Category: sponsored

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May 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructures Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue V

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

Summer officially here in the northern hemisphere is still a few weeks away, however for all practical purposes it has arrived. What this means is that in addition to normal workplace activities and projects, there are plenty of outdoor things (as well as distractions) to attend to.

Over the past several months I have mentioned a new book that is due out this summer and which means it’s getting close to announcement time. The new book title is Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, and Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft (CRC PRess/Taylor Francis/Auerbach) that you can learn more about here (with more details being added soon). A common question is will there be electronic versions of the book and the answer is yes (more on this in future newsletter).

Data Infrastructures

Another common question is what is it about, what is a data infrastructure (see this post) and what is tradecraft (see this post). Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Essentials provides fundamental coverage of physical, cloud, converged, and virtual server storage I/O networking technologies, trends, tools, techniques, and tradecraft skills.

Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Essentials provides fundamental coverage of physical, cloud, converged, and virtual server storage I/O networking technologies, trends, tools, techniques, and tradecraft skills. From webscale, software-defined, containers, database, key-value store, cloud, and enterprise to small or medium-size business, the book is filled with techniques, and tips to help develop or refine your server storage I/O hardware, software, and services skills. Whether you are new to data infrastructures or a seasoned pro, you will find this comprehensive reference indispensable for gaining as well as expanding experience with technologies, tools, techniques, and trends.

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC
ISBN-13: 978-1498738156
ISBN-10: 149873815X
Hardcover: 672 pages
Publisher: Auerbach Publications; 1 edition (June 2017)
Language: English

Watch for more news and insight about my new book Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials soon. In the meantime, check out the various items below in this edition of the Server StorageIO Update.

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:

Flackbox.com has some new independent (non NetApp produced) learning resources including NetApp simulator eBook and MetroCluster tutorial. Over in the Microsoft world, Thomas Maurer has a good piece about Windows Server build 2017 and all about containers. Microsoft also announced SQL Server 2017 CTP 2.1 is now available. Meanwhile here are some my experiences and thoughts from test driving Microsoft Azure Stack.

Speaking of NetApp among other announcements they released a new version of their StorageGrid object storage software. NVMe activity in the industry (and at customer sites) continues to increase with Cavium Qlogic NVMe over Fabric news, along with Broadcom recent NVMe RAID announcements. Keep in mind that if the answer is NVMe, than what are the questions.

Here is a good summary of the recent OpenStack Boston Summit. Storpool did a momentum announcement which for those of you into software defined storage, add Storpool to your watch list. On the VMware front, check out this vSAN 6.6 demo (video) of stretched cluster via Yellow Bricks.

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 EnterpriseStorageForum: What to Do with Legacy Assets in a Flash Storage World
There is still a place for hybrid arrays. A hybrid array is the home run when it comes to leveraging your existing non-flash, non-SSD based assets today.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Where All-Flash Storage Makes No Sense
A bit of flash in the right place can go a long way, and everybody can benefit from at least a some of flash somewhere. Some might say the more, the better. But where you have budget constraints that simply prevent you from having more flash for things such as cold, inactive, or seldom access data, you should explore other options.

Via Bitpipe: Changing With the Times – Protecting VMs(PDF)

Via FedTech: Storage Strategies: Agencies Optimize Data Centers by Focusing on Storage

Via SearchCloudStorage: Dell EMC cloud storage strategy needs to cut through fog

Via SearchStorage: Microsemi upgrades controllers based on HPE technology

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: 8 Data Machine Learning and AI Storage Tips

Via SiliconAngle: Dell EMC announces hybrid cloud platform for Azure Stack

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

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

Sep. 13-15, 2017 – Fujifilm IT Executive Summit – Seattle WA

August 28-30, 2017 – VMworld – Las Vegas

Jully 22, 2017 – TBA

June 22, 2017 – Webinar – GDPR and Microsoft Environments

May 11, 2017 – Webinar – Email Archiving, Compliance and Ransomware

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/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

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.

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Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links U to Z

Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links U to Z

IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

Updated 2/20/2018

Following are some useful Data Infrastructure IT Industry Resource Links U to Z 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

  • ubuntu.com    Opensource Linux software and cloud tools
  • unisys.com    Server, storage and managed services
  • unitedlayer.com    Collocation and hosting services
  • unitrends.com    Data protection solutions
  • updraftplus.com/    WordPress Updraft Cloud Backup Plugin
  • uptimeinstitute.org    Uptime Institute
  • uptimesoftware.com    Capacity management tools
  • Logicalis   IT solutions and managed services
  • us.logicalis.com    Cloud, managed and data center services
  • usb.org    USB trade association
  • uscolo.com    Co-location facility and hosting service
  • usenix.org    LISA and data center forums
  • usgbc.org    United States Green Building Council
  • v3sys.com    VDI and desktop cloud solutions
  • vadiumtech.com    Security and encryption tools
  • varonis.com    Unstructured data management and protection
  • vaultive.com    Cloud encryption for hosted exchange
  • vaultize.com    Cloud backup, file and data sharing
  • vaultstor.com    Data protection and cloud storage services
  • vaultus.com   Cloud, colo and manged service hosting –
  • vbridges.com    Virtual desktop management tools
  • vce.com    Converged infrastructure solutions
  • vdbench     vdbench storage testing/workload generation tool
  • veeam.com    Virtual server data protection, reporting, monitoring, cap planning
  • vellosystems.com   Cloud infrastructure technology solutoins –
  • velobit.com    SSD cache software (Bought by WD)
  • veloxum.com   VM performance management tools Added 11/30/10
  • vembu.com    Backup data protection tools
  • Venus   Venus    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
  • venyu.com    Cloud hosting
  • verari.com    Blade servers and blade storage
  • verdiem.com    Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) and energy reporting tools
  • vericept.com    Network monitoring software
  • Veritest.com    Third party testing service

  • verity.com    Data search, discovery, classification
  • versant.com    Object database management solutions
  • vertinsys.com    Server I/O virtualization
  • Vibe    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
  • victorinox.com    Swiss army knife and USB thumb drive
  • viewfinity.com    Rights management, audit and compliance
  • vigitrust.com    Security management tools
  • vikingmodular.com    FLASH SSD storage solutions
  • violin-memory.com    FLASH SSD storage solutions
  • vion.com    Value added reseller
  • vipreantivirus.com    Security, data loss, data leak prevention
  • virident.com    SSD based database management solutions (Bought by WD)
  • viridity.com    Data center and infrastructure resource management (IRM) tools
  • virsto.com    Server virtualization management tools (Bought by VMware)
  • virtensys.com    Virtual I/O and I/O virtualization (IOV)
  • virtualinstruments.com    SAN probes/analyzers (Formerly Finisar Analyzer tools)
  • VirtualIron.com    Server virtualization (Bought by Oracle)
  • VirtunetSystems    Storage I/O acceleration and cache tools for VMware
  • virtuon-inc.com    Cloud, virtualization IT consulting and staffing
  • visi.com    Managed service provider, cloud and hosting service
  • VisionSolutions.com    BC, DR and data protection solutions
  • visualstorageintelligence.com    Cross vendor cloud storage reporting and srmprovider
  • vitesse.com    Storage networking component supplier
  • vivisimo.com    eDiscovery and search
  • vizoncore.com    Virtualization tools and data protection for virtual servers
  • vizrt.com    Video management software tools
  • vkernel.com    VM performance tools (Bought by Quest, bought by Dell)
  • vmc.com    Cloud consulting and outsourcing
  • vmturbo.com    Cloud and virtualization workload management
  • vmware.com    Server virtualization software (Bought by EMC)
  • Vocus   Vocus    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
  • voltaire.com    InfiniBand Technology
  • vontu.com    Data loss prevention tools (Bought by Symantec)
  • Vormetric   Data security solutions
  • votela.com    Specialized network service provider
  • vscalesystems.com    Virtual and converged networking and consulting
  • vssmonitoring.com    Network monitoring
  • vwsolutions.com    Backup and data protection solutions
  • vyatta.com    Cloud and virtual networking, IOV
  • wanova.com    Desktop management solutions
  • wasabisystems.com    iSCSI storage
  • wdc.com    Western Digital Disk drives
  • WedgeNetworks.com    Security solutions
  • whiptailtech.com    Flash SSD solutions (Bought by Cisco)
  • Microsoft Skydrive   Cloud storage
  • windspring.com    Data management and DFR for mobile access
  • wipro.com    Business services
  • workscomputing.com    VAR
  • wovensystems.com    High speed networking switches
  • wwt.com    VAR/Systems integrator
  • wysdm.com    SRA and DPM management tools (Bought by EMC)
  • Xencode.com    Various open tools
  • XenData   Digital Archive solutions
  • xenos.com    Archive and data footprint reduction solutions
  • xfpmsa.org    10Gb multi-source trade group
  • xiotech.com    Renamed XIO: Storage sub-systems and software
  • xirin.com    Storage adapter (iSCSI) and chip vendor
  • xosoft.com    BC/DR and data protection replication tools (Bought by CA)
  • xsigo.com    I/O virtualization and service oriented connectivity – (Bought by Oracle)
  • xtreemfs.org    scaleout filesystem
  • xtremio.com    SSD startup – Bought by EMC
  • xyratex.com    Storage enclosures, subsystems, test equipmen, Lustre software (Bought by Seagate)t
  • xyxel.com    Networking technologies for cloud and consumer
  • yorktel.com    video solutions
  • Yosemitetech.com    Backup software (Bought by Barracuda)
  • yousendit.com    Cloud backup, storage and file sharing
  • zadarastorage.com    iSCSI cloud storage
  • zenoss.com    Converged, Virtual systems and cloud monitoring, DCIM
  • Zentera   Private cloud and IaaS solutions
  • zerto.com    Data protection for virtual environments
  • Zetera.com    Storage over IP alternative to iSCSI
  • zetta.net    Cloud storage solutions
  • zettapoint.com    Database management tools
  • zintrus.com    Systems development
  • zirtu.com    VDI management tools and platform
  • zlti.com    Email archive and management solutions
  • zmanda.com    Open source data backup
  • zoho.com    Online and cloud management solutions
  • zyrion.com    Network and systems monitoring and management

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.

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2016 Going Dutch Cloud Virtualization Server Storage I/O Seminars

2016 Going Dutch Cloud Virtualization Server Storage I/O Seminars

server storage I/O trends

In June 2016 Brouwer Storage Consultancy is organizing their yearly spring seminar workshops in Nijkerk Holland (south of Amsterdam, near Utrecht and Amersfoort) with myself among others presenting.

Brouwer Consultancy

Cloud Virtualization Server Storage I/O Seminars

For this series of seminar workshops, there are four sessions, two being presented by myself, and two others in conjunction with Reduxio as well as Fujitsu & SJ Solutions.

Brouwer and Server StorageIO Seminar Sessions

Agenda, How To Register and Where To Learn More

The vendor sponsored sessions will consist of about 50% content being independent presented by myself and Gert Brouwer, the balance by the event sponsors as well as their partners. All presentation and associated content including handouts will be in English.

There will be 4 seminar workshop sessions, two of those are paid sessions dedicated to Greg Schulz and the other two are free (sponsored) sessions where 50% of the content is sponsored (Reduxio, Fujitsu & SJ Solutions) and the other 50% will be independent (Greg Schulz & Gert Brouwer).

Thursday June 9th – Server StorageIO Trends and Updates

Server Storage I/O Fundamental Trends V2.016 and Updates. What’s New, What’s the buzz, what you need to know about. From Speeds and Feeds, Slots and Watts to Who’s doing what. Event Location: Golden Tulip Ampt van Nijkerk Hotel, Berencamperweg 4, 3861MC, Nijkerk. Learn more here (PDF abstract and topics to be covered).

Thursday June 10th – Converged Day

Converged Day – Moving beyond Hyper-Converged Hype and Server Storage I/O Decision Making Strategies. Event Location: Golden Tulip Ampt van Nijkerk Hotel, Berencamperweg 4, 3861MC, Nijkerk. Learn more here (PDF abstract and topics to be covered).

Brouwer and Server StorageIO Seminar Sessions De Roode Schuur

Tuesday June 14th – Round Table Vendor Session with Reduxio

Symposium Workshop – Round Table Vendor Session with Reduxio – Are some solutions really ‘a Paradigm shift’ or ‘new and revolutionary” as they claim to be, or is it just more of the same (e.g. evolutionary)? – Presentations and discussions led by Greg Schulz (StorageIO), Reduxio and Brouwer Storage Consultancy. (Free, sponsored Session, Access for end-users only). Event Location: Hotel & Gasterij De Roode Schuur, Oude Barneveldseweg 98, 3862PS Nijkerk. Learn more here (PDF abstract and topics to be covered).

Wednesday June 15th – Software Defined Data Center Symposium Workshop

Software Defined Data Center Symposium Workshop – Round Table Vendor Session with Fujitsu & SJ Solutions
With subjects like Openstack, Ceph, distributed object storage, Bigdata, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Converged Infrastructure (CI), Software defined storage (SDS) and Network (SDN and NFV), this round table format workshop seminars explores these and other related topics including what to use when, where, why and how. Presentations by Greg Schulz (StorageIO), SJ Solutions & Fujitsu and Brouwer Storage Consultancy. Event Location: Hotel & Gasterij De Roode Schuur, Oude Barneveldseweg 98, 3862PS Nijkerk. Learn more here (PDF abstract and topics to be covered).

For more information, abstracts/agenda, registration and the specific locations for all the above events click here.

Brouwer and Server StorageIO Sessions Ampt van Nijkerk

What This All Means

There is a lot of things occurring in the IT industry from physical to software defined clouds, containers and virtualization, nonvolatile memory (NVM) including flash SSD among others. These series of interactive educational workshop seminars converge on Nijkerk Holland combing content discussions from strategy, planning decision making, to what’s new (and old) that can be used in new ways, as well as some trends, speeds and feeds along with practicality for your environment.

Brouwer Consultancy

I Look forward to seeing you in Nijkerk and Europe during June 2016, in the meantime, contact Brouwer Storage Consultancy for more information on the above sessions as well as to arrange private discussions or meetings.

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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Which Enterprise HDD for Content Server Platform

Which Enterprise HDD to use for a Content Server Platform

data infrastructure HDD server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform?

Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This post is the first in a multi-part series based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Equus Computer Systems and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Equus Computer Systems (www.equuscs.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). I was given the opportunity to do some hands-on testing running different application workloads with a 2U content solution platform along with various Seagate Enterprise 2.5” HDD’s handle different application workloads. This includes Seagate’s Enterprise Performance HDD’s with the enhanced caching feature.

Issues And Challenges

Even though Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) including NAND flash solid state devices (SSDs) have become popular storage for use internal as well as external to servers, there remains the need for HDD’s Like many of you who need to make informed server, storage, I/O hardware, software and configuration selection decisions, time is often in short supply.

A common industry trend is to use SSD and HDD based storage mediums together in hybrid configurations. Another industry trend is that HDD’s continue to be enhanced with larger space capacity in the same or smaller footprint, as well as with performance improvements. Thus, a common challenge is what type of HDD to use for various content and application workloads balancing performance, availability, capacity and economics.

Content Applications and Servers

Fast Content Needs Fast Solutions

An industry and customer trend are that information and data are getting larger, living longer, as well as there is more of it. This ties to the fundamental theme that applications and their underlying hardware platforms exist to process, move, protect, preserve and serve information.

Content solutions span from video (4K, HD, SD and legacy streaming video, pre-/post-production, and editing), audio, imaging (photo, seismic, energy, healthcare, etc.) to security surveillance (including Intelligent Video Surveillance [ISV] as well as Intelligence Surveillance and Reconnaissance [ISR]). In addition to big fast data, other content solution applications include content distribution network (CDN) and caching, network function virtualization (NFV) and software-defined network (SDN), to cloud and other rich unstructured big fast media data, analytics along with little data (e.g. SQL and NoSQL database, key-value stores, repositories and meta-data) among others.

Content Solutions And HDD Opportunities

A common theme with content solutions is that they get defined with some amount of hardware (compute, memory and storage, I/O networking connectivity) as well as some type of content software. Fast content applications need fast software, multi-core processors (compute), large memory (DRAM, NAND flash, SSD and HDD’s) along with fast server storage I/O network connectivity. Content-based applications benefit from having frequently accessed data as close as possible to the application (e.g. locality of reference).

Content solution and application servers need flexibility regarding compute options (number of sockets, cores, threads), main memory (DRAM DIMMs), PCIe expansion slots, storage slots and other connectivity. An industry trend is leveraging platforms with multi-socket processors, dozens of cores and threads (e.g. logical processors) to support parallel or high-concurrent content applications. These servers have large amounts of local storage space capacity (NAND flash SSD and HDD) and associated I/O performance (PCIe, NVMe, 40 GbE, 10 GbE, 12 Gbps SAS etc.) in addition to using external shared storage (local and cloud).

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Fast content applications need fast content and flexible content solution platforms such as those from Equus Computer Systems and HDD’s from Seagate. Key to a successful content application deployment is having the flexibility to hardware define and software defined the platform to meet your needs. Just as there are many different types of content applications along with diverse environments, content solution platforms need to be flexible, scalable and robust, not to mention cost effective.

Continue reading part two of this multi-part series here where we look at how and what to test as well as project planning.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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Part 2 – Which HDD for Content Applications – HDD Testing

Part 2 – Which HDD for Content Applications – HDD Testing

HDD testing server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server, hdd testing, how and what to do

Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This is the second in a multi-part series (read part one here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). In this post we look at some decisions and configuration choices to make for testing content applications servers as well as project planning.

Content Solution Test Objectives

In short period, collect performance and another server, storage I/O decision-making information on various HDD’s running different content workloads.

Working with the Servers Direct staff a suitable content solution platform test configuration was created. In addition to providing two Intel-based content servers, Servers Direct worked with their partner Seagate to arrange for various enterprise-class HDD’s to be evaluated. For these series of content application tests, being short on time, I chose to do run some simple workloads including database, basic file (large and small) processing and general performance characterization.

Content Solution Decision Making

Knowing how Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) NAND flash SSD (1) devices (drives and PCIe cards) perform, what would be the best HDD based storage option for my given set of applications? Different applications have various performance, capacity and budget considerations. Different types of Seagate Enterprise class 2.5” Small Form Factor (SFF) HDD’s were tested.

While revolutions per minute (RPM) still plays a role in HDD performance, there are other factors including internal processing capabilities, software or firmware algorithm optimization, and caching. Most HDD’s today have some amount of DRAM for read caching and other operations. Seagate Enterprise Performance HDD’s with the enhanced caching feature (2) are examples of devices accelerate storage I/O speed vs. traditional 10K and 15K RPM drives.

Project Planning And Preparation

Workload to be tested included:

  • Database read/writes
  • Large file processing
  • Small file processing
  • General I/O profile

Project testing consisted of five phases, some of which overlapped with others:

Phase 1 – Plan
Identify candidate workloads that could be run in the given amount of time, determine time schedules and resource availability, create a project plan.

Phase 2 – Define
Hardware define and software define the test platform.

Phase 3 – Setup
The objective was to assess plug-play capability of the server, storage and I/O networking hardware with a Linux OS before moving on to the reported workloads in the next phase. Initial setup and configuration of hardware and software, installation of additional devices along with software configuration, troubleshooting, and learning as applicable. This phase consisted of using Ubuntu Linux 14.04 server as the operating system (OS) along with MySQL 5.6 as a database server during initial hands-on experience.

Phase 4 – Execute
This consisted of using Windows 2012 R2 server as the OS along with Microsoft SQL Server on the system under test (SUT) to support various workloads. Results of this phase are reported below.

Phase 5 – Analyze      
Results from the workloads run in phase 3 were analyzed and summarized into this document.

(Note 1) Refer to Seagate 1200 12 Gbps Enterprise SAS SSD StorageIO lab review

(Note 2) Refer to Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy

Planning And Preparing The Tests

As with most any project there were constraints to contend with and work around.

Test constraints included:

  • Short-time window
  • Hardware availability
  • Amount of hardware
  • Software availability

Three most important constraints and considerations for this project were:

  • Time – This was a project with a very short time “runway”, something common in most customer environments who are looking to make a knowledgeable server, storage I/O decisions.
  • Amount of hardware – Limited amount of DRAM main memory, sixteen 2.5” internal hot-swap storage slots for HDD’s as well as SSDs. Note that for a production content solution platform; additional DRAM can easily be added, along with extra external storage enclosures to scale memory and storage capacity to fit your needs.
  • Software availability – Utilize common software and management tools publicly available so anybody could leverage those in their own environment and tests.

The following content application workloads were profiled:

  • Database reads/writes – Updates, inserts, read queries for a content environment
  • Large file processing – Streaming of large video, images or other content objects.
  • Small file processing – Processing of many small files found in some content applications
  • General I/O profile – IOP, bandwidth and response time relevant to content applications

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

There are many different types of content applications ranging from little data databases to big data analytics as well as very big fast data such as for video. Likewise there are various workloads and characteristics to test. The best test and metrics are those that apply to your environment and application needs.

Continue reading part three of this multi-part series here looking at how the systems and HDD’s were configured and tested.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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Part 3 – Which HDD for content applicaitons – Test Configuration

Which HDD for content applications – HDD Test Configuration

HDD Test Configuration server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform hdd test configuratoin

Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This is the third in a multi-part series (read part two here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). In this post the focus expands to hardware and software defining as well as configuring the test environments along with applications workloads.

Defining Hardware Software Environment

Servers Direct content platforms are software defined and hardware defined to your specific solution needs. For my test-drive, I used a pair of 2U Content Solution platforms, one for a client System Test Initiator (STI) (3), the other as server SUT shown in figure-1 (next page). With the STI configured and SUT setup Seagate Enterprise class 2.5” 12Gbps SAS HDD’s were added to the configuration.

(Note 3) System Test Initiator (STI) was hardware defined with dual Intel Xeon E5-2695 v3 (2.30 GHz) processors, 32GB RAM running Windows Server 2012 R2 with two network connections to the SUT. Network connections from the STI to SUT included an Intel GbE X540-AT2 as well as an Intel XL710 Q2 40 GbE Converged Network Adapter (CNA). In addition to software defining the STI with Windows Server 2012 R2, Dell Benchmark Factory (V7.1 64b bit 496) part of the Database Administrators (DBA) Toad Tools (including free versions) was also used. For those familiar with HammerDB, Sysbench among others, Benchmark Factory is an alternative that supports various workloads and database connections with robust reporting, scripting and automation. Other installed tools included Spotlight on Windows, Iperf 2.0.5 for generating network traffic and reporting results, as well as Vdbench with various scripts.

SUT setup (4)  included four Enterprise 10K and two 15K Performance drives with enhanced performance caching feature enabled, along with two Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s, all were attached to an internal 12Gbps SAS RAID controller. With the STI configured and SUT setup Seagate Enterprise class 2.5” 12Gbps SAS HDD’s were added to the configuration.

(Note 4) System Under Test (SUT) dual Intel Xeon E5-2697 v3 (2.60 GHz) providing 54 logical processors, 64GB of RAM (expandable to 768GB with 32GB DIMMs, or 3TB with 128GB DIMMs) and two network connections. Network connections from the STI to SUT consisting of an Intel 1 GbE X540-AT2 as well as an Intel XL710 Q2 40 GbE CNA. The GbE LAN connection was used for management purposes while the 40 GbE was used for data traffic. System disk was a 6Gbs SATA flash SSD. Seagate Enterprise class HDD’s were installed into the 16 available 2.5” small form factor (SFF) drive slots. Eight (left most) drive slots were connected to an Intel RMS3CC080 12 Gbps SAS RAID internal controller. The “Blue” drives in the middle were connected to both an NVMe PCIe card and motherboard 6 Gbps SATA controller using an SFF-8637 connector. The four right most drives were also connected to the motherboard 6 Gbps SATA controller.

System Test Configuration
Figure-1 STI and SUT hardware as well as software defined test configuration

This included four Enterprise 10K and two 15K Performance drives with enhanced performance caching feature enabled, along with two Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s, all were attached to an internal 12Gbps SAS RAID controller. Five 6 Gbps SATA Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD’s were setup using Microsoft Windows as a spanned volume. System disk was a 6Gbps flash SSD and an NVMe flash SSD drive was used for database temp space.

What About NVM Flash SSD?

NAND flash and other Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) memory and SSD complement content solution. A little bit of flash SSD in the right place can have a big impact. The focus for theses tests is HDD’s, however some flash SSDs were used as system boot and database temp (e.g. tempdb) space. Refer to StorageIO Lab reviews and visit www.thessdplace.com

Seagate Enterprise HDD’s Used During Testing

Various Seagate Enterprise HDD specifications use in the testing are shown below in table-1.

 

Qty

 

Seagate HDD’s

 

Capacity

 

RPM

 

Interface

 

Size

 

Model

Servers Direct Price Each

Configuration

4

Enterprise 10K
Performance

1.8TB

10K with cache

12 Gbps SAS

2.5”

ST1800MM0128
with enhanced cache

$875.00 USD

HW(5) RAID 10 and RAID 1

2

Enterprise
Capacity 7.2K

2TB

7.2K

12 Gbps SAS

2.5”

ST2000NX0273

$399.00 USD

HW RAID 1

2

Enterprise 15K
Performance

600GB

15K with cache

12 Gbps SAS

2.5”

ST600MX0082
with enhanced cache

$595.00 USD

HW RAID 1

5

Enterprise
Capacity 7.2K

2TB

7.2K

6 Gbps SATA

2.5”

ST2000NX0273

$399.00 USD

SW(6) RAID Span Volume

Table-1 Seagate Enterprise HDD specification and Servers Direct pricing

URLs for additional Servers Direct content platform information:
https://serversdirect.com/solutions/content-solutions
https://serversdirect.com/solutions/content-solutions/video-streaming
https://www.serversdirect.com/File%20Library/Data%20Sheets/Intel-SDR-2P16D-001-ds2.pdf

URLs for additional Seagate Enterprise HDD information:
https://serversdirect.com/Components/Drives/id-HD1558/Seagate_ST2000NX0273_2TB_Hard_Drive

https://serversdirect.com/Components/Drives/id-HD1559/Seagate_ST600MX0082_SSHD

Seagate Performance Enhanced Cache Feature

The Enterprise 10K and 15K Performance HDD’s tested had the enhanced cache feature enabled. This feature provides a “turbo” boost like acceleration for both reads and write I/O operations. HDD’s with enhanced cache feature leverage the fact that some NVM such as flash in the right place can have a big impact on performance (7).

In addition to their performance benefit, combing a best of or hybrid storage model (combing flash with HDD’s along with software defined cache algorithms), these devices are “plug-and-play”. By being “plug-and-play” no extra special adapters, controllers, device drivers, tiering or cache management software tools are required.

(Note 5) Hardware (HW) RAID using Intel server on-board LSI based 12 Gbps SAS RAID card, RAID 1 with two (2) drives, RAID 10 with four (4) drives. RAID configured in write-through mode with default stripe / chunk size.

(Note 6) Software (SW) RAID using Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 (span). Hardware RAID used write-through cache (e.g. no buffering) with read-ahead enabled and a default 256KB stripe/chunk size.

(Note 7) Refer to Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy

The Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K and 15K with enhanced cache feature are a good example of how there is more to performance in today’s HDD’s than simply comparing RPM’s, drive form factor or interface.

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Careful and practical planning are key steps for testing various resources as well as aligning the applicable tools, configuration to meet your needs.

Continue reading part four of this multi-part series here where the focus expands to database application workloads.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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Part 4 – Which HDD for Content Applications – Database Workloads

Part 4 – Which HDD for Content Applications – Database Workloads

data base server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018
Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform for database workloads

Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This is the fourth in a multi-part series (read part three here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). In this post the focus expands to database application workloads that were run to test various HDD’s.

Database Reads/Writes

Transaction Processing Council (TPC) TPC-C like workloads were run against the SUT from the STI. These workloads simulated transactional, content management, meta-data and key-value processing. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 was configured and used with databases (each 470GB e.g. scale 6000) created and workload generated by virtual users via Dell Benchmark Factory (running on STI Windows 2012 R2).

A single SQL Server database instance (8) was used on the SUT, however unique databases were created for each HDD set being tested. Both the main database file (.mdf) and the log file (.ldf) were placed on the same drive set being tested, keep in mind the constraints mentioned above. As time was a constraint, database workloads were run concurrent (9) with each other except for the Enterprise 10K RAID 1 and RAID 10. Workload was run with two 10K HDD’s in a RAID 1 configuration, then another workload run with a four drive RAID 10. In a production environment, ideally the .mdf and .ldf would be placed on separate HDD’s and SSDs.

To improve cache buffering the SQL Server database instance memory could be increased from 16GB to a larger number that would yield higher TPS numbers. Keep in mind the objective was not to see how fast I could make the databases run, rather how the different drives handled the workload.

(Note 8) The SQL Server Tempdb was placed on a separate NVMe flash SSD, also the database instance memory size was set to 16GB which was shared by all databases and virtual users accessing it.

(Note 9) Each user step was run for 90 minutes with a 30 minute warm-up preamble to measure steady-state operation.

Users

TPCC Like TPS

Single Drive Cost per TPS

Drive Cost per TPS

Single Drive Cost / Per GB Raw Cap.

Cost / Per GB Usable (Protected) Cap.

Drive Cost (Multiple Drives)

Protect
Space Over head

Cost per usable GB per TPS

Resp. Time (Sec.)

ENT 15K R1

1

23.9

$24.94

$49.89

$0.99

$0.99

$1,190

100%

$49.89

0.01

ENT 10K R1

1

23.4

$37.38

$74.77

$0.49

$0.49

$1,750

100%

$74.77

0.01

ENT CAP R1

1

16.4

$24.26

$48.52

$0.20

$0.20

$ 798

100%

$48.52

0.03

ENT 10K R10

1

23.2

$37.70

$150.78

$0.49

$0.97

$3,500

100%

$150.78

0.07

ENT CAP SWR5

1

17.0

$23.45

$117.24

$0.20

$0.25

$1,995

20%

$117.24

0.02

ENT 15K R1

20

362.3

$1.64

$3.28

$0.99

$0.99

$1,190

100%

$3.28

0.02

ENT 10K R1

20

339.3

$2.58

$5.16

$0.49

$0.49

$1,750

100%

$5.16

0.01

ENT CAP R1

20

213.4

$1.87

$3.74

$0.20

$0.20

$ 798

100%

$3.74

0.06

ENT 10K R10

20

389.0

$2.25

$9.00

$0.49

$0.97

$3,500

100%

$9.00

0.02

ENT CAP SWR5

20

216.8

$1.84

$9.20

$0.20

$0.25

$1,995

20%

$9.20

0.06

ENT 15K R1

50

417.3

$1.43

$2.85

$0.99

$0.99

$1,190

100%

$2.85

0.08

ENT 10K R1

50

385.8

$2.27

$4.54

$0.49

$0.49

$1,750

100%

$4.54

0.09

ENT CAP R1

50

103.5

$3.85

$7.71

$0.20

$0.20

$ 798

100%

$7.71

0.45

ENT 10K R10

50

778.3

$1.12

$4.50

$0.49

$0.97

$3,500

100%

$4.50

0.03

ENT CAP SWR5

50

109.3

$3.65

$18.26

$0.20

$0.25

$1,995

20%

$18.26

0.42

ENT 15K R1

100

190.7

$3.12

$6.24

$0.99

$0.99

$1,190

100%

$6.24

0.49

ENT 10K R1

100

175.9

$4.98

$9.95

$0.49

$0.49

$1,750

100%

$9.95

0.53

ENT CAP R1

100

59.1

$6.76

$13.51

$0.20

$0.20

$ 798

100%

$13.51

1.66

ENT 10K R10

100

560.6

$1.56

$6.24

$0.49

$0.97

$3,500

100%

$6.24

0.14

ENT CAP SWR5

100

62.2

$6.42

$32.10

$0.20

$0.25

$1,995

20%

$32.10

1.57

Table-2 TPC-C workload results various number of users across different drive configurations

Figure-2 shows TPC-C TPS (red dashed line) workload scaling over various number of users (1, 20, 50, and 100) with peak TPS per drive shown. Also shown is the used space capacity (in green), with total raw storage capacity in blue cross hatch. Looking at the multiple metrics in context shows that the 600GB Enterprise 15K HDD with performance enhanced cache is a premium option as an alternative, or, to complement flash SSD solutions.

database TPCC transactional workloads
Figure-2 472GB Database TPS scaling along with cost per TPS and storage space used

In figure-2, the 1.8TB Enterprise 10K HDD with performance enhanced cache while not as fast as the 15K, provides a good balance of performance, space capacity and cost effectiveness. A good use for the 10K drives is where some amount of performance is needed as well as a large amount of storage space for less frequently accessed content.

A low cost, low performance option would be the 2TB Enterprise Capacity HDD’s that have a good cost per capacity, however lack the performance of the 15K and 10K drives with enhanced performance cache. A four drive RAID 10 along with a five drive software volume (Microsoft WIndows) are also shown. For apples to apples comparison look at costs vs. capacity including number of drives needed for a given level of performance.

Figure-3 is a variation of figure-2 showing TPC-C TPS (blue bar) and response time (red-dashed line) scaling across 1, 20, 50 and 100 users. Once again the Enterprise 15K with enhanced performance cache feature enabled has good performance in an apples to apples RAID 1 comparison.

Note that the best performance was with the four drive RAID 10 using 10K HDD’s Given popularity, a four drive RAID 10 configuration with the 10K drives was used. Not surprising the four 10K drives performed better than the RAID 1 15Ks. Also note using five drives in a software spanned volume provides a large amount of storage capacity and good performance however with a larger drive footprint.

database TPCC transactional workloads scaling
Figure-3 472GB Database TPS scaling along with response time (latency)

From a cost per space capacity perspective, the Enterprise Capacity drives have a good cost per GB. A hybrid solution for environment that do not need ultra-high performance would be to pair a small amount of flash SSD (10) (drives or PCIe cards), as well as the 10K and 15K performance enhanced drives with the Enterprise Capacity HDD (11) along with cache or tiering software.

(Note 10) Refer to Seagate 1200 12 Gbps Enterprise SAS SSD StorageIO lab review

(Note 11) Refer to Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

If your environment is using applications that rely on databases, then test resources such as servers, storage, devices using tools that represent your environment. This means moving up the software and technology stack from basic storage I/O benchmark or workload generator tools such as Iometer among others instead using either your own application, or tools that can replay or generate various workloads that represent your environment.

Continue reading part five in this multi-part series here where the focus shifts to large and small file I/O processing workloads.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

Posted on

Which Enterprise HDD for Content Applications General I/O Performance

Which HDD for Content Applications general I/O Performance

hdd general i/o performance server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Which enterprise HDD to use with a content server platform general I/O performance Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This is the sixth in a multi-part series (read part five here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). In this post the focus is around general I/O performance including 8KB and 128KB IOP sizes.

General I/O Performance

In addition to running database and file (large and small) processing workloads, Vdbench was also used to collect basic small (8KB) and large (128KB) sized I/O operations. This consisted of random and sequential reads as well as writes with the results shown below. In addition to using vdbench, other tools that could be used include Microsoft Diskspd, fio, iorate and iometer among many others.

These workloads used Vdbench configured (13) to do direct I/O to a Windows file system mounted device using as much of the available disk space as possible. All workloads used 16 threads and were run concurrently similar to database and file processing tests.

(Note 13) Sample vdbench configuration for general I/O, note different settings were used for various tests

Table-7 shows workload results for 8KB random IOPs 75% reads and 75% writes including IOPs, bandwidth and response time.

 

ENT 15K RAID1

ENT 10K RAID1

ENT CAP RAID1

ENT 10K R10
(4 Drives)

ECAP SW RAID (5 Drives)

 

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

I/O Rate (IOPs)

597.11

559.26

514

475

285

293

979

984

491

644

MB/sec

4.7

4.4

4.0

3.7

2.2

2.3

7.7

7.7

3.8

5.0

Resp. Time (Sec.)

25.9

27.6

30.2

32.7

55.5

53.7

16.3

16.3

32.6

24.8

Table-7 8KB sized random IOPs workload results

Figure-6 shows small (8KB) random I/O (75% read and 25% read) across different HDD configurations. Performance including activity rates (e.g. IOPs), bandwidth and response time for mixed reads / writes are shown. Note how response time increases with the Enterprise Capacity configurations vs. other performance optimized drives.

general 8K random IO
Figure-6 8KB random reads and write showing IOP activity, bandwidth and response time

Table-8 below shows workload results for 8GB sized I/Os 100% sequential with 75% reads and 75% writes including IOPs, MB/sec and response time in seconds.

ENT 15K RAID1

ENT 10K RAID1

ENT CAP RAID1

ENT 10K R10
(4 Drives)

ECAP SW RAID (5 Drives)

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

75% Read

25% Read

I/O Rate (IOPs)

3,778

3,414

3,761

3,986

3,379

1,274

11,840

8,368

2,891

1,146

MB/sec

29.5

26.7

29.4

31.1

26.4

10.0

92.5

65.4

22.6

9.0

Resp. Time (Sec.)

2.2

3.1

2.3

2.4

2.7

10.9

1.3

1.9

5.5

14.0

Table-8 8KB sized sequential workload results

Figure-7 shows small 8KB sequential mixed reads and writes (75% read and 75% write), while the Enterprise Capacity 2TB HDD has a large amount of space capacity, its performance in a RAID 1 vs. other similar configured drives is slower.

8KB Sequential
Figure-7 8KB sequential 75% reads and 75% write showing bandwidth activity

Table-9 shows workload results for 100% sequential, 100% read and 100% write 128KB sized I/Os including IOPs, bandwidth and response time.

ENT 15K RAID1

ENT 10K RAID1

ENT CAP RAID1

ENT 10K R10
(4 Drives)

ECAP SW RAID (5 Drives)

Read

Write

Read

Write

Read

Write

Read

Write

Read

Write

I/O Rate (IOPs)

1,798

1,771

1,716

1,688

921

912

3,552

3,486

780

721

MB/sec

224.7

221.3

214.5

210.9

115.2

114.0

444.0

435.8

97.4

90.1

Resp. Time (Sec.)

8.9

9.0

9.3

9.5

17.4

17.5

4.5

4.6

19.3

20.2

Table-9 128KB sized sequential workload results

Figure-8 shows sequential or streaming operations of larger I/O (100% read and 100% write) requests sizes (128KB) that would be found with large content applications. Figure-8 highlights the relationship between lower response time and increased IOPs as well as bandwidth.

128K Sequential
Figure-8 128KB sequential reads and write showing IOP activity, bandwidth and response time

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Some content applications are doing small random I/Os for database, key value stores or repositories as well as meta data processing while others are doing large sequential I/O. 128KB sized I/O may be large for your environment, on the other hand, with an increasing number of applications, file systems, software defined storage management tools among others, 1 to 10MB or even larger I/O sizes are becoming common. Key is selecting I/O sizes and read write as well as random sequential along with I/O or queue depths that align with your environment.

Continue reading part seven the final post in this multi-part series here where the focus is around how HDD’s continue to evolve including performance beyond traditional RPM based execrations along with wrap up.

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.

Posted on

HDDs evolve for Content Application servers

HDDs evolve for Content Application servers

hdds evolve server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Enterprise HDDs evolve for content server platform

Insight for effective server storage I/O decision making
Server StorageIO Lab Review

Which enterprise HDD to use for content servers

This is the seventh and final post in this multi-part series (read part six here) based on a white paper hands-on lab report I did compliments of Servers Direct and Seagate that you can read in PDF form here. The focus is looking at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDD’s). The focus of this post is comparing how HDD continue to evolve over various generations boosting performance as well as capacity and reliability. This also looks at how there is more to HDD performance than the traditional focus on Revolutions Per Minute (RPM) as a speed indicator.

Comparing Different Enterprise 10K And 15K HDD Generations

There is more to HDD performance than RPM speed of the device. RPM plays an important role, however there are other things that impact HDD performance. A common myth is that HDD’s have not improved on performance over the past several years with each successive generation. Table-10 shows a sampling of various generations of enterprise 10K and 15K HDD’s (14) including different form factors and how their performance continues to improve.

different 10K and 15K HDDs
Figure-9 10K and 15K HDD performance improvements

Figure-9 shows how performance continues to improve with 10K and 15K HDD’s with each new generation including those with enhanced cache features. The result is that with improvements in cache software within the drives, along with enhanced persistent non-volatile memory (NVM) and incremental mechanical drive improvements, both read and write performance continues to be enhanced.

Figure-9 puts into perspective the continued performance enhancements of HDD’s comparing various enterprise 10K and 15K devices. The workload is the same TPC-C tests used earlier in a similar (14) (with no RAID). 100 simulated users are shown in figure-9 accessing a database on each of the different drives all running concurrently. The older 15K 3.5” Cheetah and 2.5” Savio used had a capacity of 146GB which used a database scale factor of 1500 or 134GB. All other drives used a scale factor 3000 or 276GB. Figure-9 also highlights the improvements in both TPS performance as well as lower response time with new HDD’s including those with performance enhanced cache feature.

The workloads run are same as the TPC-C ones shown earlier, however these drives were not configured with any RAID. The TPC-C activity used Benchmark Factory with similar setup and configuration to those used earlier including on a multi-socket, multi-core Windows 2012 R2 server supporting a Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database with a database for each drive type.

ENT 10K V3 2.5"

ENT (Cheetah) 15K 3.5"

Users

1

20

50

100

Users

1

20

50

100

TPS (TPC-C)

14.8

50.9

30.3

39.9

TPS (TPC-C)

14.6

51.3

27.1

39.3

Resp. Time (Sec.)

0.0

0.4

1.6

1.7

Resp. Time (Sec.)

0.0

0.3

1.8

2.1

ENT 10K 2.5" (with cache)

ENT (Savio) 15K 2.5"

Users

1

20

50

100

Users

1

20

50

100

TPS (TPC-C)

19.2

146.3

72.6

71.0

TPS (TPC-C)

15.8

59.1

40.2

53.6

Resp. Time (Sec.)

0.0

0.1

0.7

0.0

Resp. Time (Sec.)

0.0

0.3

1.2

1.2

ENT 15K V4 2.5"

Users

1

20

50

100

TPS (TPC-C)

19.7

119.8

75.3

69.2

Resp. Time (Sec.)

0.0

0.1

0.6

1.0

ENT 15K (enhanced cache) 2.5"

Users

1

20

50

100

TPS (TPC-C)

20.1

184.1

113.7

122.1

Resp. Time (Sec.)

0.0

0.1

0.4

0.2

Table-10 Continued Enterprise 10K and 15K HDD performance improvements

(Note 14) 10K and 15K generational comparisons were run on a separate comparable server to what was used for other test workloads. Workload configuration settings were the same as other database workloads including using Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on a Windows 2012 R2 system with Benchmark Factory driving the workload. Database memory sized was reduced however to only 8GB vs. 16GB used in other tests.

Where To Learn More

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

A little bit of flash in the right place with applicable algorithms goes a long way, an example being the Seagate Enterprise HDD’s with enhanced cache feature. Likewise, HDD’s are very much alive complementing SSD and vice versa. For high-performance content application workloads flash SSD solutions including NVMe, 12Gbps SAS and 6Gbps SATA devices are cost effective solutions. HDD’s continue to be cost-effective data storage devices for both capacity, as well as environments that do not need the performance of flash SSD.

For some environments using a combination of flash and HDD’s complementing each other along with cache software can be a cost-effective solution. The previous workload examples provide insight for making cost-effective informed storage decisions.

Evaluate today’s HDD’s on their effective performance running workloads as close as similar to your own, or, actually try them out with your applications. Today there is more to HDD performance than just RPM speed, particular with the Seagate Enterprise Performance 10K and 15K HDD’s with enhanced caching feature.

However the Enterprise Performance 10K with enhanced cache feature provides a good balance of capacity, performance while being cost-effective. If you are using older 3.5” 15K or even previous generation 2.5” 15K RPM and “non-performance enhanced” HDD’s, take a look at how the newer generation HDD’s perform, looking beyond the RPM of the device.

Fast content applications need fast content and flexible content solution platforms such as those from Servers Direct and HDD’s from Seagate. Key to a successful content application deployment is having the flexibility to hardware define and software defined the platform to meet your needs. Just as there are many different types of content applications along with diverse environments, content solution platforms need to be flexible, scalable and robust, not to mention cost effective.

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.

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