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

server storage I/O trends

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

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

Reducing cost and complexity

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

VMware vSAN stretch cluster
Image via VMware

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

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

server storage I/O locality of reference

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

VMware vSAN unicast
Image via VMware

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

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

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

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

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

server storage I/O trends

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

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

Scaling HCI for ROBO and data centers today and for tomorrow

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

VMware vSAN data center scaling
Image via VMware

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

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

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

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

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

VMware vSAN and data center class applications
Image via VMware

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

What about VMware vSAN 6.6. Packaging and License Options

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

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

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

server storage I/O trends

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

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

How has vSAN (formerly referred to as VSAN) Evolved

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

Previous vSAN enhancements include:

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

V5.5

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

V6.0

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

V6.1

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

V6.2

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

V6.5

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

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means, wrap up and summary

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

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

March 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue III

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

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

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

In This Issue

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

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

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

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

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

Via SearchDataCenter: New options to evolve data backup recovery

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

Various Tips, Tools, Technology and Tradecraft Topics

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

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

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

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

View more tips and articles here

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

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

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

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

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

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


Cheers
Gs

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

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

Preparing For World Backup Day 2017 Are You Prepared

Preparing For World Backup Day 2017 Are You Prepared

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

What the Vendors Have To Say

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whats In Your Data Protection Toolbox

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

storageio data protection toolbox

Where To Learn More

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

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

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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

server storage I/O trends

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

Tom Becchetti

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

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

Also available on 

Ok, nuff said for now…

Cheers
Gs

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

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

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HPE Continues Buying Into Server Storage I/O Data Infrastructures

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

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

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

Data Infrastructures

What Are Server Storage I/O Data Infrastructures Resources

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

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

HPE and Server Storage Acquisitions

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

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

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

HPE acquisitions Dejavu or Something New?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What about bulk, object, scale-out storage

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

However where is the HPE object storage story?

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

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

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

What About Hedvig

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

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

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

Where to Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What this all means

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

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

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

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

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

    Now, lets see how this all plays out.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Software Defined, Bulk, Cloud, Scale Out, Object Storage Fundamentals

    Cloud, Bulk, Scale-Out, Object Storage Fundamentals

    Welcome to the Cloud, Big Data, Software Defined, scale-out, Bulk and Object Storage Fundamentals page.

    This page contains various resources, tips, essential topics pertaining to Software Defined, scale-out, Cloud, Bulk and Object and blob Storage Fundamentals. Other resources pertaining to Software Defined, scale-out, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage include:

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

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

    Cloud Object Storage Fundamentals Access and Architectures

    There are many facets to object storage including technology implementation, products, services, access and architectures for various applications and use scenarios.

      • Project or Account – Top of the hierarchy that can represent the owner or billing information for a service that where buckets are also attached.
      • Region – Location where data is stored that can include one or more data centers also known as Availability Zones.

    AWS S3 Cross region replication
    Moving and Replicating Buckets/Containers, Subfolders and Objects

      • Availability Zone (AZ) or data center or server that implement durability and accessibility for availability within a region.

    AWS Regions and Availability Zones AZs
    Example of Regions and Availability Zones (AZs)

      • Bucket or Container – Where objects or sub-folders containing objects are attached and accessed.

    Object storage fundamentals sddc and cloud software defined

      • Sub-folder – While object storage can be located in a flat namespace for commonality and organization some solutions and service support the notion of sub-folder that resemble traditional directory hierarchy.
      • Object – Byte (or bit) stream that can be as small as one byte to as large as several Tbytes (some solutions and services support up to 5TByte sized objects). The object contains whatever data in any organization along with metadata. Different solutions and services support from a couple hundred KBytes of meta-data to Mbytes worth of meta-data. Regarding what can be stored in an object, anything from files, videos, images, virtual disks (VMDKs, VHDX), ZIP or tar files, backup and archive save sets, executable images or ISO’s, anything you want.
      • End-point – Where or what your software, application or tool and utilities along with gateways attach to for accessing buckets and objects.

     

    object storage fundamentals, sddc and cloud storage example

    A common theme for object storage is flexibility, along with scaling (performance, availability, capacity, economics) along with extensibility without compromise or complexity. From those basics, there are many themes and variations from how data is protected (RAID or no RAID, hardware or software), deployed as a service or as tin wrapped software (an appliance), optimized for archiving or video serving or other applications.

    Many facets of cloud and object storage access

    One aspect of object and cloud storage is accessing or using object methods including application programming interfaces (API’s) vs. traditional block (LUN) or NAS (file) based approaches. Keep in mind that many object storage systems, software, and services support NAS file-based access including NFS, CIFS, HDFS  among others for compatibility and ease of use.

    Likewise various API’s can be found across different object solutions, software or services including Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) HTTP REST based, among others. Other API’s will vary by specific vendor or product however can include IOS (e.g. Apple iPhone and iPad), WebDav, FTP, JSON, XML, XAM, CDMI, SOAP, and DICOM among others. Another aspect of object and cloud storage are expanded  and dynamic metadata.

    While traditional file systems and NAS have simple or fixed metadata, object and cloud storage systems, services and solutions along with some scale-out file systems have ability to support user defined metadata. Specific systems, solutions, software, and services will vary on the amount of metadata that could range on the low-end from 100s of KBytes  to tens or more Mbytes.

    cloud object storage

    Where to learn more

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

    Click here to view software defined, bulk, cloud and object storage trend news.


    StorageIO Founder Greg Schulz: File Services on Object Storage with HyperFile

    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via FujiFilm IT Summit: Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Hybrid Clouds
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via InfoStor: Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via Server StorageIO: April 2015 Newsletter Focus on Cloud and Object storage
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS S3 Cross Region Replication storage enhancements
    Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview
    AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions
    Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Book)
    Via ChannelPartnersOnline: Selling Software-Defined Storage: Not All File Systems Are the Same
    Via ITProPortal: IBM kills off its first cloud storage platform
    Via ITBusinessEdge: Time to Rein in Cloud Storage
    Via SerchCloudStorge: Ctera Networks’ file-sharing services gain intelligent cache
    Via StorageIOblog: Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

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

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

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    Wrap up and summary

    Object and cloud storage are in your future, the questions are when, where, with what and how among others.

    Watch for more content and links to be added here soon to this object storage center page including posts, presentations, pod casts, polls, perspectives along with services and product solutions profiles.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    February 2017 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter

    Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

    Volume 17, Issue II

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

    With world backup (and recovery) day coming up on March 31, it makes sense to plan, review, assess, remediate, test and prepare in advance, to avoid or prevent a disaster later. Some of the themes in this months newsletter thus have a data protection angle which includes availability, resiliency, security, and backup/restore along with associated topics. Keep in mind that there are many aspects to data protection, along with various tools, technologies, techniques along with tradecraft skills (experience).

    Speaking of tradecraft, the tips section has been expanded with more content to help refresh, or expand your fundamental data infrastructure skills and experiences. Watch for more about trade craft in future newsletters as well as elsewhere.

    Speaking of data protection, if you had not heard or forgot, some recent events included the Australian Tax Office (ATO) whose resiliency solution appears to not have been configured for, well, availability, resiliency along with durability. You can read more about the ATO, lessons learned as well as fall out doing a Google search such as "australian tax office disaster". Another recent disaster or disruption was Gitlab (not to be confused with Github) that lost around 300GB of data. Google something like "gitlab disaster" to see more.
    In the case of Gitlab, it seems that a DevOp admin accidentally did something like a rm -rf (e.g. recursive and force) that if you know what that means, you know it might not be good.

    As is the case with many disasters or near disasters and disruptions, they are usually the result of a chain of events, thus the mantra or isolate, contain faults to prevent snowballing into something worse. What’s concerning about Gitlab is that there are decades of lessons to be learned, known and preventable.

    Hopefully Gitlabs experiences will prompt others in or moving to so-called platform 3 or new DevOps environment to use things in new ways, as well as prevent old problems using known tradecraft skills, lessons, experiences.
    Also keep in mind that while technology can and will fail, hardware and software including clouds are defined by people, and when people are involved, human error is also present.

    In This Issue

  • Server StorageIO News Commentary
  • Trade craft Articles, Tips & Tricks Topics
  • Server StorageIOblog posts
  • Various Events and Webinars
  • IT Industry Activity Trends
  • Industry Resources and Links
  • Connect and Converse With Us
  • About Us
  • Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Cheers GS

    Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

    Some recent Industry Activities, Trends Announcements

    Cloud and object storage vendor Cloudian announced a new appliance (e.g. tin-wrapped software) that they claim give high density low (cloud service like) pricing.

    Check out iosafe who has a line of fire (and water) proof NAS and Windows Servers as part of availability data protection that can compliment clouds. For those of you who are also Synology fans (or users) take a look at what iosafe is doing for consumer, SOHO, ROBO, workgroup, SMB among other environments.

    Speaking of data protection, how are you going about wiping or digital bleaching your storage including nand flash SSDs? Particularly are you doing deep cleaning including those hard to reach persistent non-volatile memory (NVM) cell locations in SSDs? Check out what Blancco is doing for deep cleaning to wipe or digital bleach your storage including SSDs. Another aspect of data protection includes after your physical assets have been wiped clean (e.g. digital bleach), how will you safely dispose of the items? That’s where various vendors such as OceanTech among others come into play.

    Server StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

    Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

    Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

    Via SearchDataCenter: New options to evolve your data backup and recovery plan
    Via SmallBusinessComputing: Easy Storage for the Little Guy: Has the Time Come?
    Via InfoStor: 10 More Top Data Storage Applications
    Via Infostor: 10 Top Data Storage Applications

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

    Various Tips, Tools, Technology and Tradecraft Topics

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

    Via IDG/NetworkWorld:  Whats a data infrastructure?
    Via Computerweekly:  NVMe: What to use, PCIe card vs U.2 and M.2
    Via InfoStor:  Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
    Via InfoStor:  SSD Trends, Tips and Topics

    Check out Neil Anderson(@flackboxtv) flackbox.com site to view various video and tutorials about NetApp, Cisco along with VMware among others. Sharpen your data infrastructure server storage I/O tradecraft skills with the various labs and simulators that Neil has covered.

    Speaking of tradecraft skills and experience development, check out VMware Staff Architect William Lam (@lamw) virtuallyghetto.com site for a news software defined data center (SDDC) lab. This new lab focuses on automated deployment for vSphere 6.0u2 along with vSphere 6.5. In other related news, VMware has made generally available (GA) vSphere 6.0 Update 3 including enhancements to vSAN and vCenter. View more details here at Duncan Epping (@DuncanYB) of VMware Yellow Bricks site.

    If you are interested in Microsoft Azure, check out this piece on SQL Server failover clustering, along with other Windows Server, Hyper-V, Nano, Powershell and related topics here. Want to build a software defined data center (SDDC) or software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) based on Microsoft Windows Server, Hyper-V and related technologies, check out this Github lab as well as this one for S2D among others.

    View more tips and articles here

    Events and Activities

    Recent and upcoming event activities.

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

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

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

    January 11, 2017 Webinar – Redmond Magazine
    Dell Software – Presenting – Tailor Your Backup Data Repositories to Fit Your Needs

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

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Useful links and pages:
    Microsoft TechNet – Various Microsoft related from Azure to Docker to Windows
    storageio.com/links – Various industry links (over 1,000 with more to be added soon)
    objectstoragecenter.com – Cloud and object storage topics, tips and news items
    OpenStack.org – Various OpenStack related items
    storageio.com/protect – Various data protection items and topics
    thenvmeplace.com – Focus on NVMe trends and technologies
    thessdplace.com – NVM and Solid State Disk topics, tips and techniques
    storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
    VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O Tradecraft Trends

    Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O Tradecraft Trends

    Data Infrastructure trends include server storage I/O network and associated tradecraft are your skills, experiences, insight as well as tricks of the trade, profession and job function (read more about what is a data infrastructure here).

    This is the second of a two-part series exploring data infrastructure along with serve storage I/O and related tradecraft. Read part one of this series here.

    Data Infrastructures
    Data Infrastructure and IT Infrastructure Layers

    As a refresher from part one, data infrastructure encompasses servers, storage, I/O and networking along with associated hardware, software, services and management tasks including data protection among others. Tradecraft is knowing about tools, technologies, and trends in your primary domain as well as adjacent focus areas. However, tradecraft is also about knowing how and when to use different technologies, tools with various techniques to address different scenarios.

    Tradecraft Trends
    Trends involving tradecraft include capturing existing experiences and skills from those who are about to retire or simply move on to something else, as well as learning for those new to IT or servers, storage, I/O, and data infrastructure hardware, software, and services. This means being able to find a balance of old and new tools, techniques, and technologies, including using things in new ways for different situations.

    Part of expanding your tradecraft skill set is knowing when to use different tools, techniques, and technologies from proprietary and closed to open solutions, from tightly integrated to loosely integrated, to bundled and converged, or to a la carte or unbundled components, with do-it-yourself (DIY) integration.

    Tradecraft also means being able to balance when to make a change of technology, tool, or technique for the sake of change vs. clinging to something comfortable or known, vs. leveraging old and new in new ways while enabling change without disrupting the data infrastructure environment or users of its services.

    A couple of other trends include the convergence of people and positions within organizations that may have been in different silos or focus areas in the past. One example is the rise of Development Operations (also known as DevOps), where instead of separate development, administration, and operations areas, they are a combined entity. This might be déja vu for some of you who grew up and gained your tradecraft in similar types of organizations decades ago; for others, it may be something new.

    Regarding fundamental tradecraft skills, if you are a hardware person it is wise to learn software; if you are a software person, it is advisable to acquire some hardware experience. Also, don’t be afraid to say “I do not know” or “it depends on on” when asked a question. This also means learning how information technology supports the needs of the business, as well as learning the technology the business uses.

    Put another way, in addition to learning server storage I/O hardware and software tradecraft, also learn the basic tradecraft of the business your information systems are supporting. After all, the fundamental role of IT is to protect, preserve, and serve information that enables the company or organization; no business exists just to support IT.

    Data Infrastructure Tool Box

    How to develop tradecraft?
    There are many ways, including reading this book along with the companion websites as well as other books, attending seminars and webinars, participating in forums and user groups, as well as having a test lab to learn and try things. Also, find a mentor you can learn from to help capture some of his or her tradecrafts, and if you are experienced, become a mentor to help others develop their tradecraft.

    Toolbox tips, reminders, and recommendations:

    • Create a virtual, software-defined, and physical toolbox.
    • Include tip sheets, notes, hints, tricks, and shortcuts.
    • Leverage books, blogs, websites, tutorials, and related information.
    • Implement a lab or sandbox to try things out
    • Do some proof of concepts (POC) and gain more experience

    Tradecraft Tips
    Get some hands-on, behind-the-wheel time with various technologies to gain insight, perspective, and appreciation of what others are doing, as well as what is needed to make informed decisions about other areas. This also means learning from looking at demos, trying out software, tools, services, or using other ways to understand the solution. Knowing about the tools and technology is important; however, so too is knowing how to use a tool (techniques) and when along with where or for what. This means knowing the tools in your toolbox, but also knowing when, where, why, and how to use a given tool (or technology), along with techniques to use that tool by itself or with multiple other tools.

    Additional tips and considerations include:

    • Expand your social and technical network into adjacent areas.
    • Get involved in user groups, forums, and other venues to learn and give back.
    • Listen, learn, and comprehend vs. only memorizing to pass a test.
    • Find a mentor to help guide you, and become a mentor to help others.
    • Collaborate, share, respect and be respected; the accolades will follow.
    • Evolve from focus on certificates or credentials to expansion of experiences.
    • Connect with others to expand your network

    Where to learn more

    Continue reading more and expanding your tradecraft experiences with the following among other resources:

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What this means

    Remember that tradecraft is skills, experiences, tricks, and techniques along with knowing what as well as how to use various related tools as part of what it is that you are doing. Your data infrastructure tradecraft is (or should be):

    • Essential skills and experiences spanning different technologies and focus areas
    • Knowing various techniques to use new and old things in new as well as hybrid ways
    • Expanding awareness into adjacent areas around your current focus or interest areas
    • Leveraging comprehension, understanding application of what you know
    • Evolving with new knowledge, experiences, and insight about tools and techniques
    • Hardware, software, services, processes, practices, and management
    • From legacy to software-defined, cloud, virtual, and containers

    Part of server storage I/O data infrastructure tradecraft is understanding what tools to use when, where, and why, not to mention knowing how to adapt with those tools, find new ones, or create your own.

    Remember, if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. On the other hand, if you have more tools than you know what to do with, or how to use them, perhaps fewer tools are needed along with learning how to use them by enhancing your skillset and tradecraft.

    In-between the known data infrastructure server, storage, I/O network, converged infrastructure (CI), hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), Docker and other containers, cloud, hardware software-defined known, and unknown is your tradecraft. The narrow the gap between the known and the unknown as well as how to apply your experience is the diversity of your tradecraft.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Server Storage I/O network Data Infrastructure Tradecraft Overview

    Server Storage I/O network Data Infrastructure Tradecraft Overview

    Updated 1/17/2018

    Data Infrastructure Tradecraft includes server storage I/O network and associated technology, technique, skills, experiences. Tradecraft includes insight as well as tricks of the trade, profession and job function (read more about what is a data infrastructure here). This is the first of a two-part series exploring data infrastructure along with serve storage I/O and related tradecraft. Read part two of this series here.

    Data Infrastructures Tradecraft Overview
    Data Infrastructure and IT Infrastructure Layers

    Data infrastructure encompasses servers, storage, I/O and networking along with associated hardware, software, services and management tasks including data protection among others. Tradecraft is knowing about tools, technologies, and trends in your primary domain as well as adjacent focus areas. However, tradecraft is also about knowing how and when to use different technologies, tools with various techniques to address different scenarios.

    What Is Your Tradecraft
    An example of expanding tradecraft is, for instance, an automobile technician who has learned how to change oil, check tire air pressure, or other essential entry-level functions. On the other hand, a master mechanic knows how to do more involved tasks, from the engine to transmission repair or rebuilding, bodywork, along with troubleshooting. A master mechanic not only knows what buttons, knobs, tools, and techniques to use for different tasks, he also knows how to diagnose problems, as well as what usually causes those problems to occur.

    There are many other examples, including salespeople who have the tradecraft of selling, including account as well as relationship building along with the ability to learn new tradecraft related to the trade or items they are or will be selling. Moreover, then there are pre-sales and systems engineers, technical marketing, product and program management, test and development, R&D engineering, IT and technology architects, among many others.
    IT Data Infrastructure Professionals

    Another example is engineers and architects (non-IT) who have basic design along with engineering discipline tradecraft, as well as specialties such as mechanical, electrical, heating ventilation air condition (HVAC), or environmental, among others. They can leverage their basic tradecraft while extending and enhancing it by gaining insight as well as experience in adjacent areas of focus.

    For IT and data infrastructure tradecraft this means expanding from basic tasks to being able to do more advanced things. For example, developing tradecraft from knowing the different hardware, software, and services resources as well as tools, to what to use when, where, why, and how. Another dimension of expanding data infrastructure tradecraft skills is gaining the experience and insight to troubleshoot problems, gain insight awareness with dashboard or monitoring tools, as well as how to design and manage to cut or reduce the chance of things going wrong.

    From Tools and Technologies to Techniques and Tricks of the Trade
    Expanding your awareness of new technologies along with how they work is important, so too is understanding application and organization needs. Developing your tradecraft means balancing the focus on new and old technologies, tools, and techniques with business or organizational application functionality.

    This is where using various tools that themselves are applications to gain insight into how your data infrastructure is configured and being used, along with the applications they support, is important.

    Data Infrastructure Tool Box

    Learning the Talk and Walking the Talk
    For some people their tradecraft is only learning the talk, so that they can talk the talk of trends, techniques, technology buzzwords to do their job (or get a job) and fit in. The next step is comprehending the talk, gaining more insight and experience ability of what to do (and not do) by walking the talk. Sometimes this means learning from mistakes (yours or others) to prevent them in the future.

    Expanding your tradecraft means learning the talk as well as how to walk the talk for adjacent areas. This can mean new skills, ability, tools, and technologies along with proper terminology. For your data infrastructure tradecraft, you need to acquire competencies in these different yet related areas.

    Even if your focus is to be a hardware or software or services person, there are opportunities to expand your tradecraft. For example extend into physical, virtualization, cloud, container, networking, storage, performance, data protection, or security, among others. This also means comprehending how the pieces work together to support the business applications, as well as the impact on each other (e.g. cause and effect).

    Part of tradecraft is also understanding that various terms and acronyms have different context meaning. For example, SAS can mean big data statistical analysis software or Serial Attached SCSI among others. What this means is as your tradecraft expands, so too does awareness that different terms have various meaning along with the importance of asking for context.

    Another example of understanding context is Fabric. Fabric can also have different context and meaning. It can refer to a network of switches, directors, and routers tying together servers, storage, bridges, gateways, and other devices, but it can also be associated with higher-level application functions, or a cluster of servers or services, as well as data. Keep context in mind about fabric: whether it is referring to lower-level physical and logical networks, or applications and data, among others.

    Yet another context example includes that client can have different meanings, including software or applications that communicate with a server or service, local or in the cloud. A variation of client can also be a type of device, such as a tablet, laptop, mobile device or phone, as well as a workstation with varying software for accessing different data infrastructure as well as applications. Another context for client is the user, person, or thing such as IoT that accesses and interacts with client software or server and services of application or data resources. Yet another context for client is a consumer of lower-level data infrastructure resources or higher-level applications services.

    Where To Learn More

    View additional Data Infrastructure and tradecraft related topics via the following links.

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure SDDC Data Infrastructure Tradecraft Overview

    What this means

    Remember that tradecraft is skills, experiences, tricks, and techniques along with knowing what as well as how to use various related tools as part of what it is that you are doing.  Continue reading more about data infrastructure along with server storage I/O network hardware software as well as associated management tradecraft in part two of this series here.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links A to E

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links A to E

    IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

    Updated 2/20/2018

    Following are some useful Data Infrastructure IT Industry Resource Links A to E to cloud, virtual and traditional IT data infrastructure related web sites. The data infrastructure environment (servers, storage, IO and networking, hardware, software, services, virtual, container and cloud) is rapidly changing. You may encounter a missing URL, or a URL that has changed. This list is updated on a regular basis to reflect changes (additions, changes, and retirement).

    Disclaimer and note: URL’s submitted for inclusion on this site will be reviewed for consideration and to be in generally accepted good taste in regards to the theme of this site.

    Best effort has been made to validate and verify the data infrastructure URLs that appear on this page and web site however they are subject to change. The author and/or maintainer(s) of this page and web site make no endorsement to and assume no responsibility for the URLs and their content that are listed on this page.

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    Send an email note to info at storageio dot com that includes company name, URL, contact name, title and phone number along with a brief 40 character description to be considered for addition to the above data infrastructure list, or, to be removed. Note that Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC (e.g. StorageIO) does not sell, trade, barter, borrow or share your contact information per our Privacy and Disclosure policy. View related data infrastructure Server StorageIO content here, and signup for our free newsletter here.

    Links A-E
    Links F-J
    Links K-O
    Links P-T
    Links U-Z
    Other Links

    • A3Cube    Computer I/O solution startup
    • AAPT   AAPT    AWS connect partner, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • abiquo.com    Cloud development and management tools
    • Above.net/Zayo Group    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • abrevity.com    eDiscovery, search, indexing, classification
    • accellion.com    File transfer tools
    • accessopt.com    Holographic storage
    • acinion.com    Video solutions
    • acopia.com    NAS aggregation and global name space (bought by F5)
    • acronis.com    Backup and data protection tools
    • acsacs.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • acs-inc.com    Hosting, outsourcing and managed services (Bought by Xerox)
    • actifio.com    Data protection solutions
    • active-circle.com    Data archiving and storage solutions
    • activestate.com    Stackato PaaS for cloud tools
    • adaptec.com    Adapters, iSCSI storage, data backup solutions (See PMC)
    • adesto.com    CBRAM startup
    • addonics.com    SSD storage solutions
    • adic.com    Backup, Dedupe and data protection solutions (Bought by Quantum)
    • adinfa.com        Energy and resource management tools
    • AdRem Netcrunch        Monitoring of Networks, Systems and Applications, DCIM
    • Adtran    Datacom and networking solutions
    • advancedvault.com    Business continuity solutions
    • advaoptical.com    Optical networking
    • afcom.com    Data center industry user group
    • aforesolutions.com    Cloud storage and infrasture management tools
    • agami.com    High performance NAS storage (Shutdown)
    • agilent.com    Host adapters and test equipment
    • agility.com    Optical solutions and components
    • agilysys.com    VAR
    • aiim.com    Archiving and records management trade group
    • ait.com    Cloud and web hosting
    • Ajubeo    Cloud and management solutions
    • akamai.com    Content distribution network (CDN)
    • akitio.com    Storage systems
    • akorri.com    Storage resource and capacity management
    • alacritech.com    Storage networking adapters for iSCSI
    • alacritus.com    Data Protection Software
    • alcatel.com    Networking and storage networking equipment
    • alliance-it.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • allstorage.nl    Storage services solution provider
    • amazon.com    Cloud compute and storage services
    • AmberPoint.com    SOA management tools
    • amcc.com    Storage networking components (aka JNI & 3ware Bought by LSI)
    • amd.com    Server and processor chips
    • americanfibersystems.com    Metropolitan storage networks and fiber bandwidth
    • amphenol.com    Storage Networking connectors and cables
    • Amplidata.com    Object and wide area based storage
    • ancot.com    Storage networking testing equipment
    • anixter.com    Networking components
    • Anobit.com    Memory components
    • ansi.org    American National Standards Institute
    • Anstor64.com    iSCSI storage software
    • anuesystems.com    SONET’/SDH and network test equipment
    • apc.com    Environmental and power systems and DCIM solutoins
    • apcon.com    Physical cabling and management
    • aperture.com    Data center tools including CMDB (Bought by Emerson)
    • appassue.com    SQL server and data protection tools (Bought by Dell)
    • Appcore    Cloud management tools
    • Appfirst    IT Ops, Development and DCIM monitoring and PKI metrics
    • appiq.com    Storage Management Software (Bought by HP)
    • appirio.com    Cloud and content tools and services
    • apple.com    Server and storage
    • apprenda.com    Grid and data management tools
    • Apprenda   Platform as a service tools
    • aprius.com    PCIe Server I/O virtualization (IOV) technology
    • aptare.com    Data protection management and backup reporting
    • arasan.com    IP Networking components
    • Archivas.com    Archiving and data management software (Bought by HDS)
    • arcmail.com    Email archiving
    • Arcplace    Data management archiving
    • arcsight.com    Compliance solutions
    • argent.com    Data center management and CMDB tools
    • ariodata.com    Scalable data storage and blade storage systems
    • aristanetworks.com    Networking technologies
    • aristoslogic.com    Storage controller technology (Bought by Adaptec)
    • Arkeia.com    Backup and data protection software (Bought by WD)
    • arkivio.com    Storage management and ILM software
    • arm.com    Microprocessor producer
    • armor247.com    SMB focused data protection solutions
    • arrow.com    Distributor
    • arsenaldigital.com    Managed backup service (Bought by IBM)
    • arxscan.com    SRM and file reporting software
    • asankya.com    Application delivery and cloud access
    • asciitable.com    Site containing the ASCII character set table
    • ashare.org    HVAC Engineers Association
    • asigra.com    Backup and data protection solutions
    • asnp.org    Association Storage Networking Professionals
    • asperasoft.com    High speed file and data transfer tools
    • astaro.com    Security tools
    • astutenetworks.com    iSCSI storage optimized for VMware
    • atempo.com    Backup Software
    • Atlantic Metro Communications    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • Atlantiscomputing    ILIO VDI and I/O optimization, cache tools
    • atmforum.com    ATM trade association
    • atrato.com    Storage systems
    • attachmate.com    IT management tools (bought Novell)
    • attotech.com    Storage networking adapters and gateways
    • Attunesystems.com    NAS and file virtualization (Assets bought by F5)
    • attunity.com    File and data movement tools
    • autonomy.com    Data management and cloud services (Bought by HP) –
    • autovirt.com    Storage automation tiering tools
    • avagotech.com    Semiconductor technologies
    • availl.com    Data movement and replication solutions
    • avamar.com    Dedupe, Backup and Restoration Solutions (Bought by EMC)
    • avanade.com    Var
    • avaya.com    Networking and communications
    • averesystems.com    NAS caching and automated tiering
    • avg.com    Security and anti-virus software
    • avnet.com    Distributor
    • www.avocent.com    Infrastructure resource management tools
    • axcient.com    Cloud data protection solutions
    • axiossystems.com    IRM and service management tools
    • axsone.com    Records and document management
    • axxana.com    Data protection and replication tools
    • Backblaze    Online and cloud backup storage
    • BackupAssist    Backup and Recovery software
    • backupify.com    Backup for google apps
    • BUMI    Backup and data protection tools
    • backupright.com    Online and cloud backup
    • Backula    Opensource Backup and data protection
    • bakbone.com    Backup Software (Bought by Quest bought by Dell)
    • balesio.com    File compression solutions
    • barracudanetworks.com    Networking devices, backup software
    • basho.com    NOSQL Database and object storage technology –
    • batblue.com    Cloud, application delivery networking services
    • Bestel   Bestel    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • Beyondtust    Vulnerability assessment and detection
    • bigswitch.com    Openflow based network switches
    • BitArmor.com    Data security software
    • bitcasa.com    Cloud storage and backup
    • Bitcentral    Video management solutions
    • Bitmicro    Solid state devices and other solutions
    • Blackbox    Data center infrastructure, DCIM, KVM and other solutions
    • BlackMESH    FedRAMP and DevOPs hosting
    • blade.org    Trade group for blade servers
    • bladelogic.com    Server management and discovery software
    • BladeNetwork.net    Server and storage blades (Bought by IBM)
    • Bladeroom    Data center and hosting
    • bladesystems.org    Industry trade group for blade servers and storage
    • bladetechnologies.net    Networking technologies
    • blockbridge.com    Elastic Storage Software and Tools
    • bluearc.com    High performance NAS enterprise class storage (Bought by HDS)
    • bluecoat.com    WAN optimization
    • bluecorenetworks.com    Networking infrastructure solutions
    • Bluehost    Web hosting, dedicated and virtual private servers
    • bluelock.com    Hosting, managed service and cloud provider
    • BlueOSS    Cloud and business inteligence solutions
    • www.bluestripe.com     Software for managing virtual data centers
    • bmc.com    Storage management software
    • bocada.com    Backup and management software
    • bowindustries.com    Tape media cleaning tools
    • box.net    Internet/web/cloud storage services
    • bphx.com    Legacy application transformation
    • bridgestor.com    Data reduction and storage optimization
    • Bridghead.com    Storage management software
    • broadband.com    Portal site for finding network bandwidth services
    • broadbandreports.com    Portal site for finding high speed internet access
    • broadcom.com    Storage networking component supplier
    • brocade.com    Switches, WAN gateways, software
    • brouwerconsultancy.com    Storage consultancy service
    • bswd.com    Brian Berg’s Storage Cornucopia web site
    • btiphotonics.com    WDM and Optical networking technologies
    • buffalotech.com    SMB and SOHO NAS storage
    • bustech.com    IBM Mainframe to open systems gateways (Bought by EMC)
    • bycast.com    Grid based fixed content, archive and object storage (Bought by NetApp)
    • c2c.com    Email archiving solutions
    • c2esoft.com    Data center operations and insight management tools
    • ca.com    Data management software
    • Computer Associates    Various data center, DCIM, data protection and other solution tools
    • call-recall.com    Optical storage
    • Canonical   Ubuntu Linux
    • carbonite.com    Cloud storage and backup
    • caringo.com    CAS archiving and object storage tools
    • casecentral.com    Cloud ediscovery
    • cassandra.apache.org    Data management and database alternative software
    • Apache Cassandra    NOSql Data Management tools
    • cassat.com    IRM management tools (Bought by CA)
    • Catalogic Software    Data protection and management tools
    • cataphora.com    Data management tools
    • catbird.com    VM security tools
    • caviumnetworks.com    Networking processors and chip technologies
    • cdproject.net    Carbon Disclosure Project
    • cdrive.com    VAR
    • cdw.com    VAR
    • celion.com    Network services for storage over distance
    • celona.com    Data migration tools
    • cemaphore.com    Messaging solutions
    • centos.org    Cluster Storage
    • centrepath.com    Storage management solutions (formerly Giant Loop)
    • centrify.com    Digital rights management for cloud, virtual, server, desktop and storage
    • Tier3/CenturyLink   Cloud, hosting and managed services
    • Centurylinkg/Savvis    Cloud and hosting solutions
    • Ceph   Cloud and object storage solutions
    • cert.org    Internet Security information
    • certesnetworks.com    Cloud security tools
    • certon.com    VAR
    • CFN Services    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • chelsio.com    High speed Ethernet adapters
    • chicorporation.com    Data protection, cloud and storage VAR
    • ciena.com    Optical networking
    • Cinenet    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • ciphermax.com    Data Storage Encryption Tools
    • cipheroptics.com    Storage networking security
    • ciprico.com    Storage systems (Bought by DotHill)
    • cirrustore.com    Backup data protection tools
    • cirtas.com    Cloud Storage Appliance – Added 6/9/10
    • cisco.com    Switches, WAN and Optical networking
    • Citrix.com    Virtualization solutions
    • ClearDB.com/.com    Local and distributed (GEO) MySQL database software and service
    • clearpace.com/.com    Large scale archive and data management tools
    • CleverSafe.com    Distributed object/esrasure storage
    • climatesaverscomputing.com    Green computing industry trade group
    • Clonix   Data cloning, duplication and protection tools
    • CloudByte   Scale-out and cloud storage
    • cloudera.com    Hadoop data storage and analytics tools
    • CloudFlare   CDN and Web Cache solutions
    • cloudfuzion.com    High performance servers
    • Cloudian   Cloud and object storage tools
    • Cloudphysics   Big data and virtualization tools
    • cloudreplica.com    Cloud data protection tools
    • cloudscaling.com    Open cloud platforms
    • Apache CloudStack   Open Source Cloud tools
    • cloudtp.com    Open cloud deployment solutions
    • CloudVelocity   Hybrid Cloud and data protection management solutins
    • cloverleafcomm.com    Storage Virtualization tools (Bought by DotHill)
    • clustrix.com    Storage software startup
    • cmg.org    Computer Measurement Group
    • cnt.com    Switches, WAN gateways, software (Bought by McData bought by Brocade)
    • Cobalt Iron   Data protection tools
    • code42.com    Cloud storage and backup aka Crashplan
    • Codenomicon.com    Data and security tools
    • cofio.com    Backup and data protection tools
    • CohesiveFT   Cloud solution and management tools
    • colliercomputing.com    VAR
    • colo-america.com    Co-location and hosting services

    • communities.vmware.com    VMware community
    • commvault.com    Data management software
    • comodo.com    Encryption tools
    • Comparitech    Consumer tech reviews
    • compellent.com    SMB Storage sub-systems and software – (Bought by Dell)
    • comptia.org    Computer and Technology Industry Association
    • compucom.com    VAR
    • computergamedesign.org    Computer game design
    • compuverde.com    Big data management tools and object storage
    • compuware.com    IT management and performance tools
    • condre.com    VAR/distributor
    • Condusiv   Data and storage management tools including Diskeeper
    • XO Communications    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • Connected Cloud    Cloud management tools
    • connectwise.com    IT automation tools
    • conres.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • consiliant.com    VAR
    • ConstantData.com    Real time data replication and mirroring
    • continuitysoftware.com    Replication and Snapshot data protection management
    • convirture.com    Cloud and virtualization tools
    • copansys.com    Secondary storage for backup and archiving (Assets Bought by SGI)
    • coraid.com    SATA over Ethernet storage
    • CoreSite    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • corevault.com    Cloud services
    • Cormant    DCIM and data center and infrastructure management tools
    • corning.com    Fiber optic cabling
    • corsair.com    SSD
    • corvis.com    Networking solutions
    • cPanel    Web, cloud and hosting management tools
    • crashplan.com    Cloud storage and backup aka Code42
    • creekpath.com    Storage management software
    • www.critical-links.com    Office in a box
    • crossroads.com    Storage routers and data protection management tools
    • Crosswalkinc.com    Clustered NAS storage (Ceased Operations)
    • crucial.com    Memory and SSD solutions
    • cru-dataport.com    Data Archive solutions
    • Crypto.com    Crypto resource site
    • www.ctera.com    Cloud storage appliance
    • Cumulus Networks    Open networking
    • curtisssd.com    SSD solution provider
    • cya.com    Document management and data protection
    • cyber-ark.com    Security data protection tools
    • cypress.com    Storage and networking components
    • dantz.com    Data protection and backup solutions (Aka Retrospect Bought by EMC, EMC sold off)
    • datacentertechnologies.com    Data management solutions (Bought by Symantec)
    • datacore.com    Storage management software
    • datadepositbox.com    Online backup and data protection
    • datadirectnetworks.com    Aka DDN Storage systems, SAN, NAS, Object and cloud
    • datadomain.com    Data Deduplication System (Bought by EMC)
    • Data Dynamics Inc    StorageX Data Movement, Migration and management
    • datafort.com    Online cloud backup
    • dataglobal.com    Data and storage management
    • Data Gravity    Big Data solutions
    • datagres.com    Cloud and application caching acceleration
    • dataguise.com/    Data security solutions
    • datalink.com    VAR
    • datallegro.com    Data warehouse storage solution (Bought by Microsoft)
    • datamirror.com    Data replication solutions
    • DataON Storage    Storage solutions
    • Datapipe    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • dataprotection.com    Vaultlogix data protection tools for cloud
    • DataRAM.com    SSD solutions
    • Data sales    Storage systems sales and leasing
    • dataslide.com    Hard rectangular disk (HRD)
    • datastor.com    Windows based backup data protection
    • datcollaborative.org    Data collaboration group and DAPL material
    • datoptic.com    Storage VAR
    • daymarksi.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • DBR360    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • ddifrontline.com    Security and access control
    • debian.org    Open source operating system
    • Debriefing software    Storage SRM tools
    • decru.com    Storage networking security solutions (Bought by NetApp)
    • Asempra.com    Data protection bought by Dell via Quest
    • dell.com    Storage networking equipment
    • Delphix    Storage, data management and data protection tools
    • demandtechnology.com    Demand technology software (performance software)
    • Denodo    Data virtualization tools
    • dexrexgear .com    Social media cloud storage
    • www.dey-sys.com    Open source software based sotrage
    • www.dh2i.com    Database virtualization software tools
    • digidata.com    Storage solutions
    • digistoresolutions.com    Archiving and data protection solutions
    • Digitalocular.com     Video data management tools
    • digitalreefinc.com    eDiscovery and compliance tools
    • digitiliti.com    Cloud and managed service backup
    • diligent.com    Virtual Tape Library (VTL) and Dedupe (Bought by IBM)
    • dimensiondata.com    VAR
    • Dimension Data    Hosting and managed services
    • dincloud.com    Cloud virtual desktop
    • directtextbook.com    Online book venue
    • discoverybox.net    Data protection for legal hold and compliance
    • diskkeeper.com    File and disk storage defragmentation (Condusiv)
    • Disklace.com    Disk storage optimization tools
    • dlink.com    Storage, network and cloud technologies
    • dmtf.org    Distributed Management Task Force
    • dnfstorage.com    iSCSI and hybrid storage (formerly Stonefly)
    • dothill.com    Distributed storage solutions
    • Doubletake.com    Data replication software
    • driveoncloud.com    Cloud drive online storage
    • drivesaversdatarecovery.com    Data protection and recovery
    • drobo.com    SMB and SOHO NAS storage
    • dropbox.com    Cloud storage and file sharing
    • druva.com    Backup, Storage, network and cloud technologies
    • dsireusa.org    Database of State Incentives and Renewable Energy
    • Dundas    Data Visualization and mobile dashboards
    • dvs.de    Digital video systems and storage
    • dynamicsolutions.com    Storage and data protection VAR
    • EaseUS    Backup, data protection and cloning tools
    • ecctek.com    Rugged data storage components
    • econnectix.com    Data and storage management solutions
    • eds.com    Data outsourcing and cloud provider (Bought by HP)
    • eere.energy.gov     U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) web site
    • egenera.com    Blade server and server virtualization management software
    • eginnovations.com    Application and infrastructure monitoring
    • egnyte.com    Cloud backup and data protection
    • eia.doe.gov/fuelelectric.html    Portal for electrical power generation, use and costs
    • emc.com    Storage sub-systems software
    • Emerson.com    DCIM IT Data center power, cooling and environmental management tools
    • Empired FlexScale    IT and business cloud solutions
    • emprisanetworks.com    Network management solutions (Bought by BMC)
    • emulex.com    Host bus adapters and embedded switches
    • enclarity.com    Healthcare CRM and analysis tools
    • encryptstick.com    USB based encryption device
    • enduradata.com    Data distribution and protection
    • energycenter.org    California Center for Sustainable Energy
    • energyshop.com    Portal for energy pricing and options
    • energystar.gov    United States EPA Energy Star web site
    • Enhance-tech.com    Storage VAR
    • enmotus.com    SSD storage tiering technology
    • Ensim   IT and cloud provisioning/management tools
    • enstratus.com    Amazon cloud computing management tools (Bought by Dell)
    • enterprisedb.com    Enterprise Database tools
    • epeat.net    Site for comparing desktop and related products
    • epic.com    Medical Information Technology software
    • equallogic.com    iSCSI storage systems (Bought by Dell)
    • Equinix, Inc.    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • equivio.com    Email data protection and retention
    • ericom.com    Desktop and VDI tools
    • esilicon.com    ASIC and custom silicon development
    • essextec.com    VAR
    • Eucalyptus    Open source cloud solutions
    • Evault.com    aka i365 – Remote (Cloud) backup service provider (Bought by Seagate)
    • Everspin Technologies    MRAM memories
    • evolvingsol.com    VAR
    • evostor.com    Storage startup
    • exablade.com    High performance application acceleration
    • Exablox    SMB storage solutions
    • Exabyte.com    Removable tape and robotics
    • exagrid.com    Backup Storage
    • exanet.com    Clustered NAS Storage (Bought by Dell aka FluidFileSystem)
    • exar.com    Server, Storage and Networking components
    • exavio.com    HD and SD data capture
    • exludus.com    Multi core optimize
    • Expand.com    Network and WAN optimization
    • Expertanalyticalsystems.com    Storage analysis tools
    • Exponential-e Ltd.    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • expresscomputersystems.com    Storage solutions VAR
    • extremenetworks.com    Networking switches

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

    Visit the following additional data infrastructure and IT data center related links.

    Links A-E
    Links F-J
    Links K-O
    Links P-T
    Links U-Z
    Other Links

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links F to J

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links F to J

    IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

    Updated 2/20/2018

    Following are some useful Data Infrastructure IT Industry Resource Links F to J to cloud, virtual and traditional IT data infrastructure related web sites. The data infrastructure environment (servers, storage, IO and networking, hardware, software, services, virtual, container and cloud) is rapidly changing. You may encounter a missing URL, or a URL that has changed. This list is updated on a regular basis to reflect changes (additions, changes, and retirement).

    Disclaimer and note: URL’s submitted for inclusion on this site will be reviewed for consideration and to be in generally accepted good taste in regards to the theme of this site.

    Best effort has been made to validate and verify the data infrastructure URLs that appear on this page and web site however they are subject to change. The author and/or maintainer(s) of this page and web site make no endorsement to and assume no responsibility for the URLs and their content that are listed on this page.

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    Send an email note to info at storageio dot com that includes company name, URL, contact name, title and phone number along with a brief 40 character description to be considered for addition to the above data infrastructure list, or, to be removed. Note that Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC (e.g. StorageIO) does not sell, trade, barter, borrow or share your contact information per our Privacy and Disclosure policy. View related data infrastructure Server StorageIO content here, and signup for our free newsletter here.

    Links A-E
    Links F-J
    Links K-O
    Links P-T
    Links U-Z
    Other Links

    • f5.com    Networking solutions
    • fabric7.com    High speed networking
    • falconstor.com    Storage management software
    • FarStone.com    Backup and data protection software
    • fcoe.com    Web site pertaining to Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
    • fdr.com    Aka Innovation data protection tools
    • fedoraproject.org    Linux based operating system
    • Fiber Internet Center    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • FiberLight    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • fibrechannel.org    Fibre Channel Trade Group
    • filenet.com    File Management Solutions
    • FilesX.com    Backup and data protection software (Bought by IBM)
    • filetek.com    Data management solutions (Bought by SGI)
    • finisar.com    Test, Diagnostic, and Optic Transceivers
    • firescope.com    DCIM, IRM, PMDB, CMDB data solutions
    • First Communications    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • Firewall Technical    AWS Desktop, Server and Network Support
    • flashsoft.com    SSD cache software (Bought by SANdisk)
    • Flexiant    Cloud management tools
    • flexstar.com    Hardware testing equipment
    • FNT Software    Data Center and DCIM software tools
    • Folder Sizes    Disk Space Management software tools
    • force10.com    High speed networking (Bought by Dell)
    • forsythe.com    VAR
    • foundrynetworks.com    Networking switches (Bought by Brocade)
    • FreeNAS    ZFS based NAS storage software
    • frety.com    Site with links to various technologies
    • fueleconomy.gov    US Government site for energy efficiency
    • fujifilm.com    Data storage tape media
    • Fujitsu.com    Computers, disks, storage
    • fujitsu-siemens.com    Storage, VTL, storage management solutions
    • fulcrummicro.com    10Gb and high performance chips and cross bars
    • fusionio.com    PCIe based NAND/FLASH local SSD for internal server attachment
    • ioturbine.com    IO optimization driver software (Bought by FusionIO)
    • fusionstorm.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • FutureMark    PC Benchmarking and testing tools (PCMark and others)
    • gear6.com    Data performance acceleration NAS caching appliance (Bought by Violin)
    • Geist Global    Data Center and DCIM tools
    • geminare.com    Cloud and application migration and recovery tools
    • genie-soft.com    Backup and data protection tools
    • genstor.com    Storage solutions
    • gfi.com    SMB Email security and data protection
    • gigaspace.com    Grid application and data management middle ware
    • gladinet.com    Cloud storage access software
    • Global Capacity    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • globalstor.com    Data storage solutions
    • glodynetechnoserve.com    IT Management tools
    • gluster.com    Open source clustered file system (Bought by Redhat)
    • gogrid.com    Cloud IaaS and hosting services
    • goldengate.com    Data protection and management software (Bought by Oracle)
    • goodsync.com    Data protection solutions
    • Google    Various cloud services including Google Drive, Documents and others
    • graudata.com    Archive software tools
    • Gravitant    Cloud brokerage and management tools
    • green-bytes.com    ZFS based storage management solutions
    • Greenfield Software    DCIM software tools
    • greenliant.com    Nand flash SSD for embedded solutions
    • greenplum.com    Data warehouse storage solutions (Bought by EMC)
    • greenracksystems.com    VAR
    • gresham-storage.com    Virtual tape solutions (VTL sold to Tributary)
    • GridGain    in memory computing
    • gridironsystems.com    Big data and high performance appliance storage
    • gridstore.com    Clustered NAS storage
    • Global Telecom Technology, Inc. (GTT)    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • Apache Hadoop    Hadoop Big Data Tools
    • hastorage.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • www.hddfiresafe.com    Fire proof and water resistant storage systems
    • hds.com    Storage sub-systems and software
    • hermes-softlab.com    IT and virtualization software
    • Hibernia Atlantic    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • hifn.com    Optimization technology (Bought by Exar)
    • high-rely.com    Removable storage solutions
    • hi-stor.com    VAR
    • hitachigst.com    Hitachi Global Storage Technologies – Disk drives (Bought by WD)
    • Hotlink    Data protection, cloud and virtualization management tools
    • hp.com    Storage networking hardware and software
    • htch.com    Hutchinson technologies – disk drive components
    • huawei.com    Networking technologies
    • hydrastor.com    Multi-tenant clustered storage (NEC)
    • hyper9.com    Virtualization management tools (aka Inovawave)
    • hyperio.com    Storage and I/O performance monitoring for Windows
    • hytrust.com    Virtual infrastructure security tools
    • Hyve Solutions   Open Compute Project Servers and Storage
    • i365.com    Online cloud backup (Bought by Seagate e.g. Evault)

    • i3-groep.nl    Dutch ICT VAR
    • iarchive.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • iBackup    Online and cloud backup service
    • ibm.com    Storage networking hardware and software
    • Ibrix.com    Clustered and cloud storage software (Bought by HP)
    • Iceweb.com    Data storage solutions
    • icorps.com    IT outsourcing and consulting services
    • IDRIVE    Cloud storage backup
    • idt.com    Server, storage, memory, networking components
    • ieee.org    Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
    • ietf.org    Internet Engineering Task Force
    • iland    Cloud and virtualization services tools
    • illumita.com    IT Cloud solutions
    • Imation.com    Removable media, primary and archive storage (Bought Nexsan)
    • imperva.com    Data protection tools
    • imtpartners.com    Storage TCO modeling tool
    • Inboxer.com    Email and compliance risk management tools
    • Incentra.com    VAR (Bought by Datalink)
    • incipient.com    Storage management and virtualization (Assets bought by TMS)
    • indexengines.com    eDiscovery, search, indexing, classification
    • infineta.com    WAN optimization
    • infinibandta.org    InfiniBand Trade Organization
    • infinicon.com    InfiniBand Technology
    • Infinio    VMware NAS I/O acceleration cache
    • infinityio.com    Storage networking training
    • infocachecorp.com    Data discovery solutions VAR
    • InfoGuard.com    Data security solutions
    • infology.net    eDiscovery
    • Infortrend.com    RAID controllers
    • infostor.com    Magazine focused on storage and storage networking
    • infostreet.com    Cloud Desktop tools
    • Inktank    Ceph services
    • inmage.com    Data protection appliance
    • innovationdp.com    Data management software
    • inoc.com    Network Operations Center (NOC) service
    • Inovawave.com    Virtualization management tools (aka Hyper9)
    • Inphase-technologies.com    Holographic storage
    • inquinox.com    Data, dedupe and data protection management tools
    • inrange.com    Storage Networking Formerly Dataswitch (Bought by CNT Bought by McData Bought by Brocade)
    • insight.com    Value Added Reseller (VAR)
    • insynchq.com    Cloud storage, document sharing
    • intel.com    Host adapters and chips
    • intelipathsolutions.com    Virtual network connectivity (Aka Onpath)
    • intellimagic.net    Server performance, resource management software
    • IntelliProp    SAS and SATA storage
    • InterCloud    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • intermedia.net.com    Exchange email hosting service
    • Intermine.com    Storage management software
    • Internap.com    Cloud, managed services, hosting and colo
    • interscapetech.com    Cloud and storage tools / services
    • InterSOC.com    Security management tools
    • intersystems.com    Medical Information Technology software
    • intradyn.com    Storage and data protection for SMB (Part of Sony)
    • intransa.com    iSCSI storage
    • Intronis.com    Online, managed and cloud backup solutions
    • iolo.com    Desktop tuneup, protection tools
    • iomega.com    SMB iSCSI, NAS and other storage (Bought by EMC, Partnering with Lenovo)
    • iometer.org    Iometer performance benchmarking tool
    • Ion Computer    Server, storage and data center solutions
    • iosafe.com    Rugged and fire proof, water proof storage
    • IP Fabrics    SDN switch
    • iphouse.com    MSP, hosting and cloud services
    • iqstor.com    Storage for SMB environments
    • iri.com    Big data management tools
    • CoSort Company IRI    Data management and protection tools
    • ironmountain.com    Data archive, managed and cloud services
    • ironspeed.com    Mobile database tools
    • iSecure    Internet security and forensics services
    • isilon.com    Shared storage – (Bought by EMC)
    • iso.org    International Standards Organizations
    • iStor.com    iSCSI storage
    • IT-ERNITY    Data center and hosting services
    • ivivity.com    Storage virtualization technology
    • iwavesoftware.com    Heterogeneous storage automation software
    • ixia.com    Fibre Channel test equipment
    • IX Reach    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • ixsight.com    IT and IRM/SRA insight and data migration
    • JAM Software    Treesize SRM including for NAS
    • jdsu.com    Storage networking optics
    • Jeda Networks    Software defined network and storage management
    • jedec.org    Joint Electron Device Engineering Council
    • jmr.com    Storage systems
    • jni.com    Host bus adapters
    • joyent.com    Cloud infrasture tools
    • jumpbox.com    VM virtual appliance hosting
    • jumpbox.com    Virtualization solutions
    • jungledisk.com    Cloud storage, backup file sharing
    • juniper.net    Networking technologies

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

    Visit the following additional data infrastructure and IT data center related links.

    Links A-E
    Links F-J
    Links K-O
    Links P-T
    Links U-Z
    Other Links

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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