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Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary
This is part one of a five-part series about Dell Technology World 2018 announcement summary. Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw). There were several announcements along with plenty of other activity from sessions, meetings, hallway and event networking taking place at Dell Technology World DTW 2018.

Major data infrastructure technology announcements include:

  • PowerMax all-flash array (AFA) solid state device (SSD) NVMe storage system
  • PowerEdge four-socket 2U and 4U rack servers
  • XtremIO X2 AFA SSD storage system updates
  • PowerEdge MX preview of future composable servers
  • Desktop and thin client along with other VDI updates
  • Cloud and networking enhancements

Besides the above, additional data infrastructure related announcements were made in association with Dell Technology family members including VMware along with other partners, as well as customer awards. Other updates and announcements were tied to business updates from Dell Technology, Dell Technical Capital (venture capital), and, Dell Financial Services.

Dell Technology World Buzzword Bingo Lineup

Some of the buzzword bingo terms, topics, acronyms from Dell Technology World 2018 included AFA, AI, Autonomous, Azure, Bare Metal, Big Data, Blockchain, CI, Cloud, Composable, Compression, Containers, Core, Data Analytics, Dedupe, Dell, DFS (Dell Financial Services), DFR (Data Footprint Reduction), Distributed Ledger, DL, Durability, Fabric, FPGA, GDPR, Gen-Z, GPU, HCI, HDD, HPC, Hybrid, IOP, Kubernetes, Latency, MaaS (Metal as a Service), ML, NFV, NSX, NVMe, NVMeoF, PACE (Performance Availability Capacity Economics), PCIe, Pivotal, PMEM, RAID, RPO, RTO, SAS, SATA, SC, SCM, SDDC, SDS, Socket, SSD, Stamp, TBW (Terabytes Written per day), VDI, venture capital, VMware and VR among others.

Dell Technology World 2018 Venue
Dell Technology World DTW 2018 Event and Venue

Dell Technology World 2018 was located at the combined Palazzo and Venetian hotels along with adjacent Sands Expo center kicking off Monday, April 30th and wrapping up May 4th.

The theme for Dell Technology World DTW 2018 was make it real, which in some ways was interesting given the focus on virtual including virtual reality (VR), software-defined data center (SDDC) virtualization, data infrastructure topics, along with artificial intelligence (AI).

Virtual Sky Dell Technology World 2018
Make it real – Venetian Palazzo St. Mark’s Square on the way to Sands Expo Center

There was plenty of AI, VR, SDDC along with other technologies, tools as well as some fun stuff to do including VR games.

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area
Dell Technology World Village Area near Key Note and Expo Halls

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Drones
Dell Technology World Drone Flying Area

During a break from some meetings, I used a few minutes to fly a drone using VR which was interesting. I Have been operating drones (See some videos here) visually without dependence on first-person view (FPV) or relying on extensive autonomous operations instead flying heads up by hand for several years. Needless to say, the VR was interesting, granted encountered a bit of vertigo that I had to get used to.

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Virtual Village
More views of the Dell Technology World Village and Commons Area with VR activity

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Virtual Village
Dell Technology World Village and VR area

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Virtual Village
Dell Technology World Bean Bag Area

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Ok, nuff with the AI, ML, DL, VR fun, time to move on to the business and technology topics of Dell Technologies World 2018.

What was announced at Dell Technology World 2018 included among others:

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

Subsequent posts in this series take a deeper look at the various announcements as well as what they mean.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and 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

On the surface it may appear that there was not much announced at Dell Technology World 2018 particular compared to some of the recent Dell EMC Worlds and EMC Worlds. However turns out that there was a lot announced, granted without some of the entertainment and circus like atmosphere of previous events. Continue reading here Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details in this series, along with Part III here, Part IV here (including PowerEdge MX composable infrastructure leveraging Gen-Z) and Part V (servers and converged) here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers 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 II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Summary
This is Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details that is part of a five-post series (view part I here, part III here, part IV here and part V here). Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw).

Dell Technology World 2018 Venue
Dell Technology World DTW 2018 Event and Venue

What was announced at Dell Technology World 2018 included among others:

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Dell Technologies data infrastructure related announcements included new solutions competencies and expanded services deployment competencies with partners to boost deal size and revenues. An Internet of Things (IoT) solution competency was added with others planned including High-Performance Computing (HPC) / Super Computing (SC), Data Analytics, Business Applications and Security related topics. Dell Financial Services flexible consumption models announced at Dell EMC World 2017 provide flexible financing options for both partners as well as their clients.

Flexible Dell Financial Services cloud-like consumption model (e.g., pay for what you use) enhancements include reduced entry points for the Flex on Demand solutions across the Dell EMC storage portfolio. For example, Flex on Demand velocity pricing models for Dell EMC Unity All-Flash Array (AFA) solid state device (SSD) storage solution, and XtremIO X2 AFA systems with price points of less than USD 1,000.00 per month. The benefit is that Dell partners have a financial vehicle to help their midrange customers run consumption-based financing for all-flash storage without custom configurations resulting in faster deployment opportunities.

In other partner updates, Dell Technologies is enhancing the incentive program Dell EMC MyRewards program to help drive new business. Dell EMC MyRewards Program is an opt-in, points-based reward program for solution provider sales reps and systems engineers. MyRewards program is slated to replace the existing Partner Advantage and Sell & Earn programs with bigger and better promotions (up to 3x bonus payout, simplified global claiming).

What this means for partners is the ability to earn more while offering their clients new solutions with flexible financing and consumption-based pricing among other options. Other partner enhancements include update demo program, Proof of Concept (POC) program, and IT transformation campaigns.

Powering up the Modern Data Center and Future of Work

Powering up the modern data center along with future of work, part of the make it real theme of Dell Technologies world 2018 includes data infrastructure server, storage, I/O networking hardware, software and service solutions. These data infrastructure solutions include NVMe based storage, Converged Infrastructure (CI), hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), software-defined data center (SDDC), VMware based multi-clouds, along with modular infrastructure resources.

In addition to server and storage data infrastructure resources form desktop to data center, Dell also has a focus of enabling traditional as well as emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) as well as analytics applications. Besides providing data infrastructure resources to support AI, ML, DL, IoT and other applications along with their workloads, Dell is leveraging AI technology in some of their products for example PowerMax.

Other Dell Technologies announcements include Virtustream cloud risk management and compliance, along with Epic and SAP Digital Health healthcare software solutions. In addition to Virtustream, Dell Technologies cloud-related announcements also include VMware NSX network Virtual Cloud Network with Microsoft Azure support along with security enhancements. Refer here to recent April VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, vRealize and other Virtual announcements as well as here for March VMware cloud updates.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and 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

The above set of announcements span business to technology along with partner activity. Continue reading here (Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details) of this series, and part I (general summary) here, along with Part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable) here and part V here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers 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 III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

This is Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details that is part of a five-post series (view part I here, part II here, part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable) here and part V here). Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw).

Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcements Include:

  • PowerMax – Enterprise class tier 0 and tier 1 all-flash array (AFA)
  • XtremIO X2 – Native replication and new entry-level pricing

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax back view
Back view of Dell PowerMax

Dell PowerMax Something Old, Something New, Something Fast Near You Soon

PowerMax is the new companion to VMAX. Positioned for traditional tier 0 and tier 1 enterprise-class applications and workloads, PowerMax is optimized for dense server virtualization and SDDC, SAP, Oracle, SQL Server along with other low-latency, high-performance database activity. Different target workloads include Mainframe as well as Open Systems, AI, ML, DL, Big Data, as well as consolidation.

The Dell PowerMax is an all-flash array (AFA) architecture with an end to end NVMe along with built-in AI and ML technology. Building on the architecture of Dell EMC VMAX (some models still available) with new faster processors, full end to end NVMe ready (e.g., front-end server attachment, back-end devices).

The AI and ML features of PowerMax PowerMaxOS include an engine (software) that learns and makes autonomous storage management decisions, as well as implementations including tiering. Other AI and ML enabled operations include performance optimizations based on I/O pattern recognition.

Other features of PowerMax besides increased speeds, feeds, performance includes data footprint reduction (DFR) inline deduplication along with enhanced compression. The DFR benefits include up to 5:1 data reduction for space efficiency, without performance impact to boost performance effectiveness. The DFR along with improved 2x rack density, along with up to 40% power savings (your results may vary) based on Dell claims to enable an impressive amount of performance, availability, capacity, economics (e.g., PACE) in a given number of cubic feet (or meters).

There are two PowerMax models including 2000 (scales from 1 to 2 redundant controllers) and 8000 (scales from 1 to 8 redundant controller nodes). Note that controller nodes are Intel Xeon multi-socket, multi-core processors enabling scale-up and scale-out performance, availability, and capacity. Competitors of the PowerMax include AFA solutions from HPE 3PAR, NetApp, and Pure Storage among others.

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax Front View
Front view of Dell PowerMax

Besides resiliency, data services along with data protection, Dell is claiming PowerMax is 2x faster than their nearest high-end storage system competitors with up to 150GB/sec (e.g., 1,200Gbps) of bandwidth, as well as up to 10 million IOPS with 50% lower latency compared to previous VMAX.

PowerMax is also a full end to end NVMe ready (both back-end and front-end). Back-end includes NVMe drives, devices, shelves, and enclosures) as well as front-end (future NVMe over Fabrics, e.g., NVMeoF). Being NVMeoF ready enables PowerMax to support future front-end server network connectivity options to traditional SAN Fibre Channel (FC), iSCSI among others.

PowerMax is also ready for new, emerging high speed, low-latency storage class memory (SCM).  SCM is the next generation of persistent memories (PMEM) having performance closer to traditional DRAM while persistence of flash SSD. Examples of SCM technologies entering the market include Intel Optane based on 3D XPoint, along with others such as those from Everspin among others.

IBM Z Zed Mainframe at Dell Technology World 2018
An IBM “Zed” Mainframe (in case you have never seen one)

Based on the performance claims, the Dell PowerMax has an interesting if not potentially industry leading power, performance, availability, capacity, economic footprint per cubic foot (or meter). It will be interesting to see some third-party validation or audits of Dell claims. Likewise, I look forward to seeing some real-world applied workloads of Dell PowerMax vs. other storage systems. Here are some additional perspectives Via SearchStorage: Dell EMC all-flash PowerMax replaces VMAX, injects NVMe


Dell PowerMax Visual Studio (Image via Dell.com)

To help with customer decision making, Dell has created an interactive VMAX and PowerMax configuration studio that you can use to try out as well as learn about different options here. View more Dell PowerMax speeds, feeds, slots, watts, features and functions here (PDF).

Dell Technology World 2018 XtremIO X2

XtremIO X2

Dell XtremIO X2 and XIOS 6.1 operating system (software-defined storage) enhanced with native replication across wide area networks (WAN). The new WAN replication is metadata-aware native to the XtremIO X2 that implements data footprint reduction (DFR) technology reducing the amount of data sent over network connections. The benefit is more data moved in a given amount of time along with better data protection requiring less time (and network) by only moving unique changed data.

Dell Technology World 2018 XtremIO X2 back view
Back View of XtremIO X2

Dell EMC claims to reduce WAN network bandwidth by up to 75% utilizing the new native XtremIO X2 native asynchronous replication. Also, Dell says XtremIO X2 requires up to 38% less storage space at disaster recovery and business resiliency locations while maintaining predictable recovery point objectives (RPO) of 30 seconds. Another XtremIO X2 announcement is a new entry model for customers at up to 55% lower cost than previous product generations. View more information about Dell XtremIO X2 here, along with speeds feeds here, here, as well as here.

What about Dell Midrange Storage Unity and SC?

Here are some perspectives Via SearchStorage: Dell EMC midrange storage keeps its overlapping arrays.

Dell Bulk and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)

One of the questions I had going into Dell Technology World 2018 was what is the status of ECS (and its predecessors Atmos as well as Centera) bulk object storage is given lack of messaging and news around it. Specifically, my concern was that if ECS is the platform for storing and managing data to be preserved for the future, what is the current status, state as well as future of ECS.

In conversations with the Dell ECS folks, ECS which has encompassed Centera functionality and it (ECS) is very much alive, stay tuned for more updates. Also, note that Centera has been EOL. However, its feature functionality has been absorbed by ECS meaning that data preserved can now be managed by ECS. While I can not divulge the details of some meeting discussions, I can say that I am comfortable (for now) with the future directions of ECS along with the data it manages, stay tuned for updates.

Dell Data Protection

What about Data Protection? Security was mentioned in several different contexts during Dell Technology World 2018, as was a strong physical security presence seen at the Palazzo and Sands venues. Likewise, there was a data protection presence at Dell Technologies World 2018 in the expo hall, as well as with various sessions.

What was heard was mainly around data protection management tools, hybrid, as well as data protection appliances and data domain-based solutions. Perhaps we will hear more from Dell Technologies World in the future about data protection related topics.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and 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

If there was any doubt about would Dell keep EMC storage progressing forward, the above announcements help to show some examples of what they are doing. On the other hand, lets stay tuned to see what news and updates appear in the future pertaining to mid-range storage (e.g. Unity and SC) as well as Isilon, ScaleIO, Data Protection platforms as well as software among other technologies.

Continue reading part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable and Gen-Z) here in this series, as well as part I here, part II here, part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable) here, and, part V here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers 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 IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure

Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure

Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure
This is Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure that is part of a five-post series (view part I here, part II here, part III here and part V here). Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw).

Introducing PowerEdge MX Composable Infrastructure (the other CI)

Dell announced at Dell Technology World 2018 a preview of the new PowerEdge MX (kinetic) family of data infrastructure resource servers. PowerEdge MX is being developed to meet the needs of resource-centric data infrastructures that require scalability, as well as performance availability, capacity, economic (PACE) flexibility for diverse workloads. Read more about Dell PowerEdge MX, Gen-Z and composable infrastructures (the other CI) here.

Some of the workloads being targeted by PowerEdge MX include large-scale dense SDDC virtualization (and containers), private (or public clouds by service providers). Other workloads include AI, ML, DL, data analytics, HPC, SC, big data, in-memory database, software-defined storage (SDS), software-defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV) among others.

The new PowerEdge MX previewed will be announced later in 2018 featuring a flexible, decomposable, as well as composable architecture that enables resources to be disaggregated and reassigned or aggregated to meet particular needs (e.g., defined or composed). Instead of traditional software defined virtualization carving up servers in smaller virtual machines or containers to meet workload needs, PowerEdge MX is part of a next-generation approach to enable server resources to be leveraged at a finer granularity.

For example, today an entire server including all of its sockets, cores, memory, PCIe devices among other resources get allocated and defined for use. A server gets defined for use by an operating system when bare metal (or Metal as a Service) or a hypervisor. PowerEdge MX (and other platforms expected to enter the market) have a finer granularity where with a proper upper layer (or higher altitude) software resources can be allocated and defined to meet different needs.

What this means is the potential to allocate resources to a given server with more granularity and flexibility, as well as combine multiple server’s resources to create what appears to be a more massive server. There are vendors in the market who have been working on and enabling this type of approach for several years ranging from ScaleMP to startup Liqid and Tidal among others. However, at the heart of the Dell PowerEdge MX is the new emerging Gen-Z technology.

If you are not familiar with Gen-Z, add it to your buzzword bingo lineup and learn about it as it is coming your way. A brief overview of Gen-Z consortium and Gen-Z material and primer information here. A common question is if Gen-Z is a replacement for PCIe which for now is that they will coexist and complement each other. Another common question is if Gen-Z will replace Ethernet and InfiniBand and the answer is for now they complement each other. Another question is if Gen-Z will replace Intel Quick Path and another CPU device and memory interconnects and the answer is potentially, and in my opinion, watch to see how long Intel drags its feet.

Note that composability is another way of saying defined without saying defined, something to pay attention too as well as have some vendor fun with. Also, note that Dell is referent to PowerEdge MX and Kinetic architecture which is not the same as the Seagate Kinetic Ethernet-based object key value accessed drive initiative from a few years ago (learn more about Seagate Kinetic here). Learn more about Gen-Z and what Dell is doing here.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and 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

Dell has provided a glimpse of what they are working on pertaining composable infrastructure, the other CI, as well as Gen-Z and related next generation of servers with PowerEdge MX as well as Kinetic. Stay tuned for more about Gen-Z and composable infrastructures. Continue reading Part V (servers converged) in this series here, as well as part I here, part II here and part III here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers 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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How to Achieve Flexible Data Protection Availability with All Flash Storage Solutions

Achieve Flexible Data Protection Availability with All Flash Solutions

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Updated 1/21/2018

How to Achieve Flexible flash data protection and Availability with All-Flash Storage Solutions

Interactive webinar discussion (not death by power point or Ui Gui product demo ;) pertaining flash data protection )
Tuesday January 30 2018 11AM PT / 2PM ET
Via Redmond Magazine (Free with registration)

Everything is not the same across different organizations, environments, application workloads and the data infrastructures that support them. Fast application and workloads need fast protection, restoration, and resumption as well as fast flash storage. This applies across legacy, software-defined, virtual, container, cloud, hybrid, converged and HCI among other environments.

SDDC Data Infrastructure Data Protection

Join me along with representatives from Pure Storage along with Veeam for this interactive discussion as we explore how to boost the performance, availability, capacity, and economics (PACE) of your applications along with the data infrastructures that support them.

  • How all-flash storage enables faster protection and restoration of fast applications
  • Why data protection and availability should not be an afterthought
  • Ways to leverage your data protection storage to drive business change
  • How to simplify and reduce complexity to boost productivity while lowering costs
  • Why workload aggregation consolidation should not cause aggravation

Register for the live event or catch the replay here.

Where to learn more

Learn more about data protection, SSD, flash, data infrastructure and related topics via the following links:

SDDC Data Infrastructure

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 and wrap-up

Fast applications need fast and resilient data infrastructures that include server, storage, I/O networking along with data protection. Likewise performance depends on availability along with durability, likewise, availability and accessibility depend on performance, they go hand in hand. Join me and others from Pure Storage as well as Veeam for this conversational discussion about How to Achieve Flexible Data Protection and Availability with All-Flash Storage Solutions.

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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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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VMware vSAN 6.6 hyper-converged (HCI) software defined data infrastructure

server storage I/O trends

VMware vSAN 6.6 hyper-converged (HCI) software defined data infrastructure

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

Software-defined data infrastructure

Excuse Me, What is vSAN and who is if for

Some might find it odd having to explain what vSAN is, on the other hand, not everybody is dialed into the VMware world ecosystem, so let’s give them some help, for everybody else, and feel free to jump ahead.

For those not familiar, VMware vSAN is an HCI software-defined storage solution that converges compute (hypervisors and server) with storage space capacity and I/O performance along with networking. Being HCI means that with vSAN as you scale compute, storage space capacity and I/O performance also increases in an aggregated fashion. Likewise, increase storage space capacity and server I/O performance you also get more compute capabilities (along with memory).

For VMware-centric environments looking to go CI or HCI, vSAN offers compelling value proposition leveraging known VMware tools and staff skills (knowledge, experience, tradecraft). Another benefit of vSAN is the ability to select your hardware platform from different vendors, a trend that other CI/HCI vendors have started to offer as well.

CI and HCI data infrastructure

Keep in mind that fast applications need a fast server, I/O and storage, as well as server storage I/O needs CPU along with memory to generate I/O operations (IOPs) or move data. What this all means is that HCI solutions such as VMware vSAN combine or converge the server compute, hypervisors, storage file system, storage devices, I/O and networking along with other functionality into an easy to deploy (and management) turnkey solution.

Learn more about CI and HCI along with who some other vendors are as well as considerations at www.storageio.com/converge. Also, visit VMware sites to find out more about vSphere ESXi hypervisors, vSAN, NSX (Software Defined Networking), vCenter, vRealize along with other tools for enabling SDDC and SDDI.

Give Me the Quick Elevator Pitch Summary

VMware has enhanced vSAN with version 6.6 (V6.6) enabling new functionality, supporting new hardware platforms along with partners, while reducing costs, improving scalability and resiliency for SDDC and SDDI environments. This includes from small medium business (SMB) to mid-market to small medium enterprise (SME) as well as workgroup, departmental along with Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO).

Being a HCI solution, management functions of the server, storage, I/O, networking, hypervisor, hardware, and software are converged to improve management productivity. Also, vSAN integrated with VMware vSphere among other tools enable modern, robust data infrastructure that serves, protect, preserve, secure and stores data along with their associated applications.

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means

Overall a good set of enhancements as vSAN continues its evolution looking back just a few years ago, to where it is today and will be in the future. If you have not looked at vSAN recently, take some time beyond reading this piece to learn some more.

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

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VMware vSAN V6.6 Part II (just the speeds feeds features please)

server storage I/O trends

VMware vSAN v6.6 Part II (just the speeds feeds features please)

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

Just the Speeds and Feeds Please

For those who just want to see the list of what’s new with vSAN V6.6, here you go:

  • Native encryption for data-at-rest
  • Compliance certifications
  • Resilient management independent of vCenter
  • Degraded Disk Handling v2.0 (DDHv2)
  • Smart repairs and enhanced rebalancing
  • Intelligent rebuilds using partial repairs
  • Certified file service & data protection solutions
  • Stretched clusters with local failure protection
  • Site affinity for stretched clusters
  • 1-click witness change for Stretched Cluster
  • vSAN Management Pack for vRealize
  • Enhanced vSAN SDK and PowerCLI
  • Simple networking with Unicast
  • vSAN Cloud Analytics with real-time support notification and recommendations
  • vSAN ConfigAssist with 1-click hardware lifecycle management
  • Extended vSAN Health Services
  • vSAN Easy Install with 1-click fixes
  • Up to 50% greater IOPS for all-flash with optimized checksum and dedupe
  • Support for new next-gen workloads
  • vSAN for Photon in Photon Platform 1.1
  • Day 0 support for latest flash technologies
  • Expanded caching tier choice
  • Docker Volume Driver 1.1

What’s New and Value Proposition of vSAN 6.6

Let’s take a closer look beyond the bullet list of what’s new with vSAN 6.6, as well as perspectives of those features to address different needs. The VMware vSAN proposition is to evolve and enable modernizing data infrastructures with HCI powered by vSphere along with vSAN.

Three main themes or characteristics (and benefits) of vSAN 6.6 include addressing (or enabling):

  • Reducing risk while scaling
  • Reducing cost and complexity
  • Scaling for today and tomorrow

VMware vSAN 6.6 summary
Image via VMware

Reducing risk while scaling

Reducing (or removing) risk while evolving your data infrastructure with HCI including flexibility of choosing among five support hardware vendors along with native security. This includes native security, availability and resiliency enhancements (including intelligent rebuilds) without sacrificing storage efficiency (capacity) or effectiveness (performance productivity), management and choice.

VMware vSAN DaRE
Image via VMware

Dat level Data at Rest Encryption (DaRE) of all vSAN dat objects that are enabled at a cluster level. The new functionality supports hybrid along with all flash SSD as well as stretched clusters. The VMware vSAN DaRE implementation is an alternative to using self-encrypting drives (SEDs) reducing cost, complexity and management activity. All vSAN features including data footprint reduction (DFR) features such as compression and deduplication are supported. For security, vSAN DaRE integrations with compliance key management technologies including those from SafeNet, Hytrust, Thales and Vormetric among others.

VMware vSAN management
Image via VMware

ESXi HTML 5 based host client, along with CLI via ESXCLI for administering vSAN clusters as an alternative in case your vCenter server(s) are offline. Management capabilities include monitoring of critical health and status details along with configuration changes.

VMware vSAN health management
Image via VMware

Health monitoring enhancements include handling of degraded vSAN devices with intelligence proactively detecting impending device failures. As part of the functionality, if a replica of the failing (or possible soon to fail) device exists, vSAN can take action to maintain data availability.

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means

With each new release, vSAN is increasing its feature, functionality, resiliency and extensiveness associated with traditional storage and non-CI or HCI solutions. Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in Part I here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

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

server storage I/O trends

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

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

Reducing cost and complexity

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

VMware vSAN stretch cluster
Image via VMware

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

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

server storage I/O locality of reference

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

VMware vSAN unicast
Image via VMware

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

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

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

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

Posted on

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

server storage I/O trends

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

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

Scaling HCI for ROBO and data centers today and for tomorrow

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

VMware vSAN data center scaling
Image via VMware

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

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

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

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

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

VMware vSAN and data center class applications
Image via VMware

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

What about VMware vSAN 6.6. Packaging and License Options

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

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

VMware vSAN cloud analytics
Image via VMware

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

Posted on

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

server storage I/O trends

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

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

VMware vSAN 6.6
Image via VMware

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

How has vSAN (formerly referred to as VSAN) Evolved

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

Previous vSAN enhancements include:

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

V5.5

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

V6.0

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

V6.1

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

V6.2

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

V6.5

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

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means, wrap up and summary

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

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

Posted on

Cisco Next Gen 32Gb Fibre Channel NVMe SAN Updates

server storage I/O trends

Cisco Next Gen 32Gb Fibre Channel and NVMe SAN Updates

Cisco announced today next generation MDS storage area networking (SAN) Fibre Channel (FC) switches with 32Gb, along with NVMe over FC support.

Cisco Fibre Channel (FC) Directors (Left) and Switches (Right)

Highlights of the Cisco announcement include:

  • MDS 9700 48 port 32Gbps FC switching module
  • High density 768 port 32Gbps FC directors
  • NVMe over FC for attaching fast flash SSD devices (current MDS 9700, 9396S, 9250i and 9148S)
  • Integrated analytics engine for management insight awareness
  • Multiple concurrent protocols including NVMe, SCSI (e.g. SCSI_FCP aka FCP) and FCoE

Where to Learn More

The following are additional resources to learn more.

What this all means, wrap up and summary

Fibre Channel remains relevant for many environments and it makes sense that Cisco known for Ethernet along with IP networking enhance their offerings. By having 32Gb Fibre Channel, along with adding NVMe over Fabric provides existing (and new) Cisco customers to support their legacy (e.g. FC) and emerging (NVMe) workloads as well as devices. For those environments that still need some mix of Fibre Channel, as well as NVMe over fabric this is a good announcement. Keep an eye and ear open for which storage vendors jump on the NVMe over Fabric bandwagon now that Cisco as well as Brocade have made switch support announcements.

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.

Posted on

SSD, flash, Non-volatile memory (NVM) storage Trends, Tips & Topics

SSD, flash, Non-volatile memory (NVM) storage Trends, Tips & Topics

Updated 2/2/2018

server storage I/O trends

Will 2017 be there year of solid state device (SSD), all flash, or all Non-volatile memory (NVM) based storage data centers and data infrastructures?

Recently I did a piece over at InfoStor looking at SSD trends, tips and related topics. SSDs of some type, shape and form are in your future, if they are not already. In my InfoStor piece, I look at some non-volatile memory (NVM) and SSD trends, technologies, tools and tips that you can leverage today to help prepare for tomorrow. This also includes NVM Express (NVMe) based components and solutions.

By way of background, SSD can refer to solid state drive or solid state device (e.g. more generic). The latter is what I am using in this post. NVM refers to different types of persistent memories, including NAND flash and its variants most commonly used today in SSDs. Other NVM mediums include NVRAM along with storage class memories (SCMs) such as 3D XPoint and phase change memory (PCM) among others. Let’s focus on NAND flash as that is what is primarily available and shipping for production enterprise environments today.

Continue reading about SSD, flash, NVM and related trends, topics and tips over at InfoStor by clicking here.

Where To Learn More

Additional related content can be found at:

What This All Means

Will 2017 finally be the year of all flash, all SSD and all NVM including emerging storage class memories (SCM)? Or as we have seen over the past decade increasing adoption as well as deployment in most environments, some of which have gone all SSD or NVM. In the meantime it is safe to say that NVMe, NVM, SSD, flash and other related technologies are in your future in some shape or form as well as quantity. Check out my piece over at InfoStor SSD trends, tips and related topics.

What say you, are you going all flash, SSD or NVM in 2017, if not, what are your concerns or constraints and plans?

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and <a “https://storageioblog.com/book1”>Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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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EMC is now Dell EMC, part of Dell Technologies and other server storage Updates

EMC is now Dell EMC and other server storage Updates

server storage I/O trends

In case you missed it or did not hear, EMC is now Dell EMC and is future ready (one of their new tag lines).

What this means is that EMC is no longer a publicly traded company instead now being privately held under the Dell Technologies umbrella. In case you did not know or had forgotten, one of the principal owners of Dell Technologies is Michael Dell aka the founder of Dell Computers which itself went private a few years ago. The Dell Server division which sells direct as well as via channels and OEMs is now part of the Dell EMC division (e.g. they sell Servers, Storage, I/O and Networking hardware, software and services).

Dell EMC Storage Portfolio
Dell EMC Storage Portfolio – Via emc.com

Other related news and activities include:

  • Dell EMC sells Content Division (e.g. Documentum (bought in 2003), InfoArchive and LEAP) to OpenText for $1.62B USD
  • Dell is selling its Sonicwall and software division (e.g. what was a mix of Quest and other non-EMC related software) to a Private Equity group. The new company to be called Quest has ironically as one of its investors, activist PE firm Elliott Management. You might recall Elliott Management was the activist investor pushing for more value out of EMC for shareholders.
  • Expands Data Protection Portfolio For VMware Environments
  • Hybrid Cloud Platform Enhancements
  • XtremIO New Features and Management for Virtualized Environments
  • Combines DSSD and PowerEdge Servers for SAS (Software) Analytics
  • ScaleIO Ready Node Offers All-Flash Software-Defined
  • Expands Microsoft Support across Cloud and Converged Infrastructure
  • With approximately 140,000 employees worldwide post merger Dell EMC has announce some expected layoffs.

Dell EMC Enahncements made today

  • Announced a new entry-level VMAX (200F) with very small physical footprint, affordable starter system price and flexibility to scale as you need to grow. Also announced were SRDF third site enhancements as well as VPLEX updates.
  • Data Domain enhancements including OS 6.0, flash and tiering across private, public and hybrid cloud
  • Unity mid-range storage (e.g. the successor to VNX) enhanced with all-flash and UnityOE software updates that include in-line compression along with cloud tiering. All-flash Unity models using 15.36TB SAS Flash SSD drives (3D NAND) can support up to 384TB in a 2U rack. Cloud tiering includes support for Virtustream, AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Dell EMC VMAX storage family
Dell EMC VMAX family and new 200F – Via emc.com

Note that in-line compression on Unity and VMAX systems is available on all-flash based systems, while tiering is available on both all-flash as well as hybrid systems.

Where To Learn More

Dell Updates Storage Center Operating System 7 (SCOS 7)
EMC DSSD D5 Rack Scale Direct Attached Shared SSD All Flash Array Part I
Part II – EMC DSSD D5 Direct Attached Shared AFA
EMCworld 2016 Getting Started on Dell EMC announcements
EMCworld 2016 EMC Hybrid and Converged Clouds Your Way
Dell-EMC: The Storage Ramifications
VMware Targets Synergies in Dell-EMC Deal 
Dell to Buy EMC for $67B; Sharpen Focus on Large Enterprises and High-End Computing
Dell SAN strategy examined after move to go private
EMC VxRack Neutrino Nodes launched for OpenStack cloud storage
EMC Under Pressure To Spin Off VMware
EMC Bridges Cloud, On-Premise Storage With TwinStrata Buy
Top Ten Takeaways from EMC World
When to implement ultra-dense server storage
EMCworld 2015 How Do You Want Your Storage Wrapped?
EMCworld 2015 How Do You Want Your Storage Wrapped?

What This All Means

For those that think (or wish) that now that EMC has gone private (e.g. granted under Dell ownership) that they have gone away and no longer relevant, time will tell what happens long term. However while they (EMC, now Dell EMC) are no longer a publicly held company, they are still very much in the public spotlight addressing legacy, current as well as emerging IT data infrastructure and software-defined data center, software defined storage and related topics spanning cloud, virtual, container among others.

What this all means is that Dell EMC is following through with providing different types of data infrastructure along with associated server, storage and I/O solutions as well as associated software defined storage management and data protection tools to meet various needs. How do you want your storage wrapped? Do you want it software defined such as a ScaleIO, ECS (object), DataDomain (data protection), VIPR, or Unity among other virtual storage appliances (VSAs), or tin-wrapped as a physical storage system or appliance?

With the VMAX 200F, Dell EMC is showing that they can scale-down the VMAX. Dell EMC is also showing they can scale VMAX up and out while making it affordable and physically practical for smaller environments who want, need or are required to have traditional enterprise class storage in a small footprint (price, physical space) with enterprise resiliency.

Dell EMC Storage Portfolio
Dell EMC Storage Portfolio – Via emc.com

A question that comes up is what happens with the various competing Dell and EMC (pre-merger) storage product lines. If you look closely at the storage line up photo above, you will notice the Dell SC (e.g. Compellent) is shown along with all of the EMC solutions. This should or could prompt the question of what about the PS series (e.g. EqualLogic) or some MD. So far the answer I have received is that they remain available for sale which you can confirm via the Dell website. However, what will the future bring to those or others is still TBD.

Needless to say there is more to see and hear coming out of Dell EMC in the weeks and months ahead, that is unless as some predict (or wishful thinking) they go away which I don’t see happening anytime soon. Oh, FWIW, Dell and EMC have been Server StorageIO clients direct and indirect via 3rd parties in the past (that’s a disclosure btw).

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP and VMware vSAN vExpert, 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