparency in both how they are produced, information provided and most important, does it matter or is it relevant to your environment or simply entertaining.
Lets see what the next event in the ongoing server storage I/O networking benchmark 2014 winter Olympic games will be.
Disclosure: I used to work for Evaluator Group after working for a company called Inrange that competed with, then got absorbed (via CNT and McData) into Brocade who has been a client as has Cisco. I also do performance and functionality testing, audits, validation and proof of concepts services in my own as well as in client labs using various industry standard available tools and techniques. Otoh, not sure that I even need to disclose anything however its easy enough to do so why not ;).
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Lenovo buys IBM’s xSeries x86 server business for $2.3B USD, what about EMC?
Once again Lenovo is new owner of some IBM computer technology, this time by acquiring the x86 (e.g. xSeries) server business unit from big blue. Today Lenovo announced its plan to acquire the IBM x86 server storage business unit for $2.3B USD.
Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and Armonk, New York – January 23, 2014
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) have entered into a definitive agreement in which Lenovo plans to acquire IBM’s x86 server business. This includes System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations. The purchase price is approximately US$2.3 billion, approximately two billion of which will be paid in cash and the balance in Lenovo stock.
IBM will retain its System z mainframes, Power Systems, Storage Systems, Power-based Flex servers, and PureApplication and PureData appliances.
If you recall (or didn’t’t know) around a decade or so ago IBM also spun off its Laptop (e.g. Thinkpads) and workstation business unit to Lenovo after being one of the early PC players (I still have a model XT in my collection along with Mac SE and Newton).
What this means for IBM?
What this means is that IBM is selling off a portion of its systems technology group which is where the servers, storage and related hardware, software technologies report into. Note however that IBM is not selling off its entire server portfolio, only the x86 e.g. Intel/AMD based products that make up the xSeries as well as companion Blade and related systems. This means that IBM is retaining its Power based systems (and processors) that include the pSeries, iSeries and of course the zSeries mainframes in addition to the storage hardware/software portfolio.
However as part of this announcement, Lenovo is also licensing from IBM the Storwize/V7000 technology as well as tape summit resources, GPFS based scale out file systems used in SONAS and related products that are part of solution bundles tied to the x86 business.
Again to be clear, IBM is not selling off (or at least at this time) Storwize, tape or other technology to Lenovo other than x86 server business. By server business, this means the technology, patents, people, processes, products, sales, marketing, manufacturing, R&D along with other entities that form the business unit, not all that different from when IBM divested the workstation/laptop aka PC business in the past.
What this means for Lenovo?
What Lenovo gets are an immediate (once the deal closes) expansion of their server portfolio including high-density systems for cloud, HPC as well as regular enterprise, not to mention also for SME and SMB. Lenovo also gets blade systems as well as converged systems (server, storage, networking, hardware, software) hence why IBM is also licensing some technology to Lenovo that it is not selling. Lenovo also gets the sales, marketing, design, support and other aspects to also expand their server business. By gaining the server business unit, Lenovo will now be in a place to take on Dell (who was also rumored to be in the market for the IBM servers), as well as HP, Oracle and other x86 system based suppliers.
What about EMC and Lenovo?
Yes, EMC, that storage company who is also a primary owner of VMware, as well as partner with Cisco and Intel in the VCE initiatives, not to mention who also entered into a partnership with Lenovo a year or so ago.
In case you forgot or didn’t’t know, EMC after breaking up with Dell, entered into a partnership with Lenovo back in 2012.
This partnership and initiatives included developing servers that in turn EMC could use for their various storage and data appliances which continue to leverage x86 type technology. In addition, that agreement found the EMC Iomega brand transitioning over into the Lenovo line-up for both domestic North America, as well as international including the chinese market. Hence I have an older Iomega IX4 that says EMC, and a newer one that says EMC/Lenovo, also note that at CES a few weeks ago, some new Iomega products were announced.
In checking with Lenovo today, they indicated that it is business as usual and no changes with or to the EMC partnership.
Via email from Lenovo spokesperson today:
A key piece to Lenovo’s Enterprise strategy has always included strong partnerships. In fact today’s announcements reinforce that strategy very clearly.
Given the new scale, footprint and Enterprise credibility that this server acquisition affords Lenovo, we see great opportunity in offering complimentary storage offerings to new and existing customers.
Lenovo’s partnership with EMC is multifaceted and stays in-tact as an important part of Lenovo’s overall strategy to offer customers compelling solutions built on world-class technology.
Lenovo will continue to offer Lenovo/EMC NAS products from our joint venture as well as resell EMC stand-alone storage platforms.
IBM Storwize storage and other products are integral to the in-scope platforms and solutions we acquired. In order to ensure continuity of business and the best customer experience we will partner with IBM for storage products as well.
We believe this is a great opportunity for all three companies, but most importantly these partnerships are in place and will remain healthy for the benefit for our customers.
Hence it is my opinion that for now it is business as usual, the IBM x8x business unit has a new home, those people will be getting new email addresses and business cards similar to how some of their associates did when the PC group was sold off a few years ago.
Otoh, there may also be new products that might become opportunities to be placed into he Lenovo EMC partnership, however that is just my speculation at this time. Likewise while there will be some groups within Lenovo focused on selling the converged Lenovo solutions coming from IBM that may in fact compete with EMC (among others) in some scenarios, that should be no more and hopefully less than what IBM has with their server groups at times competing with themselves.
What does this mean for Cisco, Dell, HP and others?
For Cisco, instead of competing with one of their OEMs (e.g. IBM) for networking equipment (note IBM also owns some of its own networking), the server competition shifts to Lenovo who is also a Cisco partner (its called coopitition), and perhaps business as usual in many areas. For Dell, in the mid-market space, things could get interesting and the Round Rock folks need to get creative and beyond VRTX.
For HP, this is where IMHO it’s going to get really interesting as Lenovo gets things transitioned. Near-term, HP could have a disruptive upper hand, however longer-term, HP has to get their A-Game on. Oracle is in the game as are a bunch of others from Fujitsu to SuperMicro to outside of North America and in particular china there is also Huawei. Back to EMC and VCE, while I expect the Cisco partnership to stay, I also see a wild card where EMC can leverage their Lenovo partnership into more markets, while Cisco continues to move into storage and other adjacent areas (e.g. more coopitition).
What this means now and going forward?
Thus this is as much about enterprise, SME, SMB as it is HPC, cloud and high-density where the game is about volume. Likewise there is also the convergence or data infrastructure angle combing server, storage, networking hardware, software and services.
One of the things I have noticed about Lenovo as a customer using ThinkPads for over 13 years now (not the same one) is that while they are affordable, instead of simply cutting cost and quality, they seem to have found ways to remove cost which is different then simply cutting to go cheap.
Case in point about a year and a half ago I dropped my iPhone on my Lenovo X1 keyboard that is back-lit and broke a key. Calling Lenovo after trying to find a replacement key on the web, they said no worries and next morning a new keyboard for the laptop was on my doorstep by 10:30Am with instructions on how to remove the old, put in the new, and do the RMA, no questions asked (read more about this here).
The reason I mention that story about my X1 laptop is that it ties to what I’m curious and watching with their soon to be expanded new server business.
Will they go in and simply look to reduce cost by making cuts from design to manufacturing to part quality, service and support, or, find ways to remove complexity and cost while providing more value?
Now I wonder whose technology will join my HP and Dell systems to fill some empty rack space in the not so distant future to support growth?
Time will tell, congratulations to Lenovo and the IBMers who now have a new home best wishes.
November 2013 Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter & AWS reinvent info
Welcome to the November 2013 edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics. Fall (here in North America) has been busy with in-person, on-line live and virtual events along with various client projects, research, time in the StorageIO cloud, virtual and physical lab test driving, validating and doing proof of concept research among other tasks. Check out the industry trends perspectives articles, comments and blog posts below that covers some activity over the past month.
Last week I had the chance to attend the second annual AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas, see my comments, perspectives along with a summary of announcements from that conference below.
Watch for future posts, commentary, perspectives and other information down the road (and in the not so distant future) pertaining to information and data infrastructure topics, themes and trends across cloud, virtual, legacy server, storage, networking, hardware and software. Also check out our backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving (Under the resources section on StorageIO.com) for various presentation, book chapter downloads and other content.
Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter.
Ok, nuff said (for now)
Cheers gs
Industry trends: Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent
Last week I attended the AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas. This was the second annual AWS re:Invent conference which while having an AWS and cloud theme, it is also what I would describe as a data infrastructure event.
As a data infrastructure event AWS re:Invent spans traditional legacy IT and applications to newly invented, re-written, re-hosted or re-platformed ones from existing and new organizations. By this I mean a mix of traditional IT or enterprise people as well as cloud and virtual geek types (said with affection and all due respect of course) across server (operating system, software and tools), storage (primary, secondary, archive and tools), networking, security, development tools, applications and architecture.
That also means management from application and data protection spanning High Availability (HA), Business Continuance (BC), Disaster Recovery (DR), backup/restore, archiving, security, performance and capacity planning, service management among other related themes across public, private, hybrid and community cloud environments or paradigms. Hmm, I think I know of a book that covers the above and other related topic themes, trends, technologies and best practices called Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) available via Amazon.com in print and Kindle (among other) versions.
During the event AWS announced enhanced and new services including:
WorkSpaces (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure – VDI) announced as a new service for cloud based desktops across various client devices including laptops, Kindle Fire, iPad and Android tablets using PCoIP.
Kinesis which is a managed service for real-time processing of streaming (e.g. Big) data at scale including ability to collect and process hundreds of GBytes of data per second across hundreds of thousands of data sources. On top of Kinesis you can build your big data applications or conduct analysis to give real-time key performance indicator dashboards, exception and alarm or event notification and other informed decision-making activity.
Another EC2 enhancement are G2 instance that leverage high performance NVIDIA GRID GPU with 1,536 parallel processing cores. This new instance is well suited for 3D graphics, rendering, streaming video and other related applications that need large-scale parallel or high performance compute (HPC) also known as high productivity compute.
Redshift (cloud data warehouse) now supports cross region snapshots for HA, BC and DR purposes.
CloudTrail records AWS API calls made via the management console for analytics and logging of API activity.
Relational Database Service (RDS) support for PostgresSQL including multi-AZ deployment.
Ability to discover and launch various software from AWS Marketplace via the EC2 Console. The AWS Marketplace for those not familiar with it is a catalog of various software or application titles (over 800 products across 24 categories) including free and commercial licensed solutions that include SAP, Citrix, Lotus Notes/Domino among many others.
AppStream is a low latency (STX protocol based) service for streaming resource (e.g. compute, storage or memory) intensive applications and games from AWS cloud to various clients, desktops or mobile devices. This means that the resource intensive functionality can be shifted to the cloud, while providing a low latency (e.g. fast) user experience off-loading the client from having to support increased compute, memory or storage capabilities. Key to AppStream is the ability to stream data in a low-latency manner including over networks normally not suited for high quality or bandwidth intensive applications. IMHO AppStream while focused initially on mobile app’s and gaming, being a bit streaming technology has the potential to be used for other similar functions that can leverage download speed improvements.
When I asked an AWS person if or what role AppStream might have or related to WorkSpaces their only response was a large smile and no comment. Does this mean WorkSpaces leverages AppStream? Candidly I don’t know, however if you look deeper into AppStream and expand your horizons, see what you can think up in terms of innovation. Updated 11/21/13 AWS has provided clarification that WorkSpaces is based on PCoIP while AppStream uses the STX protocols.
Overall I found the AWS re:Invent event to be a good conference spanning many aspects and areas of focus which means I will be putting it on my must attend list for 2014.
Industry trends tips, commentary, articles and blog posts What is being seen, heard and talked about while out and about
The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.
Recent industry trends, perspectives and commentary by StorageIO Greg Schulz in various venues:
NetworkComputing: Comments on Software-Defined Storage Startups Win Funding
Digistor: Comments on SSD and flash storage InfoStor: Comments on data backup and virtualization software
ITbusinessEdge: Comments on flash SSD and hybrid storage environments
NetworkComputing: Comments on Hybrid Storage Startup Nimble Storage Files For IPO
InfoStor: Comments on EMC’s Light to Speed: Flash, VNX, and Software-Defined
InfoStor: Data Backup Virtualization Software: Four Solutions
ODSI: Q&A With Greg Schulz – A Quick Roundup of Data Storage Industry
Check out our objectstoragecenter.com page where you will find a growing collection of information and links on cloud and object storage themes, technologies and trends.
StorageIO activities (out and about)
Seminars, symposium, conferences, webinars Live in person and recorded recent and upcoming events
While 2013 is winding down, the StorageIO calendar continues to evolve, here are some recent and upcoming activities.
Click here to view other upcoming along with earlier event activities. Watch for more 2013 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.
Vendors, VAR’s and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.
and click here to subscribe to this news letter. View archives of past StorageIO update news letters as well as download PDF versions at: www.storageio.com/newsletter
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Following up part I of this two-part series, here are more more details, insights and perspectives about EMC XtremIO and it’s generally availability that were announced today.
XtremIO the basics
All flash Solid State Device (SSD) based solution
Cluster of up to four X-Brick nodes today
X-Bricks available in 10TB increments today, 20TB in January 2014
25 eMLC SSD drives per X-Brick with redundant dual processor controllers
Provides server-side iSCSI and Fibre Channel block attachment
Designed for extending duty cycle, minimizing wear of SSD
Removes need for dedicated hot spare drives
Capable of sustained performance and availability with multiple drive failure
Only unique data blocks are saved, others tracked via in-memory meta data pointers
Reduces overhead of data protection vs. traditional small RAID 5 or RAID 6 configurations
Eliminates overhead of back-end functions performance impact on applications
Deterministic storage I/O performance (IOPs, latency, bandwidth) over life of system
When would you use XtremIO vs. another storage system?
If you need all enterprise like data services including thin provisioning, dedupe, resiliency with deterministic performance on an all-flash system with raw capacity from 10-40TB (today) then XtremIO could be a good fit. On the other hand, if you need a mix of SSD based storage I/O performance (IOPS, latency or bandwidth) along with some HDD based space capacity, then a hybrid or traditional storage system could be the solution. Then there are hybrid scenarios where a hybrid storage system, array or appliance (mix of SSD and HDD) are used for most of the applications and data, with an XtremIO handling more tasks that are demanding.
How does XtremIO compare to others?
EMC with XtremIO is taking a different approach than some of their competitors whose model is to compare their faster flash-based solutions vs. traditional mid-market and enterprise arrays, appliances or storage systems on a storage I/O IOP performance basis. With XtremIO there is improved performance measured in IOPs or database transactions among other metrics that matter. However there is also an emphasis on consistent, predictable, quality of service (QoS) or what is known as deterministic storage I/O performance basis. This means both higher IOPs with lower latency while doing normal workload along with background data services (snapshots, data footprint reduction, etc).
Some of the competitors focus on how many IOPs or work they can do, however without context or showing impact to applications when back-ground tasks or other data services are in use. Other differences include how cluster nodes are interconnected (for scale out solutions) such as use of Ethernet and IP-based networks vs dedicated InfiniBand or PCIe fabrics. Host server attachment will also differ as some are only iSCSI or Fibre Channel block, or NAS file, or give a mix of different protocols and interfaces.
An industry trend however is to expand beyond the flash SSD need for speed focus by adding context along with QoS, deterministic behavior and addition of data services including snapshots, local and remote replication, multi-tenancy, metering and metrics, security among other items.
Who or what are XtremIO competition?
To some degree vendors who only have PCIe flash SSD cards might place themselves as the alternative to all SSD or hybrid mixed SSD and HDD based solutions. FusionIO used to take that approach until they acquired NexGen (a storage system) and now have taken a broader more solution balanced approach of use the applicable tool for the task or application at hand.
Other competitors include the all SSD based storage arrays, systems or appliance vendors which includes legacy existing as well as startups vendors that include among others IBM who bought TMS (flashsystems), NetApp (EF540), Solidfire, Pure, Violin (who did a recent IPO) and Whiptail (bought by Cisco). Then there are the hybrid which is a long list including Cloudbyte (software), Dell, EMCs other products, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp, Nexenta (Software), Nimble, Nutanix, Oracle, Simplivity and Tintri among others.
What’s new with this XtremIO announcement
10TB X-Bricks enable 10 to 40TB (physical space capacity) per cluster (available on 11/19/13). 20TB X-Bricks (larger capacity drives) will double the space capacity in January 2014. If you are doing the math, that means either a single brick (dual controller) system, or up to four bricks (nodes, each with dual controllers) configurations. Common across all system configurations are data features such as thin provisioning, inline data footprint reduction (e.g. dedupe) and XtremIO Data Protection (XDP).
What does XtremIO look like?
XtremIO consists of up to four nodes (today) based on what EMC calls X-Bricks. 25 SSD drive X-Brick
Each 4U X-Brick has 25 eMLC SSD drives in a standard EMC 2U DAE (disk enclosure) like those used with the VNX and VMAX for SSD and Hard Disk Drives (HDD). In addition to the 2U drive shelve, there are a pair of 1U storage processors (e.g. controllers) that give redundancy and shared access to the storage shelve.
XtremIO X-Brick block diagram
XtremIO storage processors (controllers) and drive shelve block diagram. Each X-Brick and their storage processors or controllers communicate with each other and other X-Bricks via a dedicated InfiniBand using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) fabric for memory to memory data transfers. The controllers or storage processors (two per X-Brick) each have dual processors with eight cores for compute, along with 256GB of DRAM memory. Part of each controllers DRAM memory is set aside as a mirror its partner or peer and vise versa with access being over the InfiniBand fabric.
XtremIO X-Brick four node fabric cluster or instance
How XtremIO works
Servers access XtremIO X-Bricks using iSCSI and Fibre Channel for block access. A responding X-Brick node handles the storage I/O request and in the case of a write updates other nodes. In the case of a write, the handling node or controller (aka storage processor) checks its meta data map in memory to see if the data is new and unique. If so, the data gets saved to SSD along with meta data information updated across all nodes. Note that data gets ingested and chunked or sharded into 4KB blocks. So for example if a 32KB storage I/O request from the server arrives, that is broken (e.g. chunk or shard) into 8 4KB pieces each with a mathematical unique fingerprint created. This fingerprint is compared to what is known in the in memory meta data tables (this is a hexadecimal number compare so a quick operation). Based on the comparisons if unique the data is saved and pointers created, if already exists, then pointers are updated.
In addition to determining if unique data, the fingerprint is also used for generate a balanced data dispersal plan across the nodes and SSD devices. Thus there is the benefit of reducing duplicate data during ingestion, while also reducing back-end IOs within the XtremIO storage system. Another byproduct is the reduction in time spent on garbage collection or other background tasks commonly associated with SSD and other storage systems.
Meta data is kept in memory with a persistent copied written to reserved area on the flash SSD drives (think of as a vault area) to support and keep system state and consistency. In between data consistency points the meta data is kept in a log journal like how a database handles log writes. What’s different from a typical database is that XtremIO XIOS platform software does these consistency point writes for persistence on a granularity of seconds vs. hours or minutes.
What about rumor that XtremIO can only do 4KB IOPs?
Does this mean that the smallest storage I/O or IOP that XtremIO can do is 4GB?
That is a rumor or some fud I have heard floated by a competitor (or two or three) that assumes if only 4KB internal chunk or shard being used for processing, that must mean no IOPs smaller than 4KB from a server.
XtremIO can do storage I/O IOP sizes of 512 bytes (e.g. the standard block size) as do other systems. Note that the standard server storage I/O block or IO size is 512 bytes or multiples of that unless the new 4KB advanced format (AF) block size being used which based on my conversations with EMC, AF is not supported, yet. (Updated 11/15/13 EMC has indicated that host (front-end) 4K AF support, along with 512 byte emulation modes are available now with XIOS). Also keep in mind that since XtremIO XIOS internally is working with 4KB chunks or shards, that is a stepping stone for being able to eventually leverage back-end AF drive support in the future should EMC decide to do so (Updated 11/15/13 Waiting for confirmation from EMC about if back-end AF support is now enabled or not, will give more clarity as it is recieved).
What else is EMC doing with XtremIO?
VCE Vblock XtremIO systems for SAP HANA (and other databases) in memory databases along with VDI optimized solutions.
VPLEX and XtremIO for extended distance local, metro and wide area HA, BC and DR.
EMC PowerPath XtremIO storage I/O path optimization and resiliency.
Secure Remote Support (aka phone home) and auto support integration.
Boosting your available software license minutes (ASLM) with SSD
Another use of SSD has been in the past the opportunity to make better use of servers stretching their usefulness or delaying purchase of new ones by improving their effective use to do more work. In the past this technique of using SSDs to delay a server or CPU upgrade was used when systems when hardware was more expensive, or during the dot com bubble to fill surge demand gaps. This has the added benefit of stretching database and other expensive software licenses to go further or do more work. The less time servers spend waiting for IOP’s means more time for doing useful work and bringing value of the software license. Otoh, the more time spent waiting is lot available software minutes which is cost overhead.
Think of available software licence minutes (ASLM) in terms of available software license minutes where if doing useful work your software is providing value. On the other hand if those minutes are not used for useful work (e.g. spent waiting or lost due to CPU or server or IO wait, then they are lost). This is like airlines and available seat miles (ASM) metric where if left empty it’s a lost opportunity, however if used, then value, not to mention if yield management applied to price that seat differently. To make up for that loss many organizations have to add extra servers and thus more software licensing costs.
Can we get a side of context with them metrics?
EMC along with some other vendors are starting to give more context with their storage I/O performance metrics that matter than simple IOP’s or Hero Marketing Metrics. However context extends beyond performance to also availability and space capacity which means data protection overhead. As an example, EMC claims 25% for RAID 5 and 20% for RAID 6 or 30% for RAID 5/RAID 6 combo where a 25 drive (SSD) XDP has a 8% overhead. However this assumes a 4+1 (5 drive) RAID , not apples to apples comparison on a space overhead basis. For example a 25 drive RAID 5 (24+1) would have around an 4% parity protection space overhead or a RAID 6 (23+2) about 8%.
Granted while the space protection overhead might be more apples to apples with the earlier examples to XDP, there are other differences. For example solutions such as XDP can be more tolerant to multiple drive failures with faster rebuilds than some of the standard or basic RAID implementations. Thus more context and clarity would be helpful.
StorageIO would like see vendors including EMC along with startups who give data protection space overhead comparisons without context to do so (and applaud those who provide context). This means providing the context for data protection space overhead comparisons similar to performance metrics that matter. For example simply state with an asterisk or footnote comparing a 4+1 RAID 5 vs. a 25 drive erasure or forward error correction or dispersal or XDP or wide stripe RAID for that matter (e.g. can we get a side of context). Note this is in no way unique to EMC and in fact quite common with many of the smaller startups as well as established vendors.
General comments
My laundry list of items which for now would be nice to have’s, however for you might be need to have would include native replication (today leverages Recover Point), Advanced Format (4KB) support for servers (Updated 11/15/13 Per above, EMC has confirmed that host/server-side (front-end) AF along with 512 byte emulation modes exist today), as well as SSD based drives, DIF (Data Integrity Feature), and Microsoft ODX among others. While 12Gb SAS server to X-Brick attachment for small in the cabinet connectivity might be nice for some, more practical on a go forward basis would be 40GbE support.
Now let us see what EMC does with XtremIO and how it competes in the market. One indicator to watch in the industry and market of the impact or presence of EMC XtremIO is the amount of fud and mud that will be tossed around. Perhaps time to make a big bowl of popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show…
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
EMC announces XtremIO flash SSD General Availability
EMC announced today the general availability (GA) if the all flash Solid State Device (SSD) XtremIO that they acquired a little over a year ago. Earlier this year EMC announced directed availability (DA) of the EMC version of XtremIO as part of other SSD hardware and software updates (here and here). The XtremIO GA announcement also follows that of the VNX2 or MCx released in September of this year that also has flash SSD enhancements along with doing more with available resources.
As an industry trend, the question is not if SSD is in your future, rather where, when, how much, what to use along with coexistence to complement Hard Disk Drive (HDD) based solutions in some environments. This also means that SSD is like real estate where location matters, not to mention having different types of technologies, packaging, solutions to meet various needs (and price points). This all ties back to the best server and storage I/O or IOP is the one that you do know have to do, the second best is the one with the least impact and best application benefit.
From industry adoption to customer deployment
EMC has evolved the XtremIO platform from a pre-acquisition solution to an first EMC version that was offered to an early set of customers e.g. DA.
I suspect that the DA was as much a focus on getting early customer feedback, addressing immediate needs or opportunities as wells as getting the EMC sales and marketing teams messaging, marching orders aligned and deployed. The latter would be rather important to decrease or avoid the temptation to cannibalize existing product sales with the shiny new technology (SNT). Likewise, it would be important for EMC to not create isolated pockets or fenced off products as some other vendors often do.
25 SSD drive X-Brick
What is being announced?
General availability vs. directed or limited availability
Version 2.2 of the XIOS platform software
Integrating with EMC support and service tools
Let us get back go this announcement and XtremIO of which EMC has indicated that they have several customers who have now done either $1M or $5M USD deals. EMC has claimed over 1.5 PBytes have been booked and deployed, or with data footprint reduction (DFR) including dedupe over 10PB effective capacity. Note that for those who are focused on dedupe or DFR reduction ratios 10:1.5 may not be as impressive as seen with some backup solutions, however keep in mind that this is for primary high performance storage vs. secondary or tertiary storage devices.
As part of this announcement, EMC has also release V2.2 of the XtremIO platform software (XIOS). Hence a normal new product should start with a version 1.0 at launch, however as explained this is both a new version of the technology as well as the initial GA by EMC.
Also as part of this announcement, EMC is making available XtremIO 10TB X-Bricks with 25 eMLC SSD drives each, along with dual controllers (storage processors). EMC has indicated that it will make available a 20TB X-Brick using larger capacity SSD drives in January 2014. Note that the same type of SSD drives must be used in the systems. Currently there can be up to four X-Bricks per XtremIO cluster or instance that are interconnected using a dedicated InfiniBand Fabric. Application servers access the XtremIO X-Bricks using standard Fibre Channel or Ethernet and IP based iSCSI. In addition to the hardware platform items, the XtremIO platform software (XIOS) includes built-in on the fly data footprint reduction (DFR) using global dedupe during data ingestion and placement. Other features include thin provisioning, VMware VAII, data protection and self-balancing data placement.
Who or what applications are XtremIO being positioned for?
Some of XtremIO industry sectors include:
Financial and insurance services
Medical, healthcare and life sciences
Manufacturing, retail and warehouse management
Government and defense
Media and entertainment
Application and workload focus:
VDI including replacing linked clones with ability to do full clone without overhead
Server virtualization where aggregation causes aggravation with many mixed IOPs
Database for reducing latency, boosting IOPs as well as improving software license costs.
Databases such as IBM DB2, Oracle RAC, Microsoft SQLserver and MySQL among others have traditionally for decades been a prime opportunity for SSD (DRAM and flash). This also includes newer NoSQL or key value stores and meta data repositories for object such as Mongo, Hbase, Cassandra, Riak among others. Typical focus includes placing entire instances, or specific files and objects such as indices, journals and redo logs, import/export temp or scratch space, message queries and high activity tables among others.
What about overlap with other EMC products?
If you simply looked at the above list of sectors (among others) or applications, you could easily come to a conclusion that there is or would be overlap. Granted in some environments there will be which means XtremIO (or other vendors solutions) may be the primary storage solution. On the other hand since everything is not the same in most data centers or information factories, there will be a mix of storage systems handling various tasks. This is where EMC will need to be careful learning what they did during DA on where to place XtremIO and how to positing to complement when and where needed other solutions, or as applicable being a replacement.
XtremIO Announcement Summary
All flash SSD storage solution with iSCSI and Fibre Channel server attachment
Scale out and scale up performance while keeping latency low and deterministic
Enhanced flash duty cycle (wear leveling) to increase program / erase (P/E) cycles durability
Can complement other storage systems, arrays or appliances or function as a standalone
Coexists and complements host side caching hardware and software
Inline always on data footprint reduction (DFR) including dedupe (global dedupe without performance compromise), space saving snapshots and copies along with thin provisioning
Some General Comment and Perspectives
Overall, XtremIO gives EMC and their customers, partners and prospects a new technology to use and add to their toolbox for addressing various challenges. SSD is in your future, when, where, with what and how are questions not to mention how much. After all, a bit of flash SSD in the right location used effectively can have a large impact. On the other hand, a lot of flash SSD in the wrong place or not used effectively will cost you lots of cash. Key for EMC and their partners will be to articulate clearly, where XtremIO fits vs. other solutions without adding complexity.
Checkout part II of this series to learn more about XtremIO including what it is, how it works, competition and added perspectives.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
DataDynamics StorageX 7.0 file and data management migration software
Some of you may recall back in 2006 (here and here) when Brocade bought a file management storage startup called NuView whose product was StorageX, and then in 2009 issued end of life (EOL) notice letters that the solution was being discontinued.
Fast forward to 2013 and there is a new storage startup (DatraDynamics) with an existing product that was just updated and re-released called StorageX 7.0.
Software Defined File Management – SDFM?
Granted from an industry buzz focused adoption perspective you may not have heard of DataDynamics or perhaps even StorageX. However many other customers around the world from different industry sectors have as well as are using the solution.
The current industry buzz is around software defined data centers (SDDC) which has lead to software defined networking (SDN), software defined storage (SDS), and other software defined marketing (SDM) terms, not to mention Valueware. So for those who like software defined marketing or software defined buzzwords, you can think of StorageX as software defined file management (SDFM), however don’t ask or blame them about using it as I just thought of it for them ;).
This is an example of industry adoption traction (what is being talked about) vs. industry deployment and customer adoption (what is actually in use on a revenue basis) in that DataDynamics is not a well-known company yet, however they have what many of the high-flying startups with industry adoption don’t have which is an installed base with revenue customers that also now have a new version 7.0 product to deploy.
StorageX 7.0 enabling intelligent file and data migration management
Thus, a common theme is adding management including automated data movement and migration to carry out structure around unstructured NAS file data. More than a data mover or storage migration tool, Data Dynamics StorageX is a software platform for adding storage management structure around unstructured local and distributed NAS file data. This includes heterogeneous vendor support across different storage system, protocols and tools including Windows CIFS and Unix/Linux NFS.
If you have a new for gaining insight and management control around your file unstructured data to support migrations for upgrades, technology refresh, archiving or tiering across different vendors including EMC and NetApp, check out DataDynamics StorageX 7.0, take it for a test drive like I did and tell them StorageIO sent you.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
What are the indicators that something is gaining traction?
Perhaps it is tied to the number of press releases, product or staffing announcements including who has joined the organization along with added coverage of it?
Maybe its based on how many articles, videos or some other content and coverage that helps to show traction and momentum?
On the other hand is it tied to how many prospects are actually trying a product or service as part of a demo or proof of concept?
Then again, maybe it is associated with how many real paying or revenue installed footprints and customers or what is also known as industry deployment (customer adoption).
Of those customers actually buying and deploying, how many have continued using the technology even after industry adoption subsides or does the solution become shelf ware?
Does the customer deployment actually continue to rise quietly while industry adoption or conversations drop off (past the cycle of hype)?
Gaining context with industry traction
Gaining traction can mean different things to people, however there is also a difference between industry adoption (what’s being talked about among the industry) and industry deployment (what customers are actually buying, installing and continue to use).
Often the two can go hand in hand, usually one before the other, however they can also be separate. For example it is possible that something new will have broad industry adoption (being talked about) yet have low customer deployment (even over time). This occurs when something is new and interesting that might be fun to talk about or the vendor, solution provider is cool and fun to hang out and be with, or simply has cool giveaways.
On the other hand there can be customer deployment and adoption with little to no fan fare (industry adoption) for different reasons.
Here’s my point
Not long ago if you asked or listened to some, you would think that once high-flying cloud storage vendor Nirvanix was gaining traction based on their marketing along with other activities, yet they recently closed their doors. Then there was Kim Dotcoms hyped Megacloud launch earlier this year that also has now gone dark or shutting down. This is not unique to cloud service providers or solutions as the same can, has and will happen again to traditional hardware, software and services providers (startups and established).
How about former high-flying FusionIO, or the new startup by former FusionIO founder and CEO David Flynn called Primary Data. One of the two is struggling to gain or keep up revenue traction while having declined in industry popularity traction. The other is gaining in industry popularity traction with their recently secured $50 Million in funding yet are still in stealth mode so rather difficult to gain customer adoption or deployment traction (thus for now its industry adoption focus for them ;).
If you are a customer or somebody actually deploying and using technology, tools, techniques and services for real world activity vs. simply trying new things out, your focus on what is gaining traction will probably be different than others. Granted it is important to keep an eye on what is coming or on futures, however there is also the concern of how it will really work and keep working over time.
For example while Hard Disk Drives (HDD) continue to support industry deployment traction (customer adoption and usage) traction. However they are not new and when new models apear (such as Seagate Ethernet based Kinetic) they may not get the same industry adoption traction as a newer technology might. Case in point Solid State Devices (SSD) continue to gain in customer deployment adoption with some environments doing more than others, yet have very high industry adoption traction status.
Relative SSD customer adoption and deployment along with future opportunities
On the other hand if your focus is on what’s new and emerging which is usually more industry centered, then it should be no surprise what traction means and where it is focused. For example the following figure shoes where different audiences have various timelines on adoption (read more here).
Current and emerging memory, flash and other SSD technologies for different audiences
Wrap up
When you hear that something is gaining traction, ask yourself (or others) what that means along with the applicable context.
Does that mean something is popular and trending to discuss (based on GQ or looks), or that it is actually gaining real customer adoption based on G2 (insight – they are actually buying vs. simply trying our a free version).
Does it mean one form of traction along with industry adoption (what’s being talked about) vs. industry deployment (real customer adoption) is better than the other?
No, it simply means putting things into the applicable context.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Welcome to the Fall 2013 (joint September and October) edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics. It is fall (at least here in north America) which means conferences, symposium, virtual and physical events, seminars, webinars in addition to normal client project activities. Starting with VMworld back in late August, that event occurred in San Francisco which kicked off the fall (or back to school) season of activity. VMworld was followed with many other events including in-person along with virtual or on-line such as webinars, Google+ hangouts among others, not to mention all the briefings for vendor product announcements and updates. Check out the industry trends perspectives articles, comments and blog posts below that covers some activity over the past few months.
VMworld 2013 Congratulations to VMworld on the 10th anniversary of the event. With the largest installment yet of a VMworld in terms of attendance, there were also many announcements. Here are a synopsis of some of those announcements which of course included plenty of software defined marketing (SDM).
CMG and Storage Performance During mid-September I was invited to give an industry trends and perspectives presentation to the Storage Performance Council (SPC) board. The SPC board were meeting in the Minneapolis area and I gave a brief talk about Metrics that Matter and importance of context with focus on applications. Speaking of the Minneapolis area, Tom Becchetti (@tbecchetti) organized a great CMG event hosted over at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. I gave a discussion around Technolutionary, technology evolution and revolution, using old and new things in new ways.
SNW Fall 2013 Long Beach Talking about traveling, there was a quick trip out to Long Beach for the fall 2013 edition of Storage Networking World (SNW) where I had some good meetings and conversations with those who were actually there. No need to sugar coat it, likewise no need to kick sand in its face. Plain and simple, SNW is not the event it used to be has been a common discussion theme for several years which I had set my expectation accordingly.
Some have asked me why I even spent time, money and resources to attend SNW?
My answer is that I had some meetings to attend to, wanted to see and meet with others who were going to be there, and perhaps even say goodbye to an event that I have been involved with for over a decade.
Does that mean I’m all done with SNW?
Not sure yet as will have to wait and see what SNIA and IDG/Computerworld the event co-owners and producers put together for future events. However there are enough other events and activities to pick up the slack which is part of what has caused the steady decline in events like SNW among others.
Perhaps it is time for SNIA to partner with another adjacent yet like-minded organization such as CMG to collaborate and try doing something like what was done in the early 2000s? That is SNIA providing their own seminars along with others such as myself who involved with both CMG, SNW and SNIA to beef up or set up a storage and I/O focused track at the CMG event.
Beyond those items mentioned above, or in the following section, there are plenty of interesting and exciting things occurring in the background that I cant talk about yet. However watch for future posts, commentary, perspectives and other information down the road (and in the not so distant future).
Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter.
Ok, nuff said (for now)
Cheers gs
Industry trends perspectives and commentary What is being seen, heard and talked about while out and about
The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.
InfoStor: Perspectives on Data Dynamics file migration tool (Read more about StorageX later in this newsletter) SearchStorage: Perspectives on Data Dynamics resurrects StorageX for file migration SearchStorage: Perspectives on Cisco buying SSD storage vendor Whiptail
21cIT: Why You Should Consider Object Storage InfoStor: HDDs Are Still Spinning (Rust Never Sleeps) 21cIT: Object Storage Is in Your Future, Even if You Use Files 21cIT: Playing the Name Game With Virtual Storage InfoStor: Flash Data Storage: Myth vs. Reality InfoStor: The Nand Flash Cache SSD Cash Dance SearchEnterpriseWAN: Remote Office / ROBO backup and data protection for networking Pro’s TheVirtualizationPractice: When and Where to use NAND Flash SSD for Virtual Servers FedTech: These Data Center (DCIM) Tools Can Streamline Computing Resources
Check out our objectstoragecenter.com page where you will find a growing collection of information and links pertaining to cloud and object storage themes, technologies and trends.
StorageIO in Europe (Netherlands) Spent over a week in the Netherlands where I presented three different seminar workshop sessions organized by Brouwer Storage Consultancy who is celebrating their 10th anniversary in business. These sessions spanned five full days of interactive discussions with an engaged diverse group of attendees in the Nijkerk area who came from across Holland to take part in these workshops.
Congratulations to Gert and Frank Brouwer on their ten years of being in business and best wishes for many more. Fwiw those who are curious StorageIO will be ten years young in business in about two years.
Some observations from while in Europe:
Continued cloud privacy concerns amplified by NSA and suspicion of US-based companies, yet many are not aware of similar concerns of European or UK-based firms from those outside those areas. While there were some cloud concern conversations over the demise of Nirvanix, those seemed less so then in the media or US given that at least in Holland they have seen other cloud and storage as a service firms come and go already. It should be noted that the US has also seen cloud and storage as a service startups come and go, however I think sometimes we or at least the media tends to have a short if not selective memory at times.
In one of our workshops sessions we were talking about service level objectives (SLO), service level agreements (SLA), recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) among other themes. Somebody mentioned why the focus of time in RPO and questions why not a transactional perspective which I thought was a brilliant question. We had a good conversation in the group and concurred that while RPO is what the industry uses, that there also needs to be a transactional state context tie to what is inferred or assumed with RPO and RTO. Thus the importance of looking beyond just the point in time, however the importance of a transactional context or state, such as not just the time, however to a given transactional point.
Note that transactional could mean database, file system, backup or data protection index or catalog, meta data repository or other entity. This is where some should be jumping up and down like Donkey in Shrek wanting to point out that is exactly what RTO and RPO refer to which would be great. However all to often what is assumed is not conveyed, thus those who don’t know, well, they assume or simply don’t know what others.
Data Dynamics StorageX 7.0 Intelligent Policy Based File Data Migration – There is no such thing as a data or information recession . Likewise, people and data are living longer as well as getting larger. These span various use cases from traditional to personal or at work productivity. From little to big data content, collaboration including file or document sharing to rich media applications all of which are leveraging unstructured data. For example, email, word processing back-office documents, web and text files, presentations (e.g. PowerPoint), photos, audio and video among others. These macro trends result in the continued growth of unstructured Network Attached Storage (NAS) file data.
Thus, a common theme is adding management including automated data movement and migration to carry out structure around unstructured NAS file data. More than a data mover or storage migration tool, Data Dynamics StorageX is a software platform for adding storage management structure around unstructured local and distributed NAS file data. This includes heterogeneous vendor support across different storage system, protocols and tools including Windows CIFS and Unix/Linux NFS. (Disclosure DataDynamics has been a StorageIO client). Visit Data Dynamics at www.datadynamicsinc.com/
StorageIO activities (out and about)
Seminars, symposium, conferences, webinars Live in person and recorded recent and upcoming events
Announcing: Backup.U brought to you by Dell
Some on-line (live and recorded) events have include an ongoing series tied to data protection (Backup/restore, HA, BC, DR and Archiving) called Backup.U organized and sponsored by Dell Data Protection Software that you can learn more about at the landing page www.software.dell.com/backupu (more on this in a future post). In addition to data protection, some other events and activities including a BrightTalk webinar on storage I/O and networking for cloud environments (here).
In addition to the above, check out the StorageIO calendar to see more recent and upcoming activities.
Watch for more 2013 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.
Vendors, VAR’s and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.
and click here to subscribe to this news letter. View archives of past StorageIO update news letters as well as download PDF versions at: www.storageio.com/newsletter
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
IMHO clouds can be safe if used in safe ways which includes knowing and addressing your concerns, not to mention following best practices, some of which pre-date the cloud era, sometimes by a few decades.
Nirvanix Storm Clouds
More on this in a moment, however lets touch base on Nirvanix and why I said they were finally shutting down.
The reason I say finally shutting down is that there were plenty of early warning signs and storm clouds circling Nirvanix for a few years now.
What I mean by this is that in their seven plus years of being in business, there have been more than a few CEO changes, something that is not unheard of.
Likewise there have been some changes to their business model ranging from selling their software as a service to a solution to hosting among others, again, smart startups and establishes organizations will adapt over time.
Nirvanix also invested heavily in marketing, public relations (PR) and analyst relations (AR) to generate buzz along with gaining endorsements as do most startups to get recognition, followings and investors if not real customers on board.
In the case of Nirvanix, the indicator signs mentioned above also included what seemed like a semi-annual if not annual changing of CEOs, marketing and others tying into business model adjustments.
It was only a year or so ago that if you gauged a company health by the PR and AR news or activity and endorsements you would have believed Nirvanix was about to crush Amazon, Rackspace or many others, perhaps some actually did believe that, followed shortly there after by the abrupt departure of their then CEO and marketing team. Thus just as fast as Nirvanix seemed to be the phoenix rising in stardom their aura started to dim again, which could or should have been a warning sign.
This is not to solo out Nirvanix, however given their penchant for marketing and now what appears to some as a sudden collapse or shutdown, they have also become a lightning rod of sort for clouds in general. Given all the hype and fud around clouds when something does happen the distract ors will be quick to jump or pile on to say things like "See, I told you, clouds are bad".
Meanwhile the cloud cheerleaders may go into denial saying there are no problems or issues with clouds, or they may go back into a committee meeting to create a new stack, standard, API set marketing consortium alliance. ;) On the other hand, there are valid concerns with any technology including clouds that in general there are good implementations that can be used the wrong way, or questionable implementations and selections used in what seem like good ways that can go bad.
This is not to say that clouds in general whether as a service, solution or product on a public, private or hybrid bases are any riskier than traditional hardware, software and services. Instead what this should be is a wake up call for people and organizations to review clouds citing their concerns along with revisiting what to do or can be done about them.
Clouds: Being prepared
Ben Woo of Neuralytix posted this question comment to one of the Linked In groups Collateral Considerations If You Were/Are A Nirvanix Customer which I posted some tips and recommendations including:
1) If you have another copy of your data somewhere else (which you should btw), how will your data at Nirvanix be securely erased, and the storage it resides on be safely (and secure) decommissioned?
2) if you do have another copy of your data elsewhere, how current is it, can you bring it up to date from various sources (including update from Nirvanix while they stay online)?
3) Where will you move your data to short or near term, as well as long-term.
4) What changes will you make to your procurement process for cloud services in the future to protect against situations like this happening to you?
5) As part of your plan for putting data into the cloud, refine your strategy for getting it out, moving it to another service or place as well as having an alternate copy somewhere.
Fwiw any data I put into a cloud service there is also another copy somewhere else which even though there is a cost, there is a benefit, The benefit is that ability to decide which to use if needed, as well as having a backup/spare copy.
Cloud Concerns and Confidence
As part of cloud procurement as services or products, the same proper due diligence should occur as if you were buying traditional hardware, software, networking or services. That includes checking out not only the technology, also the companies financial, business records, customer references (both good and not so good or bad ones) to gain confidence. Part of gaining that confidence also involves addressing ahead of time how you will get your data out of or back from that services if needed.
Keep in mind that if your data is very important, are you going to keep it in just one place? For example I have data backed-up as well as archived to cloud providers, however I also have local copies either on-site or off.
Likewise there is data I have local kept at alternate locations including cloud. Sure that is costly, however by not treating all of my data and applications the same, I’m able to balance those costs out, plus use cost advantages of different services as well as on-site to be effective. I may be spending no less on data protection, in fact I’m actually spending a bit more, however I also have more copies and versions of important data and in multiple locations. Data that is not changing often does not get protected as often, however there are multiple copies to meet different needs or threat risks.
Don’t be scared of clouds, be prepared
While some of the other smaller cloud storage vendors will see some new customers, I suspect that near to mid-term, it will be the larger, more established and well funded providers that gain the most from this current situation. Granted some customers are looking for alternatives to the mega cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Rackspace among others, however there are a long list of others some of which who are not so well-known that should be such as Centurylink/Savvis, Verizon/Terremark, Sungurd, Dimension Data, Peak, Bluehost, Carbonite, Mozy (owned by EMC), Xerox ACS, Evault (owned by Seagate) not to mention a long list of many others.
Something to be aware of as part of doing your due diligence is determining who or what actually powers a particular cloud service. The larger providers such as Rackspace, Amazon, Microsoft, HP among others have their own infrastructure while some of the smaller service providers may in fact use one of the larger (or even smaller) providers as their real back-end. Hence understanding who is behind a particular cloud service is important to help decide the viability and stability of who it is you are subscribed to or working with.
This also means having cloud concerns is a good thing, again don’t be scared, however find what those concerns are along with if they are major or minor. From that list you can start to decide how or if they can be worked around, as well as be prepared ahead of time should you either need all of your cloud data back quickly, or should that service become un-available.
Also when it comes to clouds, look beyond lowest cost or for free, likewise if something sounds too good to be true, perhaps it is. Instead look for value or how much do you get per what you spend including confidence in the service, service level agreements (SLA), security, and other items.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Congratulations to Virident for being bought today for $645 Million USD by Western Digital (WD). Virident a nand flash PCIe card startup vendor has been around for several years and in the last year or two has gain more industry awareness as a competitor to FusionIO among others.
There is a nand flash solid state devices (SSD) cash-dash occurring, not to mention fast cache dances that is occurring the IT and data infrastructure (e.g. storage and IO) sector specifically.
Obviously this begs a couple of questions, some of which I raised in my post yesterday about WD, Virident, Seagate, FusionIO and others.
Questions include
Does this mean Cisco is getting ready to take on EMC, NetApp, HDS and its other storage partners who leverage the Cisco UCS server?
IMHO at least near term no more than they have in the past, nor any more than EMCs partnership with Lenovo indicates a shift in what is done with vBlocks. On the other hand, some partners or customers may be as nervous as a long-tailed cat next to a rocking chair (Google it if you don’t know what it means ;).
Is Cisco going to continue to offer Whiptail SSD storage solutions on a standalone basis, or pull them in as part of solutions similar to what it has done on other acquisitions?
IMHO this is one of the most fundamental questions and despite the press release and statements about this being a UCS focus, a clear sign of proof for Cisco is how they reign in (if they go that route) Whiptail from being sold as a general storage solution (with SSD) as opposed to being part of a solution bundle.
How will Cisco manage its relationship in a coopitition manner cooperating with the likes of EMC in the joint VCE initiative along with FlexPod partner NetApp among others? Again time will tell.
Also while most of the discussions about NetApp have been around the UCS based FlexPod business, there is the other side of the discussion which is what about NetApp E Series storage including the SSD based EF540 that competes with Whiptail (among others).
Many people may not realize how much DAS storage including fast SAS, high-capacity SAS and SATA or PCIe SSD cards Cisco sells as part of UCS solutions that are not vBlock, FlexPod or other partner systems.
NetApp and Cisco have partnerships that go beyond the FlexPod (UCS and ONTAP based FAS) so will be interesting to see what happens in that space (if anything). This is where Cisco and their UCS acquiring Whiptail is not that different from IBM buying TMS to complement their servers (and storage) while also partnering with other suppliers, same holds true for server vendors Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle among others.
Can Cisco articulate and convince their partners, customers, prospects and others that the whiptail acquisition is more about direct attached storage (DAS) which includes both internal dedicated and external shared device?
Keep in mind that DAS does not have to mean Dumb A$$ Storage as some might have you believe.
Then there are the more popular questions of who is going to get bought next, what will NetApp, Dell, Seagate, Huawei and a few others do?
Oh, btw, funny how have not seen any of the pubs mention that Whiptail CEO Dan Crain is a former Brocadian (e.g. former Brocade CTO) who happens to be a Cisco competitor, just saying.
Congratulations to Dan and his crew and enjoy life at Cisco.
Stay tuned as the fall 2013 nand flash SSD cache dash and cash dance activities are well underway.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Congratulations to Virident for being bought today for $645 Million USD by Western Digital (WD). Virident a nand flash PCIe card startup vendor has been around for several years and in the last year or two has gain more industry awareness as a competitor to FusionIO among others.
There is a nand flash solid state devices (SSD) cash dash occurring, not to mention fast cache dances that is occurring the IT and data infrastructure (e.g. storage and IO) sector specifically.
Why the nand flash SSD cash dash and cache dance?
Here is a piece that I did today over at InfoStor on a related theme that sets the basis of why the nand flash-based SSD market is popular for storage and as a cache. Hence there is a flash cash dash and by some dance for increased storage I/O performance.
Like the hard disk drive (HDD) industry before it which despite what some pundits and profits have declared (for years if not decades) as being dead (it is still alive), there were many startups, shutdowns, mergers and acquisitions along with some transformations. Granted solid-state memories is part of the presence and future being deployed in new and different ways.
The same thing has occurred in the nand flash-based SSD sector with LSI acquiring SANDforce, SANdisk picking up Pliant and Flashsoft among others. Then there is Western Digital (WD) that recently has danced with their cash as they dash to buy up all things flash including Stec (drives & PCIe cards), Velobit (cache software), Virident (PCIe cards), along with Arkeia (backup) and an investment in Skyera.
What about industry trends and market dynamics?
Meanwhile there have been some other changes with former industry darling and highflying stock post IPO FusionIO hitting as market reality and sudden CEO departure a few months ago. However after a few months of their stock being pummeled, today it bounced back perhaps as people now speculate who will buy FusionIO with WD picking up Virident. Note that one of Viridents OEM customers is EMC for their PCIe flash card XtremSF as are Micron and LSI.
Meanwhile Stec, also now own by WD was also EMCs original flash SSD drive supplier or what they refer to as a EFDs (Electronic Flash Devices), not to mention having also supplied HDDs to them (also keep in mind WD bought HGST a year or so back).
There are some early signs as well as their stock price jumping today which was probably oversold. Perhaps people are now speculating that maybe Seagate who had been an investor in Virident which was bought by WD for $645 million today might be in the market for somebody else? Alternatively, that perhaps WD didn’t see the value in a FusionIO, or willing to make big flash cache cash grabs dash of that size? Also note Seagate won a $630 million (and the next appeal was recently upheld) infringement lawsuit vs. WD (here and here).
Does that mean FusionIO could become Seagate’s target or that of NetApp, Oracle or somebody else with the cash and willingness to dash, grab a chunk of the nand flash, and cache market?
Likewise, there are the software I/O and caching tool vendors some of which are tied to VMware and virtual servers vs. others that are more flexible that are gaining popularity. What about the systems or solution appliances play, could that be in the hunt for a Seagate?
Anything is possible however IMHO that would be a risky move, one that many at Seagate probably still remember from their experiment with Xiotech, not to mention stepping on the toes of their major OEM customer partners.
Thus I would expect Seagate if they do anything would be more along the lines of a component type suppler meaning a FusionIO (yes they have Nexgen, however that could be easily dealt with), OCZ, perhaps even a LSI or Micron however some of those start to get rather expensive for a quick flash cache grab for some stock and cash.
Also, keep in mind that FusionIO in addition to having their PCIe flash cards also have the ioturbine software-caching tool that if you are not familiar with, IBM recently made an announcement of their Flash Cache Storage Accelerator (FCSA) that has an affiliation to guess who?
Closing comments (for now)
Some of the systems or solutions players will survive, perhaps even being acquired as XtremIO was by EMC, or file for IPO like Violin, or express their wish to IPO and or be bought such as all the others (e.g. Skyera, Whiptail, Pure, Solidfire, Cloudbyte, Nimbus, Nimble, Nutanix, Tegile, Kaminario, Greenbyte, and Simplivity among others).
Here’s the thing, those who really do know what is going to happen are not and probably cannot say, and those who are talking what will happen are like the rest of us, just speculating or providing perspectives or stirring the pot among other things.
So who will be next in the flash cache ssd cash dash dance?
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Cloud, Virtualization, SSD, Data Protection, Storage I/O
Welcome to the Summer 2013 (combined July and August) edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics.
Summer 2013 News letter
This summer has been far from quiet on the merger and acquisitions (M&E) front with Western Digital (WD) continuing its buying spree including Stec among others. There is the HDS Mid Summer Storage and Converged Compute Enhancements and EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements (Part I and Part II).
With VMworld just around the corner along with many other upcoming events, watch for more announcements to be covered in future editions and on StorageIOblog as we move into fall.
Click on the following links to view the Summer 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
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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