Category: perspective

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Part II: EMC announces XtremIO General Availability, speeds and feeds

Storage I/O trends

XtremIO flash SSD more than storage I/O speed

Following up part I of this two-part series, here are more more details, insights and perspectives about EMC XtremIO and it’s generally availability that were announced today.

XtremIO the basics

  • All flash Solid State Device (SSD) based solution
  • Cluster of up to four X-Brick nodes today
  • X-Bricks available in 10TB increments today, 20TB in January 2014
  • 25 eMLC SSD drives per X-Brick with redundant dual processor controllers
  • Provides server-side iSCSI and Fibre Channel block attachment
  • Integrated data footprint reduction (DFR) including global dedupe and thin provisioning
  • Designed for extending duty cycle, minimizing wear of SSD
  • Removes need for dedicated hot spare drives
  • Capable of sustained performance and availability with multiple drive failure
  • Only unique data blocks are saved, others tracked via in-memory meta data pointers
  • Reduces overhead of data protection vs. traditional small RAID 5 or RAID 6 configurations
  • Eliminates overhead of back-end functions performance impact on applications
  • Deterministic  storage I/O performance (IOPs, latency, bandwidth) over life of system

When would you use XtremIO vs. another storage system?

If you need all enterprise like data services including thin provisioning, dedupe, resiliency with deterministic performance on an all-flash system with raw capacity from 10-40TB (today) then XtremIO could be a good fit. On the other hand, if you need a mix of SSD based storage I/O performance (IOPS, latency or bandwidth) along with some HDD based space capacity, then a hybrid or traditional storage system could be the solution. Then there are hybrid scenarios where a hybrid storage system, array or appliance (mix of SSD and HDD) are used for most of the applications and data, with an XtremIO handling more tasks that are demanding.

How does XtremIO compare to others?

EMC with XtremIO is taking a different approach than some of their competitors whose model is to compare their faster flash-based solutions vs. traditional mid-market and enterprise arrays, appliances or storage systems on a storage I/O IOP performance basis. With XtremIO there is improved performance measured in IOPs or database transactions among other metrics that matter. However there is also an emphasis on consistent, predictable, quality of service (QoS) or what is known as deterministic storage I/O performance basis. This means both higher IOPs with lower latency while doing normal workload along with background data services (snapshots, data footprint reduction, etc).

Some of the competitors focus on how many IOPs or work they can do, however without context or showing impact to applications when back-ground tasks or other data services are in use. Other differences include how cluster nodes are interconnected (for scale out solutions) such as use of Ethernet and IP-based networks vs dedicated InfiniBand or PCIe fabrics. Host server attachment will also differ as some are only iSCSI or Fibre Channel block, or NAS file, or give a mix of different protocols and interfaces.

An industry trend however is to expand beyond the flash SSD need for speed focus by adding context along with QoS, deterministic behavior and addition of data services including snapshots, local and remote replication, multi-tenancy, metering and metrics, security among other items.

Storage I/O trends

Who or what are XtremIO competition?

To some degree vendors who only have PCIe flash SSD cards might place themselves as the alternative to all SSD or hybrid mixed SSD and HDD based solutions. FusionIO used to take that approach until they acquired NexGen (a storage system) and now have taken a broader more solution balanced approach of use the applicable tool for the task or application at hand.

Other competitors include the all SSD based storage arrays, systems or appliance vendors which includes legacy existing as well as startups vendors that include among others IBM who bought TMS (flashsystems), NetApp (EF540), Solidfire, Pure, Violin (who did a recent IPO) and Whiptail (bought by Cisco).  Then there are the hybrid which is a long list including Cloudbyte (software), Dell, EMCs other products, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp, Nexenta (Software), Nimble, Nutanix, Oracle, Simplivity and Tintri among others.

What’s new with this XtremIO announcement

10TB X-Bricks enable 10 to 40TB (physical space capacity) per cluster (available on 11/19/13). 20TB X-Bricks (larger capacity drives) will double the space capacity in January 2014. If you are doing the math, that means either a single brick (dual controller) system, or up to four bricks (nodes, each with dual controllers) configurations. Common across all system configurations are data features such as thin provisioning, inline data footprint reduction (e.g. dedupe) and XtremIO Data Protection (XDP).

What does XtremIO look like?

XtremIO consists of up to four nodes (today) based on what EMC calls X-Bricks.
EMC XtremIO X-Brick
25 SSD drive X-Brick

Each 4U X-Brick has 25 eMLC SSD drives in a standard EMC 2U DAE (disk enclosure) like those used with the VNX and VMAX for SSD and Hard Disk Drives (HDD). In addition to the 2U drive shelve, there are a pair of 1U storage processors (e.g. controllers) that give redundancy and shared access to the storage shelve.

XtremIO Architecture
XtremIO X-Brick block diagram

XtremIO storage processors (controllers) and drive shelve block diagram. Each X-Brick and their storage processors or controllers communicate with each other and other X-Bricks via a dedicated InfiniBand using Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) fabric for memory to memory data transfers. The controllers or storage processors (two per X-Brick) each have dual processors with eight cores for compute, along with 256GB of DRAM memory. Part of each controllers DRAM memory is set aside as a mirror its partner or peer and vise versa with access being over the InfiniBand fabric.

XtremIO fabric
XtremIO X-Brick four node fabric cluster or instance

How XtremIO works

Servers access XtremIO X-Bricks using iSCSI and Fibre Channel for block access. A responding X-Brick node handles the storage I/O request and in the case of a write updates other nodes. In the case of a write, the handling node or controller (aka storage processor) checks its meta data map in memory to see if the data is new and unique. If so, the data gets saved to SSD along with meta data information updated across all nodes. Note that data gets ingested and chunked or sharded into 4KB blocks. So for example if a 32KB storage I/O request from the server arrives, that is broken (e.g. chunk or shard) into 8 4KB pieces each with a mathematical unique fingerprint created. This fingerprint is compared to what is known in the in memory meta data tables (this is a hexadecimal number compare so a quick operation). Based on the comparisons if unique the data is saved and pointers created, if already exists, then pointers are updated.

In addition to determining if unique data, the fingerprint is also used for generate a balanced data dispersal plan across the nodes and SSD devices. Thus there is the benefit of reducing duplicate data during ingestion, while also reducing back-end IOs within the XtremIO storage system. Another byproduct is the reduction in time spent on garbage collection or other background tasks commonly associated with SSD and other storage systems.

Meta data is kept in memory with a persistent copied written to reserved area on the flash SSD drives (think of as a vault area) to support and keep system state and consistency. In between data consistency points the meta data is kept in a log journal like how a database handles log writes. What’s different from a typical database is that XtremIO XIOS platform software does these consistency point writes for persistence on a granularity of seconds vs. hours or minutes.

Storage I/O trends

What about rumor that XtremIO can only do 4KB IOPs?

Does this mean that the smallest storage I/O or IOP that XtremIO can do is 4GB?

That is a rumor or some fud I have heard floated by a competitor (or two or three) that assumes if only 4KB internal chunk or shard being used for processing, that must mean no IOPs smaller than 4KB from a server.

XtremIO can do storage I/O IOP sizes of 512 bytes (e.g. the standard block size) as do other systems. Note that the standard server storage I/O block or IO size is 512 bytes or multiples of that unless the new 4KB advanced format (AF) block size being used which based on my conversations with EMC, AF is not supported, yet. (Updated 11/15/13 EMC has indicated that host (front-end) 4K AF support, along with 512 byte emulation modes are available now with XIOS). Also keep in mind that since XtremIO XIOS internally is working with 4KB chunks or shards, that is a stepping stone for being able to eventually leverage back-end AF drive support in the future should EMC decide to do so (Updated 11/15/13 Waiting for confirmation from EMC about if back-end AF support is now enabled or not, will give more clarity as it is recieved).

What else is EMC doing with XtremIO?

  • VCE Vblock XtremIO systems for SAP HANA (and other databases) in memory databases along with VDI optimized solutions.
  • VPLEX and XtremIO for extended distance local, metro and wide area HA, BC and DR.
  • EMC PowerPath XtremIO storage I/O path optimization and resiliency.
  • Secure Remote Support (aka phone home) and auto support integration.

Boosting your available software license minutes (ASLM) with SSD

Another use of SSD has been in the past the opportunity to make better use of servers stretching their usefulness or delaying purchase of new ones by improving their effective use to do more work. In the past this technique of using SSDs to delay a server or CPU upgrade was used when systems when hardware was more expensive, or during the dot com bubble to fill surge demand gaps.  This has the added benefit of stretching database and other expensive software licenses to go further or do more work. The less time servers spend waiting for IOP’s means more time for doing useful work and bringing value of the software license. Otoh, the more time spent waiting is lot available software minutes which is cost overhead.

Think of available software licence minutes (ASLM) in terms of available software license minutes where if doing useful work your software is providing value. On the other hand if those minutes are not used for useful work (e.g. spent waiting or lost due to CPU or server or IO wait, then they are lost). This is like airlines and available seat miles (ASM) metric where if left empty it’s a lost opportunity, however if used, then value, not to mention if yield management applied to price that seat differently. To make up for that loss many organizations have to add extra servers and thus more software licensing costs.

Storage I/O trends

Can we get a side of context with them metrics?

EMC along with some other vendors are starting to give more context with their storage I/O performance metrics that matter than simple IOP’s or Hero Marketing Metrics. However context extends beyond performance to also availability and space capacity which means data protection overhead. As an example, EMC claims 25% for RAID 5 and 20% for RAID 6 or 30% for RAID 5/RAID 6 combo where a 25 drive (SSD) XDP has a 8% overhead. However this assumes a 4+1 (5 drive) RAID , not apples to apples comparison on a space overhead basis. For example a 25 drive RAID 5 (24+1) would have around an 4% parity protection space overhead or a RAID 6 (23+2) about 8%.

Granted while the space protection overhead might be more apples to apples with the earlier examples to XDP, there are other differences. For example solutions such as XDP can be more tolerant to multiple drive failures with faster rebuilds than some of the standard or basic RAID implementations. Thus more context and clarity would be helpful.

StorageIO would like see vendors including EMC along with startups who give data protection space overhead comparisons without context to do so (and applaud those who provide context). This means providing the context for data protection space overhead comparisons similar to performance metrics that matter. For example simply state with an asterisk or footnote comparing a 4+1 RAID 5 vs. a 25 drive erasure or forward error correction or dispersal or XDP or wide stripe RAID for that matter (e.g. can we get a side of context). Note this is in no way unique to EMC and in fact quite common with many of the smaller startups as well as established vendors.

General comments

My laundry list of items which for now would be nice to have’s, however for you might be need to have would include native replication (today leverages Recover Point), Advanced Format (4KB) support for servers (Updated 11/15/13 Per above, EMC has confirmed that host/server-side (front-end) AF along with 512 byte emulation modes exist today), as well as SSD based drives, DIF (Data Integrity Feature), and Microsoft ODX among others. While 12Gb SAS server to X-Brick attachment for small in the cabinet connectivity might be nice for some, more practical on a go forward basis would be 40GbE support.

Now let us see what EMC does with XtremIO and how it competes in the market. One indicator to watch in the industry and market of the impact or presence of EMC XtremIO is the amount of fud and mud that will be tossed around. Perhaps time to make a big bowl of popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show…

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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EMC announces XtremIO General Availability (Part I)

Storage I/O trends

EMC announces XtremIO flash SSD General Availability

EMC announced today the general availability (GA) if the all flash Solid State Device (SSD) XtremIO that they acquired a little over a year ago. Earlier this year EMC announced directed availability (DA) of the EMC version of XtremIO as part of other SSD hardware and software updates (here and here). The XtremIO GA announcement also follows that of the VNX2 or MCx released in September of this year that also has flash SSD enhancements along with doing more with available resources.

EMC XtremIO flash SSD boosting storage I/O performance

As an industry trend, the question is not if SSD is in your future, rather where, when, how much, what to use along with coexistence to complement Hard Disk Drive (HDD) based solutions in some environments. This also means that SSD is like real estate where location matters, not to mention having different types of technologies, packaging, solutions to meet various needs (and price points). This all ties back to the best server and storage I/O or IOP is the one that you do know have to do, the second best is the one with the least impact and best application benefit.

From industry adoption to customer deployment

EMC has evolved the XtremIO platform from a pre-acquisition solution to an first EMC version that was offered to an early set of customers e.g. DA.

I suspect that the DA was as much a focus on getting early customer feedback, addressing immediate needs or opportunities as wells as getting the EMC sales and marketing teams messaging, marching orders aligned and deployed. The latter would be rather important to decrease or avoid the temptation to cannibalize existing product sales with the shiny new technology (SNT). Likewise, it would be important for EMC to not create isolated pockets or fenced off products as some other vendors often do.

EMC XtremIO X-Brick
25 SSD drive X-Brick

What is being announced?

  • General availability vs. directed or limited availability
  • Version 2.2 of the XIOS platform software
  • Integrating with EMC support and service tools

Let us get back go this announcement and XtremIO of which EMC has indicated that they have several customers who have now done either $1M or $5M USD deals. EMC has claimed over 1.5 PBytes have been booked and deployed, or with data footprint reduction (DFR) including dedupe over 10PB effective capacity. Note that for those who are focused on dedupe or DFR reduction ratios 10:1.5 may not be as impressive as seen with some backup solutions, however keep in mind that this is for primary high performance storage vs. secondary or tertiary storage devices.

As part of this announcement, EMC has also release V2.2 of the XtremIO platform software (XIOS). Hence a normal new product should start with a version 1.0 at launch, however as explained this is both a new version of the technology as well as the initial GA by EMC.

Also as part of this announcement, EMC is making available XtremIO 10TB X-Bricks with 25 eMLC SSD drives each, along with dual controllers (storage processors). EMC has indicated that it will make available a 20TB X-Brick using larger capacity SSD drives in January 2014. Note that the same type of SSD drives must be used in the systems. Currently there can be up to four X-Bricks per XtremIO cluster or instance that are interconnected using a dedicated InfiniBand Fabric. Application servers access the XtremIO X-Bricks using standard Fibre Channel or Ethernet and IP based iSCSI. In addition to the hardware platform items, the XtremIO platform software (XIOS) includes built-in on the fly data footprint reduction (DFR) using global dedupe during data ingestion and placement. Other features include thin provisioning, VMware VAII, data protection and self-balancing data placement.

Storage I/O trends

Who or what applications are XtremIO being positioned for?

Some of XtremIO industry sectors include:

  • Financial and insurance services
  • Medical, healthcare and life sciences
  • Manufacturing, retail and warehouse management
  • Government and defense
  • Media and entertainment

Application and workload focus:

  • VDI including replacing linked clones with ability to do full clone without overhead
  • Server virtualization where aggregation causes aggravation with many mixed IOPs
  • Database for reducing latency, boosting IOPs as well as improving software license costs.

Databases such as IBM DB2, Oracle RAC, Microsoft SQLserver and MySQL among others have traditionally for decades been a prime opportunity for SSD (DRAM and flash). This also includes newer NoSQL or key value stores and meta data repositories for object such as Mongo, Hbase, Cassandra, Riak among others. Typical focus includes placing entire instances, or specific files and objects such as indices, journals and redo logs, import/export temp or scratch space, message queries and high activity tables among others.

What about overlap with other EMC products?

If you simply looked at the above list of sectors (among others) or applications, you could easily come to a conclusion that there is or would be overlap. Granted in some environments there will be which means XtremIO (or other vendors solutions) may be the primary storage solution. On the other hand since everything is not the same in most data centers or information factories, there will be a mix of storage systems handling various tasks. This is where EMC will need to be careful learning what they did during DA on where to place XtremIO and how to positing to complement when and where needed other solutions, or as applicable being a replacement.

XtremIO Announcement Summary

  • All flash SSD storage solution with iSCSI and Fibre Channel server attachment
  • Scale out and scale up performance while keeping latency low and deterministic
  • Enhanced flash duty cycle (wear leveling) to increase program / erase (P/E) cycles durability
  • Can complement other storage systems, arrays or appliances or function as a standalone
  • Coexists and complements host side caching hardware and software
  • Inline always on data footprint reduction (DFR) including dedupe (global dedupe without performance compromise), space saving snapshots and copies along with thin provisioning

Storage I/O trends

Some General Comment and Perspectives

Overall, XtremIO gives EMC and their customers, partners and prospects a new technology to use and add to their toolbox for addressing various challenges. SSD is in your future, when, where, with what and how are questions not to mention how much. After all, a bit of flash SSD in the right location used effectively can have a large impact. On the other hand, a lot of flash SSD in the wrong place or not used effectively will cost you lots of cash. Key for EMC and their partners will be to articulate clearly, where XtremIO fits vs. other solutions without adding complexity.

Checkout part II of this series to learn more about XtremIO including what it is, how it works, competition and added perspectives.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Fall 2013 StorageIO Update Newsletter

Storage I/O trends

Fall 2013 StorageIO Update Newsletter

Welcome to the Fall 2013 (joint September and October) edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics. It is fall (at least here in north America) which means conferences, symposium, virtual and physical events, seminars, webinars in addition to normal client project activities. Starting with VMworld back in late August, that event occurred in San Francisco which kicked off the fall (or back to school) season of activity. VMworld was followed with many other events including in-person along with virtual or on-line such as webinars, Google+ hangouts among others, not to mention all the briefings for vendor product announcements and updates. Check out the industry trends perspectives articles, comments and blog posts below that covers some activity over the past few months.

VMworld 2013
Congratulations to VMworld on the 10th anniversary of the event. With the largest installment yet of a VMworld in terms of attendance, there were also many announcements. Here are a synopsis of some of those announcements which of course included plenty of software defined marketing (SDM).

CMG and Storage Performance
During mid-September I was invited to give an industry trends and perspectives presentation to the Storage Performance Council (SPC) board. The SPC board were meeting in the Minneapolis area and I gave a brief talk about Metrics that Matter and importance of context with focus on applications. Speaking of the Minneapolis area, Tom Becchetti (@tbecchetti) organized a great CMG event hosted over at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota. I gave a discussion around Technolutionary, technology evolution and revolution, using old and new things in new ways.

Check out our backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving (Under the resources section on StorageIO.com) for various presentation, book chapter downloads and other content.

SNW Fall 2013 Long Beach
Talking about traveling, there was a quick trip out to Long Beach for the fall 2013 edition of Storage Networking World (SNW) where I had some good meetings and conversations with those who were actually there. No need to sugar coat it, likewise no need to kick sand in its face. Plain and simple, SNW is not the event it used to be has been a common discussion theme for several years which I had set my expectation accordingly.

Some have asked me why I even spent time, money and resources to attend SNW?

My answer is that I had some meetings to attend to, wanted to see and meet with others who were going to be there, and perhaps even say goodbye to an event that I have been involved with for over a decade.

Does that mean I’m all done with SNW?

Not sure yet as will have to wait and see what SNIA and IDG/Computerworld the event co-owners and producers put together for future events. However there are enough other events and activities to pick up the slack which is part of what has caused the steady decline in events like SNW among others.

Perhaps it is time for SNIA to partner with another adjacent yet like-minded organization such as CMG to collaborate and try doing something like what was done in the early 2000s? That is SNIA providing their own seminars along with others such as myself who involved with both CMG, SNW and SNIA to beef up or set up a storage and I/O focused track at the CMG event.

Beyond those items mentioned above, or in the following section, there are plenty of interesting and exciting things occurring in the background that I cant talk about yet. However watch for future posts, commentary, perspectives and other information down the road (and in the not so distant future).

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers gs

StorageIO Industry Trends and PerspectivesIndustry trends perspectives and commentary
What is being seen, heard and talked about while out and about

The following is a synopsis of some StorageIOblog posts, articles and comments in different venues on various industry trends, perspectives and related themes about clouds, virtualization, data and storage infrastructure topics among related themes.

Storage I/O trends

InfoStor: Perspectives on Data Dynamics file migration tool (Read more about StorageX later in this newsletter)
SearchStorage: Perspectives on Data Dynamics resurrects StorageX for file migration
SearchStorage: Perspectives on Cisco buying SSD storage vendor Whiptail

Recent StorageIO Tips and Articles in various venues:

21cIT:  Why You Should Consider Object Storage
InfoStor:  HDDs Are Still Spinning (Rust Never Sleeps)
21cIT:  Object Storage Is in Your Future, Even if You Use Files
21cIT:  Playing the Name Game With Virtual Storage
InfoStor:  Flash Data Storage: Myth vs. Reality
InfoStor:  The Nand Flash Cache SSD Cash Dance
SearchEnterpriseWAN:  Remote Office / ROBO backup and data protection for networking Pro’s
TheVirtualizationPractice:  When and Where to use NAND Flash SSD for Virtual Servers
FedTech:  These Data Center (DCIM) Tools Can Streamline Computing Resources

Storage I/O posts

Recent StorageIO blog post:

Seagate Kinetic Cloud and Object Storage I/O platform (and Ethernet HDD)
Cloud conversations: Has Nirvanix shutdown caused cloud confidence concerns?
Cisco buys Whiptail continuing the SSD storage I/O flash cash cache dash
WD buys nand flash SSD storage I/O cache vendor Virident
EMC New VNX MCx doing more storage I/O work vs. just being more
Is more of something always better? Depends on what you are doing
VMworld 2013 Vmware, server, storage I/O and networking update (Day 1)
EMC ViPR software defined object storage part II

Check out our objectstoragecenter.com page where you will find a growing collection of information and links pertaining to cloud and object storage themes, technologies and trends.

Brouwer Storage Consultancy

StorageIO in Europe (Netherlands)
Spent over a week in the Netherlands where I presented three different seminar workshop sessions organized by Brouwer Storage Consultancy who is celebrating their 10th anniversary in business. These sessions spanned five full days of interactive discussions with an engaged diverse group of attendees in the Nijkerk area who came from across Holland to take part in these workshops.

Congratulations to Gert and Frank Brouwer on their ten years of being in business and best wishes for many more. Fwiw those who are curious StorageIO will be ten years young in business in about two years.

StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspectives

Some observations from while in Europe:

Continued cloud privacy concerns amplified by NSA and suspicion of US-based companies, yet many are not aware of similar concerns of European or UK-based firms from those outside those areas. While there were some cloud concern conversations over the demise of Nirvanix, those seemed less so then in the media or US given that at least in Holland they have seen other cloud and storage as a service firms come and go already. It should be noted that the US has also seen cloud and storage as a service startups come and go, however I think sometimes we or at least the media tends to have a short if not selective memory at times.

In one of our workshops sessions we were talking about service level objectives (SLO), service level agreements (SLA), recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO) among other themes. Somebody mentioned why the focus of time in RPO and questions why not a transactional perspective which I thought was a brilliant question. We had a good conversation in the group and concurred that while RPO is what the industry uses, that there also needs to be a transactional state context tie to what is inferred or assumed with RPO and RTO. Thus the importance of looking beyond just the point in time, however the importance of a transactional context or state, such as not just the time, however to a given transactional point.

Note that transactional could mean database, file system, backup or data protection index or catalog, meta data repository or other entity. This is where some should be jumping up and down like Donkey in Shrek wanting to point out that is exactly what RTO and RPO refer to which would be great. However all to often what is assumed is not conveyed, thus those who don’t know, well, they assume or simply don’t know what others.

StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspectives

Data Dynamics StorageX 7.0 Intelligent Policy Based File Data Migration – There is no such thing as a data or information recession . Likewise, people and data are living longer as well as getting larger. These span various use cases from traditional to personal or at work productivity. From little to big data content, collaboration including file or document sharing to rich media applications all of which are leveraging unstructured data. For example, email, word processing back-office documents, web and text files, presentations (e.g. PowerPoint), photos, audio and video among others. These macro trends result in the continued growth of unstructured Network Attached Storage (NAS) file data.

Thus, a common theme is adding management including automated data movement and migration to carry out structure around unstructured NAS file data. More than a data mover or storage migration tool, Data Dynamics StorageX is a software platform for adding storage management structure around unstructured local and distributed NAS file data. This includes heterogeneous vendor support across different storage system, protocols and tools including Windows CIFS and Unix/Linux NFS.
(Disclosure DataDynamics has been a StorageIO client). Visit Data Dynamics at www.datadynamicsinc.com/

Server and StorageIO seminars, conferences, web cats, events, activities StorageIO activities (out and about)

Seminars, symposium, conferences, webinars
Live in person and recorded recent and upcoming events

Announcing: Backup.U brought to you by Dell

Some on-line (live and recorded) events have include an ongoing series tied to data protection (Backup/restore, HA, BC, DR and Archiving) called Backup.U organized and sponsored by Dell Data Protection Software that you can learn more about at the landing page www.software.dell.com/backupu (more on this in a future post). In addition to data protection, some other events and activities including a BrightTalk webinar on storage I/O and networking for cloud environments (here).

In addition to the above, check out the StorageIO calendar to see more recent and upcoming activities.

Watch for more 2013 events to be added soon to the StorageIO events calendar page. Topics include data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archive), data footprint reduction (archive, compression, dedupe), storage optimization, SSD, object storage, server and storage virtualization, big data, little data, cloud and object storage, performance and management trends among others.

Vendors, VAR’s and event organizers, give us a call or send an email to discuss having us involved in your upcoming pod cast, web cast, virtual seminar, conference or other events.

If you missed the Summer (July and August) 2013 StorageIO update newsletter, click here to view that and other previous editions as HTML or PDF versions. Subscribe to this newsletter (and pass it along)

and click here to subscribe to this news letter. View archives of past StorageIO update news letters as well as download PDF versions at: www.storageio.com/newsletter

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Seagate Kinetic Cloud and Object Storage I/O platform (and Ethernet HDD)

Storage I/O trends

Seagate Kinetic Cloud and Object Storage I/O platform

Seagate announced today their Kinetic platform and drive designed for use by object API accessed storage including for cloud deployments. The Kinetic platform includes Hard Disk Drives (HDD) that feature 1Gb Ethernet (1 GbE) attached devices that speak object access API or what Seagate refers to as a key / value.

Seagate Kinetic architecture

What is being announced with Seagate Kinetic Cloud and Object (Ethernet HDD) Storage?

  • Kinetic Open Storage Platform – Ethernet drives, key / value (object access) API, partner software
  • Software developer’s kits (SDK) – Developer tools, documentation, drive simulator, code libraries, code samples including for SwiftStack and Riak.
  • Partner ecosystem

What is Kinetic?

While it has 1 GbE ports, do not expect to be able to use those for iSCSI or NAS including NFS, CIFS or other standard access methods. Being Ethernet based, the Kinetic drive only supports the key value object access API. What this means is that applications, cloud or object stacks, key value and NoSQL data repositories, or other software that adopt the API can communicate directly using object access.

Seagate Kinetic storage

Internal, the HDD functions as a normal drive would store and accessing data, the object access function and translation layer shifts from being in an Object Storage Device (OSD) server node to inside the HDD. The Kinetic drive takes on the key value API personality over 1 GbE ports instead of traditional Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and Logical Block Number (LBN) access using 3g, 6g or emerging 12g SAS or SATA interfaces. Instead Kinetic drives respond to object access (aka what Seagate calls key / value) API commands such as Get, Put among others. Learn more about object storage, access and clouds at www.objectstoragecenter.com.

Storage I/O trends

Some questions and comments

Is this the same as what was attempted almost a decade ago now with the T10 OSD drives?

Seagate claims no.

What is different this time around with Seagate doing a drive that to some may vaguely resemble the predecessor failed T10 OSD approach?

Industry support for object access and API development have progressed from an era of build it and they will come thinking, to now where the drives are adapted to support current cloud, object and key value software deployment.

Wont 1GbE ports be too slow vs. 12g or 6g or even 3g SAS and SATA ports?

Keep in mind those would be apples to oranges comparisons based on the protocols and types of activity being handled. Kinetic types of devices initially will be used for large data intensive applications where emphasis is on storing or retrieving large amounts of information, vs. low latency transactional. Also, keep in mind that one of the design premises is to keep cost low, spread the work over many nodes, devices to meet those goals while relying on server-side caching tools.

Storage I/O trends

Does this mean that the HDD is actually software defined?

Seagate or other HDD manufactures have not yet noticed the software defined marketing (SDM) bandwagon. They could join the software defined fun (SDF) and talk about a software defined disk (SDD) or software defined HDD (SDHDD) however let us leave that alone for now.

The reality is that there is far more software that exists in a typical HDD than what is realized. Sure some of that is packaged inside ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) or running as firmware that can be updated. However, there is a lot of software running in a HDD hence the need for power yet energy-efficient processors found in those devices. On a drive per drive basis, you may see a Kinetic device consume more energy vs. other equivalence HDDs due to the increase in processing (compute) needed to run the extra software. However that also represents an off-load of some work from servers enabling them to be smaller or do more work.

Are these drives for everybody?

It depends on if your application, environment, platform and technology can leverage them or not. This means if you view the world only through what is new or emerging then these drives may be for all of those environments, while other environments will continue to leverage different drive options.

Object storage access

Does this mean that block storage access is now dead?

Not quite, after all there is still some block activity involved, it is just that they have been further abstracted. On the other hand, many applications, systems or environments still rely on block as well as file based access.

What about OpenStack, Ceph, Cassandra, Mongo, Hbase and other support?

Seagate has indicated those and others are targeted to be included in the ecosystem.

Seagate needs to be careful balancing their story and message with Kinetic to play to and support those focused on the new and emerging, while also addressing their bread and butter legacy markets. The balancing act is communicating options, flexibility to choose and adopt the right technology for the task without being scared of the future, or clinging to the past, not to mention throwing the baby out with the bath water in exchange for something new.

For those looking to do object storage systems, or cloud and other scale based solutions, Kinetic represents a new tool to do your due diligence and learn more about.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Cloud conversations: Has Nirvanix shutdown caused cloud confidence concerns?

Storage I/O trends

Cloud conversations: Has Nirvanix shutdown caused cloud confidence concerns?

Recently seven plus year old cloud storage startup Nirvanix announced that they were finally shutting down and that customers should move their data.

nirvanix customer message

Nirvanix has also posted an announcement that they have established an agreement with IBM Softlayer (read about that acquisition here) to help customers migrate to those services as well as to those of Amazon Web Services (AWS), (read more about AWS in this primer here), Google and Microsoft Azure.

Cloud customer concerns?

With Nirvanix shutting down there has been plenty of articles, blog posts, twitter tweets and other conversations asking if Clouds are safe.

Btw, here is a link to my ongoing poll where you can cast your vote on what you think about clouds.

IMHO clouds can be safe if used in safe ways which includes knowing and addressing your concerns, not to mention following best practices, some of which pre-date the cloud era, sometimes by a few decades.

Nirvanix Storm Clouds

More on this in a moment, however lets touch base on Nirvanix and why I said they were finally shutting down.

The reason I say finally shutting down is that there were plenty of early warning signs and storm clouds circling Nirvanix for a few years now.

What I mean by this is that in their seven plus years of being in business, there have been more than a few CEO changes, something that is not unheard of.

Likewise there have been some changes to their business model ranging from selling their software as a service to a solution to hosting among others, again, smart startups and establishes organizations will adapt over time.

Nirvanix also invested heavily in marketing, public relations (PR) and analyst relations (AR) to generate buzz along with gaining endorsements as do most startups to get recognition, followings and investors if not real customers on board.

In the case of Nirvanix, the indicator signs mentioned above also included what seemed like a semi-annual if not annual changing of CEOs, marketing and others tying into business model adjustments.

cloud storage

It was only a year or so ago that if you gauged a company health by the PR and AR news or activity and endorsements you would have believed Nirvanix was about to crush Amazon, Rackspace or many others, perhaps some actually did believe that, followed shortly there after by the abrupt departure of their then CEO and marketing team. Thus just as fast as Nirvanix seemed to be the phoenix rising in stardom their aura started to dim again, which could or should have been a warning sign.

This is not to solo out Nirvanix, however given their penchant for marketing and now what appears to some as a sudden collapse or shutdown, they have also become a lightning rod of sort for clouds in general. Given all the hype and fud around clouds when something does happen the distract ors will be quick to jump or pile on to say things like "See, I told you, clouds are bad".

Meanwhile the cloud cheerleaders may go into denial saying there are no problems or issues with clouds, or they may go back into a committee meeting to create a new stack, standard, API set marketing consortium alliance. ;) On the other hand, there are valid concerns with any technology including clouds that in general there are good implementations that can be used the wrong way, or questionable implementations and selections used in what seem like good ways that can go bad.

This is not to say that clouds in general whether as a service, solution or product on a public, private or hybrid bases are any riskier than traditional hardware, software and services. Instead what this should be is a wake up call for people and organizations to review clouds citing their concerns along with revisiting what to do or can be done about them.

Clouds: Being prepared

Ben Woo of Neuralytix posted this question comment to one of the Linked In groups Collateral Considerations If You Were/Are A Nirvanix Customer which I posted some tips and recommendations including:

1) If you have another copy of your data somewhere else (which you should btw), how will your data at Nirvanix be securely erased, and the storage it resides on be safely (and secure) decommissioned?

2) if you do have another copy of your data elsewhere, how current is it, can you bring it up to date from various sources (including update from Nirvanix while they stay online)?

3) Where will you move your data to short or near term, as well as long-term.

4) What changes will you make to your procurement process for cloud services in the future to protect against situations like this happening to you?

5) As part of your plan for putting data into the cloud, refine your strategy for getting it out, moving it to another service or place as well as having an alternate copy somewhere.

Fwiw any data I put into a cloud service there is also another copy somewhere else which even though there is a cost, there is a benefit, The benefit is that ability to decide which to use if needed, as well as having a backup/spare copy.

Storage I/O trends

Cloud Concerns and Confidence

As part of cloud procurement as services or products, the same proper due diligence should occur as if you were buying traditional hardware, software, networking or services. That includes checking out not only the technology, also the companies financial, business records, customer references (both good and not so good or bad ones) to gain confidence. Part of gaining that confidence also involves addressing ahead of time how you will get your data out of or back from that services if needed.

Keep in mind that if your data is very important, are you going to keep it in just one place? For example I have data backed-up as well as archived to cloud providers, however I also have local copies either on-site or off.

Likewise there is data I have local kept at alternate locations including cloud. Sure that is costly, however by not treating all of my data and applications the same, I’m able to balance those costs out, plus use cost advantages of different services as well as on-site to be effective. I may be spending no less on data protection, in fact I’m actually spending a bit more, however I also have more copies and versions of important data and in multiple locations. Data that is not changing often does not get protected as often, however there are multiple copies to meet different needs or threat risks.

Storage I/O trends

Don’t be scared of clouds, be prepared

While some of the other smaller cloud storage vendors will see some new customers, I suspect that near to mid-term, it will be the larger, more established and well funded providers that gain the most from this current situation. Granted some customers are looking for alternatives to the mega cloud providers such as Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Rackspace among others, however there are a long list of others some of which who are not so well-known that should be such as Centurylink/Savvis, Verizon/Terremark, Sungurd, Dimension Data, Peak, Bluehost, Carbonite, Mozy (owned by EMC), Xerox ACS, Evault (owned by Seagate) not to mention a long list of many others.

Something to be aware of as part of doing your due diligence is determining who or what actually powers a particular cloud service. The larger providers such as Rackspace, Amazon, Microsoft, HP among others have their own infrastructure while some of the smaller service providers may in fact use one of the larger (or even smaller) providers as their real back-end. Hence understanding who is behind a particular cloud service is important to help decide the viability and stability of who it is you are subscribed to or working with.

Something that I have said for the past couple of years and a theme of my book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Taylor & Francis) is do not be scared of clouds, however be ready, do your homework.

This also means having cloud concerns is a good thing, again don’t be scared, however find what those concerns are along with if they are major or minor. From that list you can start to decide how or if they can be worked around, as well as be prepared ahead of time should you either need all of your cloud data back quickly, or should that service become un-available.

Also when it comes to clouds, look beyond lowest cost or for free, likewise if something sounds too good to be true, perhaps it is. Instead look for value or how much do you get per what you spend including confidence in the service, service level agreements (SLA), security, and other items.

Keep in mind, only you can prevent data loss either on-site or in the cloud, granted it is a shared responsibility (With a poll).

Additional related cloud conversation items:
Cloud conversations: AWS EBS Optimized Instances
Poll: What Do You Think of IT Clouds?
Cloud conversations: Gaining cloud confidence from insights into AWS outages
Cloud conversations: confidence, certainty and confidentiality
Cloud conversation, Thanks Gartner for saying what has been said
Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview (Part III)
Cloud conversations: Gaining cloud confidence from insights into AWS outages (Part II)
Don’t Let Clouds Scare You – Be Prepared
Everything Is Not Equal in the Datacenter, Part 3
Amazon cloud storage options enhanced with Glacier
What do VARs and Clouds as well as MSPs have in common?
How many degrees separate you and your information?

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)

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

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Cisco buys Whiptail continuing the SSD storage I/O flash cash cache dash

Storage I/O trends

Cisco buys Whiptail continuing the Storage storage I/O flash cash cache dash

Congratulations to Virident for being bought today for $645 Million USD by Western Digital (WD). Virident a nand flash PCIe card startup vendor has been around for several years and in the last year or two has gain more industry awareness as a competitor to FusionIO among others.

There is a nand flash solid state devices (SSD) cash-dash occurring, not to mention fast cache dances that is occurring the IT and data infrastructure (e.g. storage and IO) sector specifically.

Why the nand flash SSD cash dash and cache dance?

Yesterday hard disk drive (HDD) vendor Western Digital (WD) bought Virident a nand flash PCIe Solid State Device (SSD) card vendor for $650M, and today networking and server vendor Cisco bought Whiptail a SSD based storage system startup for a little over $400M. Here is an industry trends perspective post that I did yesterday on WD and Virident.

Obviously this begs a couple of questions, some of which I raised in my post yesterday about WD, Virident, Seagate, FusionIO and others.

Questions include

Does this mean Cisco is getting ready to take on EMC, NetApp, HDS and its other storage partners who leverage the Cisco UCS server?

IMHO at least near term no more than they have in the past, nor any more than EMCs partnership with Lenovo indicates a shift in what is done with vBlocks. On the other hand, some partners or customers may be as nervous as a long-tailed cat next to a rocking chair (Google it if you don’t know what it means ;).

Is Cisco going to continue to offer Whiptail SSD storage solutions on a standalone basis, or pull them in as part of solutions similar to what it has done on other acquisitions?

Storage I/O trends

IMHO this is one of the most fundamental questions and despite the press release and statements about this being a UCS focus, a clear sign of proof for Cisco is how they reign in (if they go that route) Whiptail from being sold as a general storage solution (with SSD) as opposed to being part of a solution bundle.

How will Cisco manage its relationship in a coopitition manner cooperating with the likes of EMC in the joint VCE initiative along with FlexPod partner NetApp among others? Again time will tell.

Also while most of the discussions about NetApp have been around the UCS based FlexPod business, there is the other side of the discussion which is what about NetApp E Series storage including the SSD based EF540 that competes with Whiptail (among others).

Many people may not realize how much DAS storage including fast SAS, high-capacity SAS and SATA or PCIe SSD cards Cisco sells as part of UCS solutions that are not vBlock, FlexPod or other partner systems.

NetApp and Cisco have partnerships that go beyond the FlexPod (UCS and ONTAP based FAS) so will be interesting to see what happens in that space (if anything). This is where Cisco and their UCS acquiring Whiptail is not that different from IBM buying TMS to complement their servers (and storage) while also partnering with other suppliers, same holds true for server vendors Dell, HP, IBM and Oracle among others.

Can Cisco articulate and convince their partners, customers, prospects and others that the whiptail acquisition is more about direct attached storage
(DAS) which includes both internal dedicated and external shared device?

Keep in mind that DAS does not have to mean Dumb A$$ Storage as some might have you believe.

Then there are the more popular questions of who is going to get bought next, what will NetApp, Dell, Seagate, Huawei and a few others do?

Oh, btw, funny how have not seen any of the pubs mention that Whiptail CEO Dan Crain is a former Brocadian (e.g. former Brocade CTO) who happens to be a Cisco competitor, just saying.

Congratulations to Dan and his crew and enjoy life at Cisco.

Stay tuned as the fall 2013 nand flash SSD cache dash and cash dance activities are well underway.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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EMC New VNX MCx doing more storage I/O work vs. just being more

Storage I/O trends

It’s not how much you have, its how storage I/O work gets done that matters

Following last weeks VMworld event in San Francisco where among other announcements including this one around Virtual SAN (VSAN) along with Software Defined Storage (SDS), EMC today made several announcements.

Today’s EMC announcements include:

  • The new VNX MCx (Multi Core optimized) family of storage systems
  • VSPEX proven infrastructure portfolio enhancements
  • Availability of ViPR Software Defined Storage (SDS) platform (read more from earlier posts here, here and here)
  • Statement of direction preview of Project Nile for elastic cloud storage platform
  • XtremSW server cache software version 2.0 with enhanced management and support for VMware, AIX and Oracle RAC

EMC ViPREMC XtremSW cache software

Summary of the new EMC VNX MCx storage systems include:

  • More processor cores, PCIe Gen 3 (faster bus), front-end and back-end IO ports, DRAM and flash cache (as well as drives)
  • More 6Gb/s SAS back-end ports to use more storage devices (SAS and SATA flash SSD, fast HDD and high-capacity HDD)
  • MCx – Multi-core optimized with software rewritten to make use of threads and resources vs. simply using more sockets and cores at higher clock rates
  • Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) capabilities including block compression and dedupe, file dedupe and thin provisioning
  • Virtual storage pools that include flash SSD, fast HDD and high-capacity HDD
  • Block (iSCSI, FC and FCoE) and NAS file (NFS, pNFS, CIFS) front-end access with object access via Atmos Virtual Edition (VE) and ViPR
  • Entry level pricing starting at below $10,000 USD

EMC VNX MCx systems

What is this MCx stuff, is it just more hardware?

While there is more hardware that can be used in different configurations, the key or core (pun intended) around MCx is that EMC has taken the time and invested in reworking the internal software of the VNX that has its roots going back to the Data General CLARRiON EMC acquired. This is similar to an effort EMC made a few years back when it overhauled what is now known as the VMAX from the Symmetric into the DMX. That effort expanded from a platform or processor port to re-architecting and software optimizing (rewrite portions) to leverage new and emerging hardware capabilities more effectively.

EMC VNX MCx

With MCx EMC is doing something similar in that core portions of the VNX software have been re-architected and written to take advantage of more threads and cores being available to do work more effectively. This is not all that different from what occurs (or should) with upper level applications that eventually get rewritten to leverage underlying new capabilities to do more work faster and leverage technologies in a more cost-effective way. MCx also leverages flash as a primary medium with data than being moved (256MB chunks) down into lower tiers of storage (SSD and HDD drives).

Storage I/O trends

ENC VNX has had in the past FLASH Cache which enables SSD drives to be used as an extension of main cache as well as using drive targets. Thus while MCx can and does leverage more and faster core as would most any software, it is also able to leverage those cores and threads in a more effective way. After all, it’s not just how many processors, sockets, cores, threads, L1/L2 cache, DRAM, flash SSD and other resources, its how effective you use them. Also keep in mind that a bit of flash in the right place used effectively can go a long way vs. having a lot of cache in the wrong place or not used optimally that will end up costing a lot of cash.

Moving forward this means that EMC should be able to further refine and optimize other portions of the VNX software not yet updated to make further benefit of new hardware platforms and capabilities.

Does this mean EMC is catching up with newer vendors?

Similar to more of something is not always better, its how those items are used that matters, just because something is new does not mean its better or faster. That will manifest itself when they are demonstrated and performance results shown. However key is showing the performance across different workloads that have relevance to your needs and that convey metrics that matter with context.

Storage I/O trends

Context matters including type and size of work being done, number of transactions, IOPs, files or videos served, pages processed or items rendered per unit of time, or response time and latency (aka wait or think time), along with others. Thus some newer systems may be faster on paper, powerpoint, WebEx, You tube or via some benchmarks, however what is the context and how do they compare to others on an apples to apples basis.

What are some other enhancements or features?

Leveraging of FAST VP (Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools) with improved MCx software

Increases the effectiveness of available hardware resources (processors, cores, DRAM, flash, drives, ports)

Active active LUNs accessible by both controllers as well as legacy AULA support

Data sheets and other material for the new VNX MCx storage systems can be found here, with software options and bundles here, and general speeds and feeds here.

Learn more here at the EMC VNX MCx storage system landing page and compare VNX systems here.

What does then new VNX MCx family look like?

EMC VNX MCx family image

Is VNX MCx all about supporting VMware?

Interesting that if you read behind the lines, listen closely to the conversations, ask the right questions you will realize that while VMware is an important workload or environment to support, it is not the only one targeted for VNX. Likewise if you listen and look beyond what is normally amplified in various conversations you will find that systems such as VNX are being deployed as back-end storage in cloud (public, private, hybrid) environments for use with technologies such as OpenStack or object based solutions (visit www.objectstoragecenter.com for more on object storage systems and access)..

There is a common myth that the cloud and service providers all use white box commodity hardware including JBOD for their systems which some do, however some are also using systems such as VNX among others. In some of these scenarios the VNX type systems are or will be deployed in large numbers essentially consolidating the functions of what had been done by even larger number of JBOD based systems. This is where some of you will have a DejaVu or back to the future moment from the mid 90s when there was an industry movement to combine all the DAS and JBOD into larger storage systems. Don’t worry if you are not yet reading about this trend in your favorite industry rag or analyst briefing notes, however ask or look around and you might be surprised at what is occurring, granted it might be another year or two before you read about it (just saying ;).

Storage I/O trends

What that means is that VNX MCx is also well positioned for working with ViPR or Atmos Virtual Edition among other cloud and object storage stacks. VNX MCx is also well positioned for its new low-cost of entry for general purpose workloads and applications ranging from file sharing, email, web, database along with demanding high performance, low latency with large amounts of flash SSD. In addition to being used for general purpose storage, VNX MCx will also complement data protection solutions for backup/restore, BC, DR and archiving such as Data Domain, Avamar and Networker among others. Speaking of server virtualization, EMC also has tools for working with Hyper-V, Xen and KVM in addition to VMware.

If there is an all flash VNX MCx doesn’t that compete with XtremIO?

Yes there are all flash VNX MCx just as there have been all flash VNX before, however these will be positioned for different use case scenarios by EMC and their partners to avoid competing head to head with XtremIO. Thus EMC will need to be diligent in being very clear to its own sales and marketing forces as well as those of partners and customers of what to use when, where, why and how.

General thoughts and closing comments

The VNX MCx is a good set of enhancements by EMC and an example of how it’s not as important of how more you have, rather how you can use it to be more effective.

Ok, nuff said (fow now).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Is more of something always better? Depends on what you are doing

Storage I/O trends

Is more always better? Depends on what you are doing

As with many things it depends, however how about some of these?

Is more better for example (among others):

  • Facebook likes
  • Twitter followers or tweets (I’m @storageio btw)
  • Google+ likes, follows and hangouts
  • More smart phone apps
  • LinkedIn connections
  • People in your circle or community
  • Photos or images per post or article
  • People working with or for you
  • Partners vs. doing more with those you have
  • People you are working for or with
  • Posts or longer posts with more in them
  • IOPs or SSD and storage performance
  • Domains under management and supported
  • GB/TB/PB/EB supported or under management
  • Mart-time jobs or a better full-time opportunity
  • Metrics vs. those that matter with context
  • Programmers to get job done (aka mythical man month)
  • Lines of code per cost vs. more reliable and tested code per cost
  • For free items and time spent managing them vs. more productivity for a nominal fee
  • Meetings for planning on what to do vs. streamline and being more productive
  • More sponsors or advertisers or underwriters vs. fewer yet more effective ones
  • Space in your booth or stand at a trade show or conference vs. using what you have more effectively
  • Copies of the same data vs. fewer yet more unique (not full though) copies of information
  • Patents in your portfolio vs. more technology and solutions being delivered
  • Processors, sockets, cores, threads vs. using them more effectively
  • Ports and protocols vs. using them more effectively

Storage I/O trends

Thus does more resources matter, or making more effective use of them?

For example more ports, protocols, processors, cores, sockets, threads, memory, cache, drives, bandwidth, people among other things is not always better, particular if those resources are not being used effectively.

Likewise don’t confuse effective with efficient often assumed to mean used.

For example a cache or memory may be 100% used (what some call efficient) yet only providing a 35% effective benefit (cache hit or miss) vs. cache turn (misses etc).

Throwing more processing power in terms of clock speed, or cores is one thing, kind of like throwing more server blades at a software problem vs. using those cores and sockets not to mention threads more effectively.

Good software will run better on fast hardware while enabling more to be done with the same or less.

Thus with better software or tools, more work can be done in an effective way leveraging those resources vs. simply throwing or applying more at the situation.

Hopefully you get the point, so no need to do more with this post (for now), if not, stay tuned and pay more attention around you.

Ok, nuff said, I need to go get more work done now.

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Fall 2013 Dutch cloud, virtual and storage I/O seminars

Storage I/O trends

Fall 2013 Dutch cloud, virtual and storage I/O seminars

It is that time of the year again when StorageIO will be presenting a series of seminar workshops in the Netherlands on cloud, virtual and data storage networking technologies, trends along with best practice techniques.

Brouwer Storage

StorageIO partners with the independent firm Brouwer Storage Consultancy of Holland who organizes these sessions. These sessions will also mark Brouwer Storage Consultancy celebrating ten years in business along with a long partnership with StorageIO.

Server Storage I/O Backup and Data Protection Cloud and Virtual

The fall 2013 Dutch seminars include coverage of storage I/O networking data protection and related trends topics for cloud and virtual environments. Click on the following links or images to view an abstract of the three sessions including what you will learn, who they are for, buzzwords, themes, topics and technologies that will covered.

Modernizing Data Protection
Moving Beyond Backup and Restore

Storage Industry Trends
What’s News, What’s The Buzz and Hype

Storage Decision Making
Acquisition, Deployment, Day to Day Management

Modern Data Protection
Modern Data Protection
Modern Data Protection
September 30 & October 1
October 2 2013
October 3 and 4 2013

All seminar workshop seminars are presented in a vendor technology neutral including (e.g. these are not vendor marketing sales presentations) providing independent perspectives on industry trends, who is doing what, benefits, caveats of various approaches to addressing data infrastructure and storage challenges. View posts about earlier events here and here.

Storage I/O trends

As part of theme of being vendor and technology neutral, the workshop seminars are held off-site at hotel venues in Nijkerk Netherlands so no need to worry about the sales teams coming in to sell you something during the breaks or lunch which are provided. There are also opportunities throughout the workshops for engagement, discussion and interaction with other attendees that includes your peers from various commercial, government and service providers among others.

Learn more and register for these events by visiting the Brouwer Storage Consultancy website page (here) and calling them at +31-33-246-6825 or via email info@brouwerconsultancy.com.

Storage I/O events

View other upcoming and recent StorageIO activities including live in-person, online web and recorded activities on our events page here, as well as check out our commentary and industry trends perspectives in the news here.

Bitter ballen
Ok, nuff said, I’m already hungry for bitter ballen (see above)!

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)

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

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Care to help Coraid with a Storage I/O Content Conversation?

Storage I/O trends

Blog post – Can you help Coraid with a Storage I/O Content Conversation?

Over the past week or so have had many email conversations with the Coraid marketing/public relations (PR) folks who want to share some of their content unique or custom content with you.

Normally I (aka @StorageIO) does not accept unsolicited (placed) content (particular for product pitch/placements) from vendors or their VARs, PR, surrogates including third or fourth party placement firms. Granted StorageIOblog.com does have site sponsors , per our policies that is all that those are, advertisements with no more or less influence than for others. StorageIO does do commissioned or sponsored custom content including white papers, solution briefs among other things with applicable disclosures, retention of editorial tone and control.

Who is Coraid and what do they do?

However wanting to experiment with things, not to mention given Coraids persistence, let’s try something to see how it works.

Coraid for those who are not aware provides an alternative storage and I/O networking solution called ATA over Ethernet or AoE (here is a link to Coraids Analyst supplied content page). AoE enables servers with applicable software to use storage equipped with AoE technology (or via an applicable equipped appliance) to use Ethernet as an interconnect and transport. AoE is on the low-end an alternative to USB, Thunderbolt or direct attached SATA or SAS, along with switched or shared SAS (keep in mind SATA can plug into SAS, not vice versa).

In addition AoE is an alternative to the industry standard iSCSI (SCSI command set mapped onto IP) which can be found in various solutions including as a software stack. Another area where AoE is positioned by Coraid is as an alternative to Fibre Channel SCSI_FCP (FCP) and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Keep in mind that Coraid AoE is block based (granted they have other solutions) as opposed to NAS (file) such as NFS, CIFS/SMB/SAMBA, pNFS or HDFS among others and is using native Ethernet as opposed to being layered on top of iSCSI.

Storage I/O trends

So here is the experiment

Since Coraid wanted to get their unique content placed either by them or via others, lets see what happens in the comments section here at StorageIOblog.com. The warning of course is keep it respectful, courteous and no bashing or disparaging comments about others (vendors, products, technology).

Thus the experiment is simple, lets see how the conversation evolves into the caveats, benefits, tradeoffs and experiences of those who have used or looked into the solution (pro or con) and why a particular opinion. If you have a perspective or opinion, no worries, however put it in context including if you are a Coraid employee, var, reseller, surrogate and likewise for those with other view (state who you are, your affiliation and other disclosure). Likewise if providing or supplying links to any content (white papers, videos, webinars) including via third-party provide applicable disclosures (e.g. it was sponsored and by whom etc.).

Disclosure

While I have mentioned or provided perspectives about them via different venues (online, print and in person) in the past, Coraid has never been a StorageIO client. Likewise this is not an endorsement for or against Coraid and their AoE or other solutions, simply an industry trends perspective.

Ok, nuff said (for now).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Inaugural episode of the SSD Show podcast at Myce.com

Storage I/O trends

Inaugural episode of the SSD Show podcast at Myce.com

The other day I was invited by Jeremy Reynolds and J.W. Aldershoff to be a guest on the Inaugural episode of their new SSD Show podcast (click here to learn more or listen in).

audio

Many different facets or faces of nand flash SSD and SSHD or HHDD

With this first episode we discuss the latest developments in and around the solid-state device (SSD) and related storage industry, from consumer to enterprise, hardware and software, along with hands on experience insight on products, trends, technologies, technique themes. In this first podcast we discuss Solid State Hybrid Disks (SSHDs) aka Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDD) with flash (read about some of my SSD, HHDD/SSHD hands on personal experiences here), the state of NAND memory (also here about nand DIMMs), the market and SSD pricing.

I had a lot of fun doing this first episode with Jeremy and hope to be invited back to do some more, follow-up on themes we discussed along with new ones in future episodes. One question remains after the podcast, will I convince Jeremy to get a Twitter account? Stay tuned!

Check out the new SSD Show podcast here.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

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

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Summer 2013 Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

StorageIO 2013 Summer Newsletter

Cloud, Virtualization, SSD, Data Protection, Storage I/O

Welcome to the Summer 2013 (combined July and August) edition of the StorageIO Update (newsletter) containing trends perspectives on cloud, virtualization and data infrastructure topics.

StorageIO News Letter Image
Summer 2013 News letter

This summer has been far from quiet on the merger and acquisitions (M&E) front with Western Digital (WD) continuing its buying spree including Stec among others. There is the HDS Mid Summer Storage and Converged Compute Enhancements and EMC Evolves Enterprise Data Protection with Enhancements (Part I and Part II).

With VMworld just around the corner along with many other upcoming events, watch for more announcements to be covered in future editions and on StorageIOblog as we move into fall.

Click on the following links to view the Summer 2013 edition as (HTML sent via Email) version, or PDF versions. Visit the news letter page to view previous editions of the StorageIO Update.

You can subscribe to the news letter by clicking here

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

Ok Nuff said, for now

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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IBM Server Side Storage I/O SSD Flash Cache Software

Storage I/O trends

IBM Server Side Storage I/O SSD Flash Cache Software

As I often say, the best server storage I/O or IOP is the one that you do not have to do. The second best storage I/O or IOP is the one with least impact or that can be done in a cost-effective way. Likewise the question is not if solid-state device (SSD) including nand flash are in your future, rather when, where, why, with what, how much along with from whom. Also location matters when it comes to SSD including nand flash with different environments and applications leveraging different placement (locality) options, not to mention how much performance do you need vs. want?

As part of their $1 billion USD (to be spent over three years, or $333.3333 million per year) flash ahead initiative IBM has announced their Flash Cache Storage Accelerator (FCSA) server software. While IBM did not use the term, (congratulations and thank you btw) some creative marketer might want to try calling this Software Defined Cache (SDC) or Software Defined SSD (SDSSD) which if that occurs, apologies in advance ;). Keep in mind that it was about a year ago this time when IBM announced that they were acquiring SSD industry veteran Texas Memory Systems (TMS).

What was announced, introducing Flash Cache Storage Acceleration or FCSA

With this announcement of FCSA slated for customer general availability by end of August, IBM joins EMC and NetApp among other storage systems vendors who developed their own, or have collaborated on server-side IO optimization and cache software. Some of the other startup and established vendors who have IO optimization, performance acceleration and caching software include DataRam (Ramdisk), FusionIO, Infinio (NFS for VMware), Pernix (block for VMware), Proximal and SANdisk (bought flashsoft) among others.

Read more about IBM Flash Cache Software (FCSA) including various questions and perspectives in part two of this two-part post located here.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Part II: IBM Server Side Storage I/O SSD Flash Cache Software

Storage I/O trends

Part II IBM Server Flash Cache Storage I/O accelerator for SSD

This is the second in a two-part post series on IBM’s Flash Cache Storage Accelerator (FCSA) for Solid State Device (SSD) storage announced today. You can view part I of the IBM FCSA announcement synopsis here.

Some FCSA ssd cache questions and perspectives

What is FCSA?
FCSA is a server-side storage I/O or IOP caching software tool that makes use of local (server-side) nand flash SSD (PCIe cards or drives). As a cache tool (view IBM flash site here) FCSA provides persistent read caching on IBM servers (xSeries, Flex and Blade x86 based systems) with write through cache (e.g. data cached for later reads) while write data is written directly to block attached storage including SANs. back-end storage can be iSCSI, SAS, FC or FCoE based block systems from IBM or others including all SSD, hybrid SSD or traditional HDD based solutions from IBM and others.

How is this different from just using a dedicated PCIe nand flash SSD card?
FCSA complements those by using them as a persistent storage to cache storage I/O reads to boost performance. By using the PCIe nand flash card or SSD drives, FCSA and other storage I/O cache optimization tools free up valuable server-side DRAM from having to be used as a read cache on the servers. On the other hand, caching tools such as FCSA also keep local cached reads closer to the applications on the servers (e.g. locality of reference) reducing the impact on backed shared block storage systems.

What is FCSA for?
With storage I/O or IOPS and application performance in general, location matters due to locality of reference hence the need for using different approaches for various environments. IBM FCSA is a storage I/O caching software technology that reduces the impact of applications having to do random read operations. In addition to caching reads, FCSA also has a write-through cache, which means that while data written to back-end block storage including on iSCSI, SAS, FC or FCoE based storage (IBM or other vendors), a copy of the data is cached for later reads. Thus while the best storage I/O is the one that does not have to be done (e.g. can be resolved from cache), the second best would be writes that go to a storage system that are not competing with read requests (handled via cache).

Storage I/O trends

Who else is doing this?
This is similar to what EMC initially announced and released in February 2012 with VFcache now renamed to be XtremSW along with other caching and IO optimization software from others (e.g. SANdisk, Proximal and Pernix among others.

Does this replace IBM EasyTier?
Simple answer is no, one is for tiering (e.g. EasyTier), the other is for IO caching and optimization (e.g. FCSA).

Does this replace or compete with other IBM SSD technologies?
With anything, it is possible to find a way to make or view it as competitive. However in general FCSA complements other IBM storage I/O optimization and management software tools such as EasyTier as well as leverage and coexist with their various SSD products (from PCIe cards to drives to drive shelves to all SSD and hybrid SSD solutions).

How does FCSA work?
The FCSA software works in either a physical machine (PM) bare metal mode with Microsoft Windows operating systems (OS) such as Server 2008, 2012 among others. There is also *nix support for RedHat Linux, along with in a VMware virtual machine (VM) environment. In a VMware environment High Availability (HA), DRS and VMotion services and capabilities are supported. Hopefully it will be sooner vs. later that we hear IBM do a follow-up announcement (pure speculation and wishful thinking) on more hypervisors (e.g. Hyper-V, Xen, KVM) support along with Centos, Ubuntu or Power based systems including IBM pSeries. Read more about IBM Pure and Flex systems here.

What about server CPU and DRAM overhead?
As should be expected, a minimal amount of server DRAM (e.g. main memory) and CPU processing cycles are used to support the FCSA software and its drivers. Note the reason I say as should be expected is how you can have software running on a server doing any type of work that does not need some amount of DRAM and processing cycles. Granted some vendors will try to spin and say that there is no server-side DRAM or CPU consumed which would be true if they are completely external to the server (VM or PM). The important thing is to understand how much of an impact in terms of CPU along with DRAM consumed along with their corresponding effectiveness benefit that are derived.

Storage I/O trends

Does FCSA work with NAS (NFS or CIFS) back-end storage?
No this is a server-side block only cache solution. However having said that, if your applications or server are presenting shared storage to others (e.g. out the front-end) as NAS (NFS, CIFS, HDFS) using block storage (back-end), then FCSA can cache the storage I/O going to those back-end block devices.

Is this an appliance?
Short and simple answer is no, however I would not be surprised to hear some creative software defined marketer try to spin it as a flash cache software appliance. What this means is that FCSA is simply IO and storage optimization software for caching to boost read performance for VM and PM servers.

What is this hardware or storage agnostic stuff mean?
Simple, it means that FCSA can work with various nand flash PCIe cards or flash SSD drives installed in servers, as well as with various back-end block storage including SAN from IBM or others. This includes being able to use block storage using iSCSI, SAS, FC or FCoE attached storage.

What is the difference between Easytier and FCSA?
Simple, FCSA is providing read acceleration via caching which in turn should offload some reads from affecting storage systems so that they can focus on handling writes or read ahead operations. Easytier on the other hand is for as its name implies tiering or movement of data in a more deterministic fashion.

How do you get FCSA?
It is software that you buy from IBM that runs on an IBM x86 based server. It is licensed on a per server basis including one-year service and support. IBM has also indicated that they have volume or multiple servers based licensing options.

Storage I/O trends

Does this mean IBM is competing with other software based IO optimization and cache tool vendors?
IBM is focusing on selling and adding value to their server solutions. Thus while you can buy the software from IBM for their servers (e.g. no bundling required), you cannot buy the software to run on your AMD/Seamicro, Cisco (including EMC/VCE and NetApp) , Dell, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, Lenovo, Oracle, SuperMicro among other vendors servers.

Will this work on non-IBM servers?
IBM is only supporting FCSA on IBM x86 based servers; however, you can buy the software without having to buy a solution bundle (e.g. servers or storage).

What is this Cooperative Caching stuff?
Cooperative caching takes the next step from simple read cache with write-through to also support chance coherency in a shared environment, as well as leverage tighter application or guest operating system and storage system integration. For example, applications can work with storage systems to make intelligent predictive informed decisions on what to pre-fetch or read ahead and cached, as well as enable cache warming on restart. Another example is where in a shared storage environment if one server makes a change to a shared LUN or volume that the local server-side caches are also updated to prevent stale or inconsistent reads from occurring.

Can FCSA use multiple nand flash SSD devices on the same server?
Yes, IBM FCSA supports use of multiple server-side PCIe and or drive based SSD devices.

How is cache coherency maintained including during a reboot?
While data stored in the nand flash SSD device is persistent, it’s up to the server and applications working with the storage systems to decide if there is coherent or stale data that needs to be refreshed. Likewise, since FCSA is server-side and back-end storage system or SAN agnostic, without cooperative caching it will not know if the underlying data for a storage volume changed without being notified from another server that modified it. Thus if using shared back-end including SAN storage, do your due diligence to make sure multi-host access to the same LUN’s or volumes is being coordinated with some server-side software to support cache coherency, something that would apply to all vendors.

Storage I/O trends

What about cache warming or reloading of the read cache?
Some vendors who have tightly interested caching software and storage systems, something IBM refers to as cooperative caching that can have the ability to re-warm the cache. With solutions that support cache re-warming, the cache software and storage systems work together to main cache coherency while pre-loading data from the underlying storage system based on hot bands or other profiles and experience. As of this announcement, FCSA does not support cache warming on its own.

Does IBM have service or tools to complement FCSA?
Yes, IBM has an assessment, profile and planning tool that are available on a free consultation services basis with a technician to check your environment. Of course, the next logical step would be for IBM to make the tool available via free download or on some other basis as well.

Do I recommend and have I tried FCSA?
On paper, or WebEx, YouTube or other venue FCSA looks interesting and capable, a good fit for some environments particular if IBM server-based. However since my PM and VMware VM based servers are from other vendors, along with the fact that FCSA only runs on IBM servers, have not actually given it a hands on test drive yet. Thus if you are looking at storage I/O optimization and caching software tools for your VM or PM environment, checkout IBM FCSA to see if it meets your needs.

Storage I/O trends

General comments

It is great to see server and storage systems vendors add value to their solutions with I/O and performance optimization as well as caching software tools. However, I am also concerned with the growing numbers of different software tools that only work with one vendor’s servers or storage systems, or at least are supported as such.

This reminds me of a time not all that long ago (ok, for some longer than others) when we had a proliferation of different host bus adapter (HBA) driver and pathing drivers from various vendors. The result is a hodge podge (a technical term) of software running on different operating systems, hypervisors, PM’s, VMs, and storage systems, all of which need to be managed. On the other hand, for the time being perhaps the benefit will outweigh the pain of having different tools. That is where there are options from server-side vendor centric, storage system focused, or third-party software tool providers.

Another consideration is that some tools work in VMware environments; others support multiple hypervisors while others also support bare metal servers or PMs. Which applies to your environment will of course depend. After all, if you are an all VMware environment given that many of the caching tools tend to be VMware focused, that gives more options vs. for those who are still predominately PM environments.

Ok, nuff said (for now)

Cheers
Gs

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

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