Dell EMC World 2017 Day One news announcement summary

server storage I/O trends

Dell EMC World 2017 Day One news announcement summary

This is the first day of the first combined Dell EMC World 2017 being held in Las Vegas Nevada. Last year’s event in Las Vegas was the end of the EMC World, while this being the first of the combined Dell EMC World events that succeeded its predecessors.

What this means is an expanded focus because of the new Dell EMC that has added servers among other items to the event focus. Granted, EMC had been doing servers via its VCE and converged divisions, however with the Dell EMC integration completed as of last fall, the Dell Server group is now part of the Dell EMC organization.

The central theme of this Dell EMC world is REALIZE with a focus on four pillars:

  • Digital Transformation (Pivotal focus) of applications
  • IT Transformation (Dell EMC, Virtustream, VMware) data center modernization
  • Workforce transformation (Dell Client Solutions) devices from mobile to IoT
  • Information Security (RSA and Secureworks)

software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

What Did Dell EMC Announce Today

Note that while there are focus areas of the different Dell Technologies business units aligned to the pillars, there is also leveraging across those areas and groups. For example, VMware NSX spans into security, and  PowerEdge servers span into other pillars as a core data infrastructure building block.

What Dell EMC and Dell Technologies announced today.

  • Wave of Innovations to help customers realize digital transformation
  • New 14th generation PowerEdge Servers that are core building blocks for data infrastructures
  • Flexible consumption models (financing and more) from desktop to data center
  • Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Converged (CI) and Cloud like systems
  • New All-Flash (ADA) SSD Storage Systems (VMAX, XtremIO X2, Unity, SC, Isilon)
  • Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) and Cloud Protection solutions
  • Using Gen14 servers several Software Defined Storage (SDS) enhancements
  • Open Networking and software-defined networks (SDN) with 25G
  • Last week Dell EMC announced Microsoft Azure Stack hybrid cloud solutions

New 14th generation PowerEdge Servers that are core building blocks for data infrastructures

Dell EMC has announced the 14th generation of Intel-powered Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio systems. These includes servers that get defined with software for software-defined data centers (SDDC), software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI) for the cloud, virtual, the container as well as storage among other applications. Target application workloads and environments range from high-performance compute (HPC), and high-productivity (or profitability) compute (the other HPC), super compute (SC), little data and big data analytics, legacy and emerging business applications as well as cloud and beyond. Enhancements besides new Intel processor technology includes enhanced iDRAC, OpenManage, REST interface, QuickSync, Secure Boot among other management, automation, security, performance, and capacity updates.

Other Dell EMC enhancements with Gen14 include support for various NVDIMM to enable persistent memory also known as storage class memories such as 3D Xpoint among others. Note at this time, Dell EMC is not saying much about speeds, feeds and other details, stay tuned for more information on these in the weeks and months to come.

Dell EMC has also been leaders with deploying NVMe from PCIe flash cards to 8639 U.2 devices such as 2.5” drives. Thus it makes sense to see continued adoption and deployment of those devices along with SAS, SATA support. Note that Broadcom (formerly known as Avago) recently announced the release of their PCIe SAS, SATA and NVMe based adapters.

The reason this is worth mentioning is that in the past Dell has OEM sourced Avago (formerly known as LSI) based adapters. Given Dell EMC use of NVMe drives, it only makes sense to put two and two together.

Let’s wait a few months to see what the speeds, feeds, and specifications are to put the rest of the puzzle together. Speaking of NVMe, also look for Dell EMC to also supporting PCIe AIC and U.2 (8639) NVMe devices, also leverage M.2 Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) aka Gum sticks as boot devices.

While these are all Intel focused, I would expect Dell EMC not to sit back, instead, watch for what they do with other processors and servers including ARMs among others.

Increased support for more GPUs to support VDI and other graphic intensive workloads such as video rendering, imaging among others. Part of enhanced GPU support is improvements (multi-vector cooling) to power and cooling including sensing the type of PCIe card, and then adjusting cooling fans and subsequent power draw accordingly. The benefit should be more proper cooling to reduce power to support more work and productivity.

Flexible consumption models (financing and more) from desktop to data center

Dell Technologies has announced several financing, procurement, and consumption models with cloud-like flexible options for different IT and data center, along with mobile device technologies. These range from licensing to deployment as a service, consumption and other options via Dell Financial Services (DFS).

Highlights include:

  • DFS Flex on Demand is available now in select countries globally.
  • DFS Cloud Flex for HCI is available now for Dell EMC VxRail and Dell EMC XC Series and has planned availability for Q3 2017 in Dell EMC VxRack Systems.
  • PC as a Service is available now in select countries globally.
  • Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions are available now in select countries globally.
  • DFS Flex on Demand is available now in select countries globally.
  • DFS Cloud Flex for HCI is available now for Dell EMC VxRail and Dell EMC XC Series and has planned VxRack systems in Q3 2017.
  • PC as a Service solution is available now in select countries globally.
  • Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions are available now in select countries.
  • Dell Technologies transformation license agreement (TLA) is available now in select countries

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Converged (CI) and Cloud like systems

Enhancements to VxRail system, VxRACK Systems, and XC Series leveraging Del EMC Gen14 PowerEdge servers along with other improvements. Note that this also includes continued support for VMware, Microsoft as well as Nutanix software-defined solutions.

New All-Flash (ADA) SSD Storage Systems (VMAX, XtremIO X2, Unity, SC, Isilon)

Storage system enhancements include from high-end (VMAX and XtremIO) to mid-range (Unity and SC) along with scale-out NAS (Isilon)

Highlights of the announcements include:

  • New VMAX 950F all flash array (AFA)
  • New XtremIO X2 with enhanced software, more powerful hardware
  • New Unity AFA systems
  • New SC5020 midrange hybrid storage
  • New generation of Isilon storage with improved performance, capacity, density

Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) and Cloud Protection solutions

Data protection enhancement highlights include:

  • New Turnkey Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) with four models (DP5300, DP5800, DP8300, and DP8800) starting at 34 TB usable scaling up to 1PB usable. Data services including encryption, data footprint reduction such as dedupe, remote monitoring, Maintenance service dispatch, along with application integration. Application integration includes MongoDB, Hadoop, MySQL.

  • Enhanced cloud capabilities powered by Data Domain virtual edition (DD VE 3.1) along with data protection suite enable data to be protected too, and restored from Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) as well as Microsoft Azure.

Open Networking and software-defined networks (SDN) with 25G

Dell EMC Open Networking highlights include:

  • Dell EMCs first 25GbE open networking top of rack (TOR) switch including S5100-ON series (With OS10 enterprise edition software) complimenting new PowerEdge Gen14 servers with native 25GbE support. Switches support 100GbE uplinks fabric connectivity for east-west (management) network traffic. Also announced is the S4100-ON series and N1100-ON series that are in addition to recently announce N3100-ON and N2100-ON switches.

  • Dell EMCs first optimized Open Networking platform for unified storage network switching including support for 16Gb/32GB Fibre Channel

  • New Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and IoT advisory consulting services

Note that Dell EMC is announcing the availability of these networking solutions in Dell Technologies 2018 fiscal year which occurs before the traditional calendar year.

Using Gen14 servers, several Software Defined Storage (SDS) enhancements

Dell EMC announced enhancements to their Software Defined Storage (SDS) portfolio that leveraging the PowerEdge 14th generation server portfolio. These improvements include ScaleIO, Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS), IsilonSD Edge and Preview of Project Nautilus.

Where to learn more

What this all means

This is a summary of what has been announced so far on the first morning of the first day of the first new Dell EMC world. Needless to say, there is more detail to look at for the above announcements from speeds, feeds, functionality and related topics that will get addressed in subsequent posts. Overall this is a good set of announcements expanding capabilities of the combined Dell EMC while enhancing existing systems as well as well as solutions.

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.

Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review

server storage I/O trends

Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review

Perhaps you are aware or use Microsoft Azure, how about Azure Stack?

This is part one of a two-part series looking at Microsoft Azure Stack providing an overview, preview and review. Read part two here that looks at my experiences installing Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3).

For those who are not aware, Azure Stack is a private on-premises extension of the Azure public cloud environment. Azure Stack now in technical preview three (e.g. TP3), or what you might also refer to as a beta (get the bits here).

In addition to being available via download as a preview, Microsoft is also working with vendors such as Cisco, Dell EMC, HPE, Lenovo and others who have announced Azure Stack support. Vendors such as Dell EMC have also made proof of concept kits available that you can buy including server with storage and software. Microsoft has also indicated that once launched for production versions scaling from a few to many nodes, that a single node proof of concept or development system will also remain available.

software defined data infrastructure SDDI and SDDC
Software-Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) aka Software-defined Data Centers, Cloud, Virtual and Legacy

Besides being an on-premises, private cloud variant, Azure Stack is also hybrid capable being able to work with public cloud Azure. In addition to working with public cloud Azure, Azure Stack services and in particular workloads can also work with traditional Microsoft, Linux and others. You can use pre built solutions from the Azure marketplace, in addition to developing your applications using Azure services and DevOps tools. Azure Stack enables hybrid deployment into public or private cloud to balance flexibility, control and your needs.

Azure Stack Overview

Microsoft Azure Stack is an on premise (e.g. in your own data center) private (or hybrid when connected to Azure) cloud platform. Currently Azure Stack is in Technical Preview 3 (e.g. TP3) and available as a proof of concept (POC) download from Microsoft. You can use Azure Stack TP3 as a POC for learning, demonstrating and trying features among other activities. Here is link to a Microsoft Video providing an overview of Azure Stack, and here is a good summary of roadmap, licensing and related items.

In summary, Microsoft Azure Stack is:

  • A onsite, on premise, in your data center extension of Microsoft Azure public cloud
  • Enabling private and hybrid cloud with strong integration along with common experiences with Azure
  • Adopt, deploy, leverage cloud on your terms and timeline choosing what works best for you
  • Common processes, tools, interfaces, management and user experiences
  • Leverage speed of deployment and configuration with a purpose-built integrate solution
  • Support existing and cloud native Windows, Linux, Container and other services
  • Available as a public preview via software download, as well as vendors offering solutions

What is Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3)

This version of Azure Stack is a single node running on a lone physical machine (PM) aka bare metal (BM). However can also be installed into a virtual machine (VM) using nesting. For example I have Azure Stack TP3 running nested on a VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 systems with a Windows Server 2016 VM as its base operating system.

Microsoft Azure Stack architecture
Click here or on the above image to view list of VMs and other services (Image via Microsoft.com)

The TP3 POC Azure Stack is not intended for production environments, only for testing, evaluation, learning and demonstrations as part of its terms of use. This version of Azure Stack is associated with a single node identity such as Azure Active Directory (AAD) integrated with Azure, or Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) for standalone modes. Note that since this is a single server deployment, it is not intended for performance, rather, for evaluating functionality, features, APIs and other activities. Learn more about Azure Stack TP3 details here (or click on image) including names of various virtual machines (VMs) as well as their roles.

Where to learn more

The following provide more information and insight about Azure, Azure Stack, Microsoft and Windows among related topics.

  • Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review
  • Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview Review Part II
  • Azure Stack Technical Preview (get the bits aka software download here)
  • Azure Stack deployment prerequisites (Microsoft)
  • Microsoft Azure Stack troubleshooting (Microsoft Docs)
  • Azure Stack TP3 refresh tips (Azure Stack)
  • Here is a good post with a tip about not applying certain Windows updates to Azure stack TP3 installs.
  • Configure Azure stack TP3 to be available on your own network (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 Marketplace syndication (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 deployment experiences (Azure Stack)
  • Frequently asked questions for Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Deploy Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Connect to Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Azure Active Directory (AAD) and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
  • Azure Stack TP2 deployment experiences by Niklas Akerlund (@vNiklas) useful for tips for TP3
  • Deployment Checker for Azure Stack Technical Preview (Microsoft Technet)
  • Azure stack and other tools (Github)
  • How to enable nested virtualization on Hyper-V Windows Server 2016
  • Dell EMC announce Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack Data Sheet (Dell EMC PDF)
  • Dell EMC Cloud Chats (Dell EMC Blog)
  • Microsoft Azure stack forum
  • Dell EMC Microsoft Azure Stack solution
  • Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Overview Review of Microsoft ReFS (Reliable File System) and resource links
  • Via WServerNews.com Cloud (Microsoft Azure) storage considerations
  • Via CloudComputingAdmin.com Cloud Storage Decision Making: Using Microsoft Azure for cloud storage
  • www.thenvmeplace.com, www.thessdplace.com, www.objectstoragecenter.com and www.storageio.com/converge
  • What this all means

    A common question is if there is demand for private and hybrid cloud, in fact, some industry expert pundits have even said private, or hybrid are dead which is interesting, how can something be dead if it is just getting started. Likewise, it is early to tell if Azure Stack will gain traction with various organizations, some of whom may have tried or struggled with OpenStack among others.

    Given a large number of Microsoft Windows-based servers on VMware, OpenStack, Public cloud services as well as other platforms, along with continued growing popularity of Azure, having a solution such as Azure Stack provides an attractive option for many environments. That leads to the question of if Azure Stack is essentially a replacement for Windows Servers or Hyper-V and if only for Windows guest operating systems. At this point indeed, Windows would be an attractive and comfortable option, however, given a large number of Linux-based guests running on Hyper-V as well as Azure Public, those are also primary candidates as are containers and other services.

    Continue reading more in part two of this two-part series here including installing Microsoft Azure Stack TP3.

    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.

    Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview Review Part II

    server storage I/O trends

    Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview (Part II) Install Review

    This is part two of a two-part series looking at Microsoft Azure Stack with a focus on my experiences installing Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) including into a nested VMware vSphere ESXi environment. Read part one here that provides a general overview of Azure Stack.

    Azure Stack Review and Install

    Being familiar with Microsoft Azure public cloud having used it for a few years now, I wanted to gain some closer insight, experience, expand my trade craft on Azure Stack by installing TP3. This is similar to what I have done in the past with OpenStack, Hadoop, Ceph, VMware, Hyper-V and many others, some of which I need to get around to writing about sometime. As a refresher from part one of this series, the following is an image via Microsoft showing the Azure Stack TP3 architecture, click here or on the image to learn more including the names and functions of the various virtual machines (VMs) that make up Azure Stack.

    Microsoft Azure Stack architecture
    Click here or on the above image to view list of VMs and other services (Image via Microsoft.com)

    Whats Involved Installing Azure Stack TP3?

    The basic steps are as follows:

    • Read this Azure Stack blog post (Azure Stack)
    • Download the bits (e.g. the Azure Stack software) from here, where you access the Azure Stack Downloader tool.
    • Planning your deployment making decisions on Active Directory and other items.
    • Prepare the target server (physical machine aka PM, or virtual machine VM) that will be the Azure Stack destination.
    • Copy Azure Stack software and installer to target server and run pre-install scripts.
    • Modify PowerShell script file if using a VM instead of a PM
    • Run the Azure Stack CloudBuilder setup, configure unattend.xml if needed or answer prompts.
    • Server reboots, select Azure Stack from two boot options.
    • Prepare your Azure Stack base system (time, network NICs in static or DHCP, if running on VMware install VMtools)
    • Determine if you will be running with Azure Active Directory (AAD) or standalone Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS).
    • Update any applicable installation scripts (see notes that follow)
    • Deploy the script, then extended Azure Stack TP3 PoC as needed

    Note that this is a large download of about 16GB (23GB with optional WIndows Server 2016 demo ISO).

    Use the AzureStackDownloader tool to download the bits (about 16GB or 23GB with optional Windows Server 2016 base image) which will either be in several separate files which you stitch back together with the MicrosoftAzureStackPOC tool, or as a large VHDX file and smaller 6.8GB ISO (Windows Server 2016). Prepare your target server system for installation once you have all the software pieces downloaded (or do the preparations while waiting for download).

    Once you have the software downloaded, if it is a series of eight .bin files (7 about 2GB, 1 around 1.5GB), good idea to verify their checksums, then stitch them together on your target system, or on a staging storage device or file share. Note that for the actual deployment first phase, the large resulting cloudbuilder.vhdx file will need to reside in the C:\ root location of the server where you are installing Azure Stack.

    server storageio nested azure stack tp3 vmware

    Azure Stack deployment prerequisites (Microsoft) include:

    • At least 12 cores (or more), dual socket processor if possible
    • As much DRAM as possible (I used 100GB)
    • Put the operating system disk on flash SSD (SAS, SATA, NVMe) if possible, allocate at least 200GB (more is better)
    • Four x 140GB or larger (I went with 250GB) drives (HDD or SSD) for data deployment drives
    • A single NIC or adapter (I put mine into static instead of DHCP mode)
    • Verify your physical or virtual server BIOS has VT enabled

    The above image helps to set the story of what is being done. On the left is for bare metal (BM) or physical machine (PM) install of Azure Stack TP3, on the right, a nested VMware (vSphere ESXi 6.5) with virtual machine (VM) 11 approach. Note that you could also do a Hyper-V nested among other approaches. Shown in the image above common to both a BM or VM is a staging area (could be space on your system drive) where Azure Stack download occurs. If you use a separate staging area, then simply copy the individual .bin files and stitch together into the larger .VHDX, or, copy the larger .VHDX, which is better is up to your preferences.

    Note that if you use the nested approach, there are a couple of configuration (PowerShell) scripts that need to be updated. These changes are to trick the installer into thinking that it is on a PM when it checks to see if on physical or virtual environments.

    Also note that if using nested, make sure you have your VMware vSphere ESXi host along with specific VM properly configured (e.g. that virtualization and other features are presented to the VM). With vSphere ESXi 6.5 virtual machine type 11 nesting is night and day easier vs. earlier generations.

    Something else to explain here is that you will initially start the Azure Stack install preparation using a standard Windows Server (I used a 2016 version) where the .VHDX is copied into its C:\ root. From there you will execute some PowerShell scripts to setup some configuration files, one of which needs to be modified for nesting.

    Once those prep steps are done, there is a Cloudbuilder deploy script that gets run that can be done with an unattend.xml file or manual input. This step will cause a dual-boot option to be added to your server where you can select Azure Stack or your base prep Windows Server instance, followed by reboot.

    After the reboot occurs and you choose to boot into Azure Stack, this is the server instance that will actually run the deployment script, as well as build and launch all the VMs for the Azure Stack TP3 PoC. This is where I recommend having a rough sketch like above to annotate layers as you go to remember what layer working at. Don’t worry, it becomes much easier once all is said and done.

    Speaking of preparing your server, refer to Microsoft specs, however in general give the server as much RAM and cores as possible. Also if possible place the system disk on a flash SSD (SAS, SATA, NVMe) and make sure that it has at least 200GB, however 250 or even 300GB is better (just in case you need more space).

    Additional configuration tips include allocating four data disks for Azure, if possible make these SSDs as well as, however more important IMHO to have at least the system on fast flash SSD. Another tip is to enable only one network card or NIC and put it into static vs. DHCP address mode to make things easier later.

    Tip: If running nested, vSphere 6.5 worked the smoothest as had various issues or inconsistencies with earlier VMware versions, even with VMs that ran nested just fine.

    Tip: Why run nested? Simple, I wanted to be able to use using VMware tools, do snapshots to go back in time, plus share the server with some other activities until ready to give Azure Stack TP3 its own PM.

    Tip: Do not connect the POC machine to the following subnets (192.168.200.0/24, 192.168.100.0/27, 192.168.101.0/26, 192.168.102.0/24, 192.168.103.0/25, 192.168.104.0/25) as Azure Stack TP3 uses those.

    storageio azure stack tp3 vmware configuration

    Since I decided to use a nested VM deploying using VMware, there were a few extra steps needed that I have included as tips and notes. Following is view via vSphere client of the ESXi host and VM configuration.

    The following image combines a couple of different things including:

    A: Showing the contents of C:\Azurestack_Supportfiles directory

    B: Modifying the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 file if deploying on virtual machine (See tips and notes)

    C: Showing contents of staging area including individual .bin files along with large CloudBuilder.vhdx

    D: Running the PowerShell script commands to prepare the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 and related items

    prepariing azure stack tp3 cloudbuilder for nested vmware deployment

    From PowerShell (administrator):

    # Variables
    $Uri = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure stack/master/Deployment/'
    $LocalPath = 'c:\AzureStack_SupportFiles'

    # Create folder
    New-Item $LocalPath -type directory

    # Download files
    ( 'BootMenuNoKVM.ps1', 'PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1', 'Unattend.xml', 'unattend_NoKVM.xml') | foreach { Invoke-WebRequest ($uri + $_) -OutFile ($LocalPath + '\' + $_) }

    After you do the above, decide if you will be using an Unattend.xml or manual entry of items for building the Azure Stack deployment server (e.g. a Windows Server). Note that the above PowerShell script created the C:\azurestack_supportfiles folder and downloads the script files for building the cloud image using the previously downloaded Azure Stack CloudBuilder.vhdx (which should be in C:\).

    Note and tip is that if you are doing a VMware or virtual machine based deployment of TP3 PoC, you will need to change C:\PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 in the Azure Stack support files folder. Here is a good resource on what gets changed via Github that shows an edit on or about line 87 of PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1. If you run the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 script on a virtual machine you will get an error message, the fix is relatively easy (after I found this post).

    Look in PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 for something like the following around line 87:

    if ((get-disk | where {$_.isboot -eq $true}).Model -match 'Virtual Disk')       {      Write-Host "The server is currently already booted from a virtual hard disk, to boot the server from the CloudBuilder.vhdx you will need to run this script on an Operating System that is installed on the physical disk of this server."      Exit      }
    

    You can either remove the "exit" command, or, change the test for "Virtual Disk" to something like "X", for fun I did both (and it worked).

    Note that you only have to make the above and another change in a later step if you are deploying Azure Stack TP3 as a virtual machine.

    Once you are ready, go ahead and launch the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 script which will set the BCDBoot entry (more info here).

    azure stack tp3 cloudbuilder nested vmware deployment

    You will see a reboot and install, this is installing what will be called the physical instance. Note that this is really being installed on the VM system drive as a secondary boot option (e.g. azure stack).

    azure stack tp3 dual boot option

    After the reboot, login to the new Azure Stack base system and complete any configuration including adding VMware Tools if using VMware nested. Some other things to do include make sure you have your single network adapter set to static (makes things easier), and any other updates or customizations. Before you run the next steps, you need to decide if going to use Azure Active Directory (AAD) or local ADFS.

    Note that if you are not running on a virtual machine, simply open a PowerShell (administrator) session, and run the deploy script. Refer to here for more guidance on the various options available including discussion on using AAD or ADFS.

    Note if you run the deployment script on a virtual machine, you will get an error which is addressed in the next section, otherwise, sit back and watch the progress..

    CloudBuilder Deployment Time

    Once you have your Azure Stack deployment system and environment ready, including a snapshot if on virtual machine, launch the PowerShell deployment script. Note that you will need to have decided if deploying with Azure Active Directory (AAD) or Azure Directory Federated Services (ADFS) for standalone aka submarine mode. There are also other options you can select as part of the deployment discussed in the Azure Stack tips here (a must read) and here. I chose to do a submarine mode (e.g. not connected to Public Azure and AAD) deployment.

    From PowerShell (administrator):

    cd C:\CloudDeployment:\Setup
    $adminpass = ConvertTo-SecureString "youradminpass" -AsPlainText -Force
    .\InstallAzureStackPOC.ps1 -AdminPassword $adminpass -UseADFS

    Deploying on VMware Virtual Machines Tips

    Here is a good tip via Gareth Jones (@garethjones294) that I found useful for updating one of the deployment script files (BareMetal_Tests.ps1 located in C:\CloudDeployment\Roles\PhysicalMachines\Tests folder) so that it would skip the bare metal (PM) vs. VM tests. Another good resource, even though it is for TP2 and early versions of VMware is TP2 deployment experiences by Niklas Akerlund (@vNiklas).

    Note that this is a bit of a chick and egg scenario unless you are proficient at digging into script files since the BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file does not get unpacked until you run the CloudBuilder deployment script. If you run the script and get an error, then make the changes below, and rerun the script as noted. Once you make the modification to the BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file, keep a copy in a safe place for future use.

    Here are some more tips for deploying Azure Stack on VMware,

    Per the tip mentioned about via Gareth Jones (tip: read Gareths post vs. simply cut and paste the following which is more of a guide):

    Open BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file in PowerShell ISE and navigate to line 376 (or in that area)
    Change $false to $true which will stop the script failing when checking to see if the Azure Stack is running inside a VM.
    Next go to line 453.
    Change the last part of the line to read “Should Not BeLessThan 0”
    This will stop the script checking for the required amount of cores available.

    After you make the above correction as with any error (and fix) during Azure Stack TP3 PoC deployment, simply run the following.

    cd C:\CloudDeployment\Setup
    .\InstallAzureStackPOC.ps1 -rerun
    

    Refer to the extra links in the where to learn more section below that offer various tips, tricks and insight that I found useful, particular for deploying on VMware aka nested. Also in the links below are tips on general Azure Stack, TP2, TP3, adding services among other insight.

    starting azure stack tp3 deployment

    Tip: If you are deploying Azure Stack TP3 PoC on virtual machine, once you start the script above, copy the modified BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file

    Once the CloudBuilder deployment starts, sit back and wait, if you are using SSDs, it will take a while, if using HDDs, it will take a long while (up to hours), however check in on it now and then to see progress of if any errors. Note that some of the common errors will occur very early in the deployment such as the BareMetal_Tests.ps1 mentioned above.

    azure stack tp3 deployment finished

    Checking in periodically to see how the deployment progress is progressing, as well as what is occurring. If you have the time, watch some of the scripts as you can see some interesting things such as the software defined data center (SDDC) aka software-defined data infrastructure (SDDC) aka Azure Stack virtual environment created. This includes virtual machine creation and population, creating the software defined storage using storage spaces direct (S2D), virtual network and active directory along with domain controllers among others activity.

    azure stack tp3 deployment progress

    After Azure Stack Deployment Completes

    After you see the deployment completed, you can try accessing the management portal, however there may be some background processing still running. Here is a good tip post on connecting to Azure Stack from Microsoft using Remote Desktop (RDP) access. Use RDP from the Azure Stack deployment Windows Server and connect to a virtual machine named MAS-CON01, launch Server Manager and for Local Server disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security (make sure you are on the right system, see the tip mentioned above). Disconnect from MAS-CON01 (refer to the Azure Stack architecture image above), then reconnect, and launch Internet Explorer with an URL of (note documentation side to use which did not work for me).

    Note the username for the Azure Stack system is AzureStack\AzureStackAdmin with a password of what you set for administrative during setup. If you get an error, verify the URLs, check your network connectivity, wait a few minutes as well as verify what server you are trying to connect from and too. Keep in mind that even if deploying on a PM or BM (e.g. non virtual server or VM), the Azure Stack deployment TP3 PoC creates a "virtual" software-defined environment with servers, storage (Azure Stack uses Storage Spaces Direct [S2D] and software defined network.

    accessing azure stack tp3 management portal dashboard

    Once able to connect to Azure Stack, you can add new services including virtual machine image instances such as Windows (use the Server 2016 ISO that is part of Azure Stack downloads), Linux or others. You can also go to these Microsoft resources for some first learning scenarios, using the management portals, configuring PowerShell and troubleshooting.

    Where to learn more

    The following provide more information and insight about Azure, Azure Stack, Microsoft and Windows among related topics.

  • Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review
  • Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview Review Part II
  • Azure Stack Technical Preview (get the bits aka software download here)
  • Azure Stack deployment prerequisites (Microsoft)
  • Microsoft Azure Stack troubleshooting (Microsoft Docs)
  • Azure Stack TP3 refresh tips (Azure Stack)
  • Here is a good post with a tip about not applying certain Windows updates to AzureStack TP3 installs.
  • Configure Azure Stack TP3 to be available on your own network (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 Marketplace syndication (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 deployment experiences (Azure Stack)
  • Frequently asked questions for Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Azure Active Directory (AAD) and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
  • Deploy Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Connect to Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Azure Stack TP2 deployment experiences by Niklas Akerlund (@vNiklas) useful for tips for TP3
  • Deployment Checker for Azure Stack Technical Preview (Microsoft Technet)
  • Azure stack and other tools (Github)
  • How to enable nested virtualization on Hyper-V Windows Server 2016
  • Dell EMC announce Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack Data Sheet (Dell EMC PDF)
  • Dell EMC Cloud Chats (Dell EMC Blog)
  • Microsoft Azure stack forum
  • Dell EMC Microsoft Azure Stack solution
  • Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Overview Review of Microsoft ReFS (Reliable File System) and resource links
  • Via WServerNews.com Cloud (Microsoft Azure) storage considerations
  • Via CloudComputingAdmin.com Cloud Storage Decision Making: Using Microsoft Azure for cloud storage
  • www.thenvmeplace.com, www.thessdplace.com, www.objectstoragecenter.com and www.storageio.com/converge
  • What this all means

    A common question is if there is demand for private and hybrid cloud, in fact, some industry expert pundits have even said private, or hybrid are dead which is interesting, how can something be dead if it is just getting started. Likewise, it is early to tell if Azure Stack will gain traction with various organizations, some of whom may have tried or struggled with OpenStack among others.

    Given a large number of Microsoft Windows-based servers on VMware, OpenStack, Public cloud services as well as other platforms, along with continued growing popularity of Azure, having a solution such as Azure Stack provides an attractive option for many environments. That leads to the question of if Azure Stack is essentially a replacement for Windows Servers or Hyper-V and if only for Windows guest operating systems. At this point indeed, Windows would be an attractive and comfortable option, however, given a large number of Linux-based guests running on Hyper-V as well as Azure Public, those are also primary candidates as are containers and other services.

    software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

    Some will say that if OpenStack is struggling in many organizations and being free open source, how Microsoft can have success with Azure Stack. The answer could be that some organizations have struggled with OpenStack while others have not due to lack of commercial services and turnkey support. Having installed both OpenStack and Azure Stack (as well as VMware among others), Azure Stack is at least the TP3 PoC is easy to install, granted it is limited to one node, unlike the production versions. Likewise, there are easy to use appliance versions of OpenStack that are limited in scale, as well as more involved installs that unlock full functionality.

    OpenStack, Azure Stack, VMware and others have their places, alongside, or supporting containers along with other tools. In some cases, those technologies may exist in the same environment supporting different workloads, as well as accessing various public clouds, after all, Hybrid is the home run for many if not most legality IT environments.

    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.

    Dell EMC Announce Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud Solution

    server storage I/O trends

    Dell EMC Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud Solution

    Dell EMC have announced their Microsoft Azure Stack hybrid cloud platform solutions. This announcement builds upon earlier statements of support and intention by Dell EMC to be part of the Microsoft Azure Stack community. For those of you who are not familiar, Azure Stack is an on premise extension of Microsoft Azure public cloud.

    What this means is that essentially you can have the Microsoft Azure experience (or a subset of it) in your own data center or data infrastructure, enabling cloud experiences and abilities at your own pace, your own way with control. Learn more about Microsoft Azure Stack including my experiences with and installing Technique Preview 3 (TP3) here.

    software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

    What Is Azure Stack

    Microsoft Azure Stack is an on-premises (e.g. in your own data center) private (or hybrid when connected to Azure) cloud platform. Currently Azure Stack is in Technical Preview 3 (e.g. TP3) and available as a proof of concept (POC) download from Microsoft. You can use Azure Stack TP3 as a POC for learning, demonstrating and trying features among other activities. Here is link to a Microsoft Video providing an overview of Azure Stack, and here is a good summary of roadmap, licensing and related items.

    In summary, Microsoft Azure Stack and this announcement is about:

    • A onsite, on-premises, in your data center extension of Microsoft Azure public cloud
    • Enabling private and hybrid cloud with good integration along with shared experiences with Azure
    • Adopt, deploy, leverage cloud on your terms and timeline choosing what works best for you
    • Common processes, tools, interfaces, management and user experiences
    • Leverage speed of deployment and configuration with a purpose-built integrated solution
    • Support existing and cloud-native Windows, Linux, Container and other services
    • Available as a public preview via software download, as well as vendors offering solutions

    What Did Dell EMC Announce

    Dell EMC announced their initial product, platform solutions, and services for Azure Stack. This includes a Proof of Concept (PoC) starter kit (PE R630) for doing evaluations, prototype, training, development test, DevOp and other initial activities with Azure Stack. Dell EMC also announced a larger for production deployment, or large-scale development, test DevOp activity turnkey solution. The initial production solution scales from 4 to 12 nodes, or from 80 to 336 cores that include hardware (server compute, memory, I/O and networking, top of rack (TOR) switches, management, Azure Stack software along with services. Other aspects of the announcement include initial services in support of Microsoft Azure Stack and Azure cloud offerings.
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    The announcement builds on joint Dell EMC Microsoft experience, partnerships, technologies and services spanning hardware, software, on site data center and public cloud.
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    Dell EMC along with Microsoft have engineered a hybrid cloud platform for organizations to modernize their data infrastructures enabling faster innovate, accelerate deployment of resources. Includes hardware (server compute, memory, I/O networking, storage devices), software, services, and support.
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    The value proposition of Dell EMC hybrid cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack includes consistent experience for developers and IT data infrastructure professionals. Common experience across Azure public cloud and Azure Stack on-premises in your data center for private or hybrid. This includes common portal, Powershell, DevOps tools, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure and associated experiences (management, provisioning, services).
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    Secure, protect, preserve and serve applications VMs hosted on Azure Stack with Dell EMC services along with Microsoft technologies. Dell EMC data protection including backup and restore, Encryption as a Service, host guard and protected VMs, AD integration among other features.
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    Dell EMC services for Microsoft Azure Stack include single contact support for prepare, assessment, planning; deploy with rack integration, delivery, configuration; extend the platform with applicable migration, integration with Office 365 and other applications, build new services.
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    Dell EMC Hyper-converged scale out solutions range from minimum of 4 x PowerEdge R730XD (total raw specs include 80 cores (4 x 20), 1TB RAM (4 x 256GB), 12.8TB SSD Cache, 192TB Storage, plus two top of row network switches (Dell EMC) and 1U management server node. Initial maximum configuration raw specification includes 12 x R730XD (total 336 cores), 6TB memory, 86TB SSD cache, 900TB storage along with TOR network switch and management server.

    The above configurations initially enable HCI nodes of small (low) 20 cores, 256GB memory, 5.7TB SSD cache, 40TB storage; mid size 24 cores, 384GB memory, 11.5TB cache and 60TB storage; high-capacity with 28 cores, 512GB memory, 11.5TB cache and 80TB storage per node.
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    Dell EMC Evaluator program for Microsoft Azure Stack including the PE R630 for PoCs, development, test and training environments. The solution combines Microsoft Azure Stack software, Dell EMC server with Intel E5-2630 (10 cores, 20 threads / logical processors or LPs), or Intel E5-2650 (12 cores, 24 threads / LPs). Memory is 128GB or 256GB, storage includes flash SSD (2 x 480GB SAS) and HDD (6 x 1TB SAS).
    and networking.
    server storage I/O trends
    Image via Dell EMC

    Collaborative support single contact between Microsoft and Dell EMC

    Who Is This For

    This announcement is for any organization that is looking for an on-premises, in your data center private or hybrid cloud turnkey solution stack. This initial set of announcements can be for those looking to do a proof of concept (PoC), advanced prototype, support development test, DevOp or gain cloud-like elasticity, ease of use, rapid procurement and other experiences of public cloud, on your terms and timeline. Naturally, there is a strong affinity and seamless experience for those already using, or planning to use Azure Public Cloud for Windows, Linux, Containers and other workloads, applications, and services.

    What Does This Cost

    Check with your Dell EMC representative or partner for exact pricing which varies for the size and configurations. There are also various licensing models to take into consideration if you have Microsoft Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs) that your Dell EMC representative or business partner can address for you. Likewise being cloud based, there is also time usage-based options to explore.

    Where to learn more

    What this all means

    The dust is starting to settle on last falls Dell EMC integration, both of whom have long histories working with, and partnering along with Microsoft on legacy, as well as virtual software-defined data centers (SDDC), software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI), native, and hybrid clouds. Some may view the Dell EMC VMware relationship as a primary focus, however, keep in mind that both Dell and EMC had worked with Microsoft long before VMware came into being. Likewise, Microsoft remains one of the most commonly deployed operating systems on VMware-based environments. Granted Dell EMC have a significant focus on VMware, they both also sell, service and support many services for Microsoft-based solutions.

    What about Cisco, HPE, Lenovo among others who have to announce or discussed their Microsoft Azure Stack intentions? Good question, until we hear more about what those and others are doing or planning, there is not much more to do or discuss beyond speculating for now. Another common question is if there is demand for private and hybrid cloud, in fact, some industry expert pundits have even said private, or hybrid are dead which is interesting, how can something be dead if it is just getting started. Likewise, it is early to tell if Azure Stack will gain traction with various organizations, some of whom may have tried or struggled with OpenStack among others.

    Given a large number of Microsoft Windows-based servers on VMware, OpenStack, Public cloud services as well as other platforms, along with continued growing popularity of Azure, having a solution such as Azure Stack provides an attractive option for many environments. That leads to the question of if Azure Stack is essentially a replacement for Windows Servers or Hyper-V and if only for Windows guest operating systems. At this point indeed, Windows would be an attractive and comfortable option, however, given a large number of Linux-based guests running on Hyper-V as well as Azure Public, those are also primary candidates as are containers and other services.

    Overall, this is an excellent and exciting move for both Microsoft extending their public cloud software stack to be deployed within data centers in a hybrid way, something that those customers are familiar with doing. This is a good example of hybrid being spanning public and private clouds, remote and on-premises, as well as familiarity and control of traditional procurement with the flexibility, elasticity experience of clouds.

    software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

    Some will say that if OpenStack is struggling in many organizations and being free open source, how Microsoft can have success with Azure Stack. The answer could be that some organizations have struggled with OpenStack while others have not due to lack of commercial services and turnkey support. Having installed both OpenStack and Azure Stack (as well as VMware among others), Azure Stack is at least the TP3 PoC is easy to install, granted it is limited to one node, unlike the production versions. Likewise, there are easy to use appliance versions of OpenStack that are limited in scale, as well as more involved installs that unlock full functionality.

    OpenStack, Azure Stack, VMware and others have their places, along, or supporting containers along with other tools. In some cases, those technologies may exist in the same environment supporting different workloads, as well as accessing various public clouds, after all, Hybrid is the home run for many if not most legality IT environments.

    Overall this is a good announcement from Dell EMC for those who are interested in, or should become more aware about Microsoft Azure Stack, Cloud along with hybrid clouds. Likewise look forward to hearing more about the solutions from others who will be supporting Azure Stack as well as other hybrid (and Virtual Private Clouds).

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    March 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

    Volume 17, Issue III

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

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

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

    In This Issue

    Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Cheers GS

    Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Server StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

    Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

    Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

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

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

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

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

    Via SearchDataCenter: New options to evolve data backup recovery

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

    Various Tips, Tools, Technology and Tradecraft Topics

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

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

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

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

    View more tips and articles here

    Events and Activities

    Recent and upcoming event activities.

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

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

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

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

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


    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

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

    Cloud, Bulk, Scale-Out, Object Storage Fundamentals

    data infrastructure sddc object storage fundamentals

    Updated 1/21/2018

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

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

  • www.objectstoragecenter.com
  • Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book (CRC Press)
  • Cloud, Software Defined, Scale-Out, Object Storage News Trends
  • There are various types of cloud, bulk and object storage including public services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), Google, Microsoft Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, Rackspace among many others. There are also solutions for hybrid and private deployment from Cisco, Cloudian, Fujifilm, DDN, Dell EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HPE, IBM, NetApp, Noobaa, OpenStack, Quantum, Rackspace, Scality, Seagate, Spectra, Storpool, Suse, Swift and WD among others.

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

    Cloud Object Storage Fundamentals Access and Architectures

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

    • Project or Account – Top of the hierarchy that can represent the owner or billing information for a service that where buckets are also attached.
    • Region – Location where data is stored that can include one or more data centers also known as Availability Zones.
    • AWS S3 Cross region replication
      Moving and Replicating Buckets/Containers, Subfolders and Objects

    • Availability Zone (AZ) or data center or server that implement durability and accessibility for availability within a region.
    • AWS Regions and Availability Zones AZs
      Example of Regions and Availability Zones (AZs)

    • Bucket or Container – Where objects or sub-folders containing objects are attached and accessed.
    • Object storage fundamentals sddc and cloud software defined

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

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

      Many facets of cloud and object storage access

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

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

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

      cloud object storage

      Where to learn more

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

      Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

      Wrap up and summary

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

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

      Ok, nuff said, for now.

      Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links A to E

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links A to E

    IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

    Updated 2/20/2018

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

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

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

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

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

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

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

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

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

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links F to J

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links F to J

    IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

    Updated 2/20/2018

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

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

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

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

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

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

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

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

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

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links K to O

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links K to O

    IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

    Updated 2/20/2018

    Following are some useful Data Infrastructure IT Industry Resource Links K to O 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

    • kaminario.com    Scale out high performance database server
    • kanbox.com    Chineese cloud provider
    • kaseya.com    IT Infrastructure resource management tools
    • kashya.com    Data Protection Solutions (Bought by EMC)
    • kastenchase.com    Data and information security solutions
    • kazeon.com    eDiscovery, search, indexing, classification (Bought by EMC)
    • kcura.com    eDiscovery tools
    • Kerstor.com    Cloud storage
    • kickfire.com    Business analytics tools
    • kineticd.com    Storage and data protection solutions
    • Kingston.com    Memory manufacturer
    • KLSecurity.com    Data protection solutions
    • komnetworks.com    Archiving solutions
    • k-par.com    Archiving solutions
    • ksplice.com    Linux management tools
    • Kubisys.com    Virtualization management tools
    • KVH Co. Ltd.    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • kvsinc.com    Email archiving and compliance software
    • lacie.com    Consumer, SOHO and SMB NAS and DAS storage (Bought by Seagate)
    • laconicsecurity.com    Cloud security and storage
    • lampertz.com    Environmental and data center protection
    • laurustech.com    Managed services provider
    • lecroy.com    Analyzers, probes and diagnostics
    • lefthandnetworks.com    iSCSI clustered storage (Bought by HP)
    • legato.com    Storage management software (Bought by EMC)
    • Lenovo   Servers, storage, workstations
    • Level 3 Communications    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • lexar.com    Flash memory
    • liebert.com    Data center power and cooling systems (Bought by Emerson)
    • Lightower    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • lightsand.com    SAN connectivity
    • likewise.com    Open backup software for macs/Linux/windows
    • liquidcomputing.com    High density servers
    • liquidcoolsolutions.com    Liquid cooled servers
    • Liquidware Labs   Desktop management solutions
    • livedrive.com    Cloud storage and backup
    • www.liveoffice.com    Cloud and Email hosting
    • LiveVault.com    Online cloud backup service (Bought by IronMountain)
    • locknet-inc.com    Security and network management
    • Lockstep.com    Backup and data protection tools
    • logicube.com    Hard drive copy tools
    • LoginVSI   VDI Testing solutions
    • losttapes.org    Portal pertaining to lost magnetic tape information
    • lsi.com    Storage and networking chips and controllers (Bought by Avago)
    • lto-technology.com    Information about LTO tape media
    • lucent.com    Networking components
    • lumigent.com    Compliance management tools
    • luminex.com    S390 IBM Mainframe to open systems gateways
    • luxtera.com    High speed network and storage interconnects
    • m5data.com    VAR
    • MagePlace Backup    Backup and data protection solutions
    • Maginatics.com    Storage for virtual environments
    • magma.com    PCIe and storage solutions
    • mainline.com    VAR
    • Maintech    Infrastructure services
    • maintech.com    IT Servers and solutions
    • Maldivica    Cloud and object storage gateway
    • ManageEngine    DCIM, data center and networking management
    • maponics.com    Mapping data solutions
    • MAPR   Hadoop and Big Data Tools

    • maranti.com    Storage systems
    • marconi.com    Networking equipment
    • marvell.com    Data storage components
    • Masergy    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • Mathon.com    eDiscovery
    • maxava.com    HA tools for IBM iSeries
    • maxell.com    Data storage media
    • maxim-ic.com    Data storage components and solutions
    • maxiscale.com    Web infrastructure scale out file system
    • Maxta   Virtualization storage
    • maxtor.com    Disk drives (Bought by Seagate)
    • maxxan.com    Storage systems (Now Ciphermax)
    • mcdata.com    Switches, WAN gateways, software (Bought by Brocade)
    • mediagateusa.com    HD Video streaming appliance
    • Meditech.com    Medical information technology software
    • Megaport    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • mellanox.com    Ethernet and InfiniBand technology
    • Memeo.com    Data and content management tools
    • Mendocino.com    CDP and data protection (Missing in Action)
    • metalogix.net    Sharepoint archiving solutions
    • methode.com    Storage networking transceivers
    • mezeo.com    Cloud storage management tools
    • micron.com    SSD storage solutions
    • micronet.com    Storage solutions
    • microsoft.com    Hyper-V virtualizaiton, Windows Storage Server, Azure Cloud, Storsimple, SkyDrive (aka OneDrive) and more
    • midwave.com    Var
    • Mimecast email management including archiving
    • Mimosasystems.com    Email protection and archiving (Bought by Iron Mountain)
    • mindtree.com    Testing services
    • Mirantis    OpenStack tools, downloads, service and support
    • Miray HDClone    Storage clone and data protection tools
    • mirra.com    SMB storage sharing
    • mobiuspartners.com    VAR
    • Modius    DCIM power, cooling and monitoring
    • moka5.com    VDI tools
    • MongoDB    Open source document optimized database
    • Monitis.com    IT Monitoring and services (applications, systems, clouds and more)
    • Monosphere.com    Storage planning and usage software (Bought by Quest)
    • moonwalk.com    HSM, ILM and data management software
    • morphlabs.com    Dense converged server platforms
    • mosaictec.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • mosys.com    High density memory components
    • mpstor.com    Cloud storage and orchestration software
    • msiinet.com    VAR
    • mti.com    European VAR
    • mtron.net    Solid state storage devices
    • My Digital SSD    SSD solutions
    • NAKIVO    Backup and data protection tools
    • napatech.com    Network tools and analysis
    • naspa.org    System administrator’s user group
    • nasuni.com    Cloud storage access appliance
    • ncino.com    Banking and financial deployment platform
    • ncipher.com    Data protection and security solutions (Bought by Thales)
    • ncompass-inc.com    VAR and services firm
    • ncr.com    Servers and storage solutions
    • ndci.com    Data conversion services
    • ndmp.org    Trade organization for NDMP backup protocol
    • neartek.com    VTL software (Bought by EMC)
    • nebulassolutions.com    Security and data protection
    • NEC.com    Servers and storage
    • neopathnetworks.com    Network file management solutions (Bought by Cisco)
    • neoscale.com    Storage networking security (Assets Bought by nCipher)
    • nephoscale.com    Cloud and object storage
    • NeptunesCloud.net    Cloud IaaS solutions
    • www.neptuny.com    Performance and capacity planning tools
    • nerc.com    North American Electrical Reliability Council
    • netcelera.com    WAN File system caching and acceleration
    • netcomm.com.au    Broadband service provider
    • netdirectsystems.com    VAR
    • neterion.com    High performance iSCSI and Ethernet 10Gb technology Bought by Exar)
    • netex.com    IP compression and channel extension
    • netezza.com    Big Data – Data warehouse storage solutions (Bought by IBM)
    • Netgear.com    SOHO and SMB storage and networking
    • NetIQ    Data center, security, identify and data protection management
    • netlist.com    Memory solutions
    • netoptics.com    Network monitoring
    • netronome.com    Network and I/O optimization technology
    • netspi.com    Network security and digital forensics
    • networkappliance.com    Storage sub-systems, management software
    • networkgeneral.com    Network and application monitoring
    • networkinstruments.com    Network test and diagnostic and performance monitoring
    • netwrix.com    Enterprise systems management tools
    • netxen.com    High performance 10Gb Ethernet chips and NICs
    • neuwingenergy.com    Energy management organization
    • neuxpower.com    File compression and data reduction
    • Neverfailgroup.com    HA software
    • nevex.com    Caching and application acceleration
    • newboundary.com    IT policy management and IRM tools
    • newisys.com    Storage enclosures
    • newrelic.com    Web, cloud and application management
    • nexenta.com    ZFS based storage management solutions
    • nexgenstorage.com    Storage with PCIe flash card
    • nexsan.com    SAS/SATA and MAID storage subsystems (Bought by Imaiton)
    • nextio.com    SSD and application acceleration solutions
    • NexusMN / Computex    VAR (e.g. Formerly Nexus MN and Stratos – now Computex)
    • nfpa.org    National Fire Protection Association
    • nicira.com    Software defined networking and IOV (Bought by VMware)
    • nimblestorage.com    Converged iSCSI SAN, backup and DR
    • nimbula.com    Cloud and application orchestration management tools
    • Nimbusdata.com    iSCSI storage
    • nirvanix.com    Cloud storage provider (Ceased operations)
    • njvc.com    Cloud and technology service provider
    • Nylte    DCIM software tools
    • noggin.intel.com/rr/    Intel Recommended Reading List
    • noliosoft.com    Cloud application management tools
    • Norlight.com    Data communications and services
    • nortel.com    Networking products
    • nortelnetworks.com    Optical networking
    • northernsoft.com    Medical software
    • novastor.com    Backup and cloud data protection tools
    • Novell.com    Server software vendor (Bought by Attachmate)
    • Novuscg.com    Storage management and services (Bought by IBM)
    • Nomura Research Institute (NRI)    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • nsic.org    National Storage Industry Consortium
    • ntp.com    Storage Management Software
    • NTT Communications Corporation    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • numarasoftware.com    IT Resource management, asset tracking tools
    • numonyx.com    SSD memory solutions
    • nutanix.com    Converged server and storage VM platform
    • nvelo.com    Caching IO performance tools
    • nvidia.com    Graphics and visualization tools
    • ocarinanetworks.com    Data reduction and compression tools (Bought by Dell)
    • ocztechnology.com    SSD drives and PCIe cards (Bought by Toshiba after bankruptcy)
    • offsitebackups.com    Online and cloud backup solutions
    • olixir.com    Removable storage for backup and data protection
    • omneon.com    Archiving and fixed content storage solutions
    • onapp.com    Cloud, CDN and storage tools
    • onaro.com    Storage and Storage Network Management (Bought by NetApp)
    • onlinebackupsearch.com    Various online backup reviews
    • oblinecourses.com    Various online education courses for various topics
    • onpathtech.com    Physical layer networking
    • onstor.com    Clustered NAS storage including NAS gateways (Bought by LSI)
    • Ontrack.com    Email and data protection software
    • OO Software   Windows management and data protection tools
    • opalis.com    Virtual data center management tools
    • OpenCompute   OpenCompute consortium
    • opendatacenteralliance.org    Open Data Center Alliance
    • open-e.com    iSCSI and NAS storage
    • Open.IO    Application aware object and bulk scale out software defined storage
    • openfabrics.org    Open Fabric Alliance
    • OpenNebula    Open source cloud software
    • opennetworking.org    Open Networking Foundation
    • OpensourceSystems.com    Data storage solutions
    • OpenStack   Open source cloud compute and storage software
    • opnet.com    Application and network performance management
    • Opsware.com    Network and storage management (HP)
    • Optica Tech.    Server and storage connectivity including FICON
    • opticatech.com    Mainframe and ESCON encryption
    • oracle.com    Data management software, hardware and services (Bought Sun/STK and others)
    • Ortera.com    Performance monitoring and management
    • OSNEXUS   Quantstor ZFS based Storage management solutions
    • Outsource Data Recovery   Data Recovery services
    • overlandstorage.com    Tape and backup, data retention, NAS solutions
    • owncloud.org    Cloud infrastructure tools

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

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

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

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links P to T

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links P to T

    IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

    Updated 6/13/2018

    Following are some useful Data Infrastructure IT Industry Resource Links P to T 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

    • Packeteer.com    WAFS and networking solutions (Bought Tacit)
    • packetlight.com    CWDM and DWDM networking solutions
    • Panasas.com    Clustered storage solution
    • pancetera.com    Virtual machine backup software (Bought by Quantum)
    • Panduit.com    Networking and cable management
    • panzura.com    Cloud storage access software
    • paraccel.com     Business and data analytics
    • paragon-software.com    Storage management and backup tools
    • parallels.com    VDI and desktop virtualization and cloud tools
    • parascale.com     Clustered and cloud storage software
    • pcisig.com    PCI trade group (PCI, PCI-X, PCI-Express/PCIe)
    • penguincomputing.com    HPC servers, storage and hosting
    • pergamumsystems.com    Archive solutions (Stealth)
    • Permabit.com    Data archiving solutions
    • Pernixdata    Server and storage I/O cache optimization for virtual servers
    • perotsystems.com    Hosting and managed service provider (Bought by Dell)
    • pgp.com    Security tools (Bought by Symantec)
    • PHDvirtual    Data protection tools
    • Pillardata.com    Data storage solutions – (Bought by Oracle)
    • pineapp.com    Email, archive solutions, web and data protection
    • Piviot3.com    IP Storage
    • Pivotal Labs    Big Data, PaaS development tools, EMC/VMware spinout
    • plasmon.com    (Now called Alliance Storage Technologies) Optical Storage Solutions
    • plextoramericas.com    SSD and other storage solutions
    • plianttechnology.com    Solid state storage devices (SSD) – (Bought by SANdisk)
    • Pluribus Networks    Converged and software defined network management
    • pmc-serria.com    Storage networking component supplier
    • pny.com    Memory componets and technology
    • Pogoplug    Cloud storage
    • PolyServe.com    Clustered storage solutions (Sold to HP)
    • Polargy    Data Center facilaties, HVAC and DCIM solutions
    • power.org    Power Processor trade group
    • Mushkin   SSD Solutions
    • Peak Cloud    Cloud and storage services
    • PowerFile.com    Data archiving solutions
    • powerware.com    UPS and power conditioning systems
    • procedo.com    Archiving and migration solutions
    • proceedtechnologies.com    SAP consulting
    • profusionbackups.com    Cloud and managed backup service solution
    • progeny.net    VAR and specialized IT systems
    • prolexic.com    Distributed denial of service tools
    • promise.com    RAID storage systems
    • Prostorsystems.com    Removable disk storage (See RDX Alliance)
    • Proxim.com    Wireless networking
    • proximaldata.com    SSD caching and tiering software
    • pt.com    Communications hardware and software
    • puresi.com aka Puresilicon    SSD storage solutions
    • purestorage.com    SSD based storage
    • Puppet Labs    IT Automation and DCIM tools for physical, Cloud and Virtual

    • qlogic.com    Host bus adapters and switches
    • qsantechnology.com    iSCSI IP storage
    • Qstart Technologies    Data protection storage including LTFS based systems
    • Quadric Software    Data protection software
    • qualstar.com    Tape backup and archive solutions (Aka Qstar)
    • quantum.com    Tape drives and libraries
    • quest.com    IT and data management solution tools (Bought by Dell)
    • Qumulo    Stealth storage startup
    • qwest.com    (Century Link) Telephone and data networking, managed services provider
    • racemi.com    Repurposing management tools
    • Rackable.com    Now SGI
    • Rackspace.com    Managed services and hosting
    • www.rackwise.com    Data center management tools
    • raidinc.com    Storage systems
    • raidundant.com    Storage systems
    • Rainfinity.com    File virtualization (Bought by EMC)
    • rainstor.com    Big data management tools
    • rapidio.org    RapidIO Trade Group
    • Raritan    Data center and DCIM tools
    • rasilient.com    Storage subsystem vendor
    • Ravello    VMware optimization and management tools
    • Raxco    Data, storage and systems management tools
    • rebit.com    Backup and data protection solutions
    • RecordNation    Digital Data Storage and Records Management
    • redbend.com    Mobile device and application management
    • redbooks.ibm.com    IBM Red books and Red pieces technical articles
    • Redhat.com    Linux provider (Bought Gluster)
    • Reduxio    Hybrid storage with data services
    • reflexphotonics.com    Optical connectivity solutions
    • Reldata.com    Storage systems (Renamed Starboard)
    • remote-backup.com    Remote backup software
    • renewdata.com    Data management and compliance tools
    • repliweb.com    Web and content distribution
    • Retrospect    Data Protection Software Tools
    • revivio.com    Data Protection Software (Assets Bought by Symantec)
    • rightscale.com    Amazon cloud computing management tools
    • rimage.com    CD/DVD production technologies
    • risingtidesystems.com    VAR
    • Ritek.com    Storage solutions
    • rittal.com    Enclosures and cabinets
    • riverbed.com    Wide area file access acceleration solution
    • rjssoftware.com    Document capture and management
    • rmsource.com    Cloud backup solutions
    • rnanetworks.com    Virtual memory management solutions (Bought by Dell)
    • rocketdivision.com    iSCSI technologies
    • rorke.com    VAR
    • rpath.com    Data center automation
    • rsa.com    Security division of EMC
    • safemediacorp.com    Internet security and intrusion detection tools
    • safenet-inc.com    Data protection focused VAR
    • Sagecloud   Cloud storage, deep cold archive
    • samsung.com    Various technologies including SSD memory
    • sanblaze.com    Embedded storage and emulation solutions
    • SANbolic.com    Storage, server and cloud management tools
    • sand-chip.com    Chip design
    • SANDforce.com    SSD storage solutions – (Bought by LSI)
    • sandial.com    Defunct SAN startup
    • SANdisk.com    SSD memory components
    • sandpiperdata.com    Data migration services
    • sanmina-sci.com    Contract manufacturer (Virtual Factory) for various OEM/VARs
    • sanovi.com    Disaster recovery management tools
    • sanpulse.com    SRA and automation tools
    • sanrad.com    Storage networking routers (Bought by OCZ)
    • sans.org    Security related web site
    • sansdigital.com    VAR
    • sap.com    Information management tools and applications
    • sas.com    Statistical analysis software
    • sata-io.org    Serial ATA trade organization
    • SavageIO   High performance storage solutions
    • savvis.com    Cloud, managed service provider and hosting (Bought by Centurylink)
    • sbbwg.org    Storage Bridge Bay Working Group
    • scalable-systems.com    Data warehouse consulting and tools
    • scalecomputing.com    Clustered storage management software
    • scalemp.com    Virtualization technology for scale out computing
    • scalent.com    Virtual IT data center management tools
    • scality.com    Email and sharepoint cloud storage
    • schoonerinfotech.com    SSD based database management solutions
    • scsita.org    SCSI and SAS trade group
    • seagate.com    Disk drives
    • Sealpath   Data and information protection tools
    • seanodes.com    Distributed storage
    • sec.gov    Site about compliance items including CFR 17a-4
    • securedatainnovations.com    Data protection and security tools
    • sentilla.com    Data center performance management tools
    • sepaton.com    Disk based backup solutions
    • serialata.org    Serial ATA trade association
    • servicemesh.com    Cloud, datacenter transformation and devops tools
    • servicenow.com    ITIL data center management tools
    • 1servosity.com    Cloud data protection
    • servoy.com    Cloud development tools
    • ServPath.com    Hosting services
    • seven10storage.com    Disaster recovery and archiving software
    • sgi.com    Storage, server and data management hardware, software, tools
    • sherpasoftware.com    Email archiving
    • shop.bellmicro.com    Distributor (Bought by Avnet)
    • siber.com    Data protection and security tools
    • sidusdata.com    Managed service and cloud provider
    • siemon.com    Storage networking infrastructure items
    • sigmasol.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • Signiant.com    Data management tools
    • silexamerica.com    Mobile device and server connectivity
    • SiliconImage.com    Digital Video components
    • SiliconStor.com    Storage networking silicon
    • siliconvalleypr.com    IT technologies press/media and analyst relations firm
    • silveradotech.com    VAR
    • silver-peak.com    Wide area data and file services (WAFS, WADM, WADS)
    • SilverSky    Cloud security
    • simpletech.com    Storage solutions including USB portable devices
    • simplivity.com    Convergence and virtualization solutions
    • simplycontinuous.net    Data protection and cloud backup
    • siriuscom.com    VAR
    • site-vault.com    On-line backup server provider (BSP) managed service provider (MSP)
    • skyera.com    SSD storage solutions
    • skytap.com    Public and private cloud application development tools
    • Smart421   Smart421    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • smartm.com    PC card and other memory module components
    • smc.com    Storage and networking components
    • smithmicro.com    Mobile data management tools
    • smmdirect.com    Memory devices
    • snapappliances.com    NAS Storage solutions (Now Adaptec)
    • snia.org    Storage Networking Industry Association
    • snseurope.com    U.K. & European Storage Networking News
    • snwusa.com    SNIA and Computerworld conference
    • softek.com    Storage management solutions (formerly Fujitsu Softek, Sold to IBM)
    • softlayer.com    Cloud infrastructure services (IaaS) (Bought by IBM)
    • softnas.com    ZFS based opensource NAS solutions
    • softricity.com    Virtualization management tools (Bought by Microsoft)
    • Sogeti.com    Data management tools
    • solarflare.com    10Gb Ethernet networking
    • solarwinds.com    IT management tools (Bought TekTools, Hyper9 and others)
    • solidaccess.com    Solid state storage (SSD) solutions
    • soliddata.com    Solid State Disk solutions
    • solidfire.com    iSCSI SSD optimized for hosting and cloud providers
    • Solix.com    Database archiving software
    • solutiontechnology.co.uk    Storage networking training
    • sonasoft.com    Email archiving, backup and data protection
    • sonnettech.com    External storage solutions
    • sony.com    Storage devices
    • sophos.com    Data protection and security tools
    • sorrento.com    Optical networking
    • sparebackup.com    Backup data protection solutions
    • sparkweave.com    Private cloud archive and file sharing
    • spec.org    SPEC benchmarks
    • spectralogic.com    Tape library and disk based backup solutions
    • spiceworks.com    Online community and management software tools
    • spirent.com    Storage networking test equipment
    • Spiron.com  Data discovery, classification, lifecycle management (formerly Identity Finder)
    • Splice Communications   Splice Communications    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • splunk.com    DCIM and log management tools
    • spotcloud.com    Cloud services clearing house
    • spraycool.com    IT Data center and component cooling
    • springsoft.com    Bought by Synopsys
    • spsoftglobal.com    Software development
    • spyrus.com    Security tools
    • ssswg.org    IEEE Storage Systems Standards Work Group
    • starboardstorage.com    Unified storage solutions (Formerly Reldata, now ceased operations)
    • startech.com    IT/AV technolgie equipment from enclosures to KVM and more
    • starwindsoftware.com    iSCSI storage management solutions
    • stcroixsolutions.com    VAR
    • stec-inc.com    SSD storage (Bought by WD)
    • Steeleye.com    HA software
    • Stellar    Data Protection tools
    • storagetek.com    Disk, tape, data management software (Bought by Sun)
    • stonebranch.com    File transfer tools
    • stonefly.com    Storage networking routers (Aka DNF)
    • storability.com    Storage management software (Bought by STK)
    • storactive.com    Data protection solutions
    • storagecraft.com    Data protection tools
    • storagefusion.com    Storage resource analysis (SRA) tools
    • storageio.net    Alternate URL for the StorageIO Group
    • storageiogroup.com    Alternate URL for the StorageIO Group
    • storagemadeeasy.com    Hybrid and personal cloud management tools and dashboards
    • Storagemonkeys.com    Storage community site
    • storagenetworking.org    Storage Networking Users Groups also known as SNUGs
    • storageperformance.org    Storage Performance Council information
    • www.storagesearch.com    Venue for information about various storage and related topics
    • storcase.com    Data Archive solutions (Bought by Crudata)
    • store-age.com    Storage management software (Bought by LSI)
    • storediq.com    eDiscovery, search, indexing, classification (Bought by IBM)
    • Storewize.com    Real time data compression (Bought by IBM)
    • Storix.com    Data backup solutions
    • storlife.com    CAS object archive storage
    • stormagic.com    Storage virtualization and data movement software
    • storserver.com    Backup and data protection solutions
    • storsimple.com    Cloud storage access solutions (Bought by Microsoft)
    • storspeed.com    NAS/NFS optimization solutions (Missing in action)
    • stratascale.com    Cloud, hosting and management solutions
    • stratus.com    High availability storage and servers
    • sugarsync.com    Backup and data protection solutions
    • sun.com    Storage networking hardware and software (Bought by Oracle)
    • sunbeltsoftware.com    End point data protection security tools
    • sungard.com    Data protection and cloud services
    • superlumin.com    Application caching tools
    • supermicro.com    Server and storage solutions
    • surdoc.com    Cloud storage and backup
    • surgient.com    Cloud computing solutions
    • svlg.net    Silicon Valley Leadership Group
    • Swiftstack    Private cloud solutions
    • swifttest.com    NFS and CIFS storage testing solutions
    • sybase.com    Database solutions
    • sycamorenetworks.com    Networking solutions
    • Symantec.com    Data and storage management software
    • symbolicio.com    stealth startup
    • symform.com    Cloud storage and backup
    • syncsort.com    Information Management tools
    • synnex.com    Distributor
    • Synnex   IT Solutions
    • synology.com    SMB storage solutions
    • synopsys.com    Computer technology development and manufacturing
    • SysAid    Data center, DCIM and ITSM tools
    • t10.orgscsi-3.htm    ANSI T10 (SCSI information) site
    • t11.org    ANSI T11 page for Fibre Channel information
    • t3media.com    Cloud storage and video platform tools
    • tableausoftware.com    Data analytics software tools
    • tacit.com    WAN file system accelerator (Bought by Packeteer)
    • tacitnetworks.com    Wide area file access acceleration solution (Bought by Packeteer)
    • tandberg.com    Data management solutions (Bought by Cisco)
    • tapeandmedia.com    Information about magnetic tape media
    • tapepower.com    Site for tape topics
    • tarmin.com        Archiving solutions
    • teamdrive.com    Cloud storage
    • teamquest.com    IRM management and capacity management tools
    • TeamViewer.com    Remote support and Online meeting software
    • techdata.com    Distributor
    • tegile.com    Storage system solutions
    • tehutinetworks.net    High speed iSCSI adapters
    • tek-tools.com    SRM storage management software (Bought by Solarwinds)
    • TelecityGroup    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • tellabs.com    Networking components
    • Telx    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • teneros.com    Email archiving and management solutions
    • teracloud.com    Capacity planning and resource management software
    • teradata.com    Large scale database and data warehouse systems
    • teradici.com    PC over IP technologies
    • teranetics.com    Ethernet chips
    • Terascala    Data analytics and management solutions
    • ter.de    Optical storage libraries
    • terracloudinc.com    Cloud services
    • TerraScale.com    Scalable storage and server solutions
    • Verizon/Terremark   Cloud, hosting and managed services
    • Tevron   Application Response Time Monitoring
    • texmemsys.com    Solid State Disk storage
    • thebci.org    Business Continuity Institute
    • thecus.com    Multi-protocol storage
    • thegreengrid.org    Industry Trade Group
    • The Padcaster    Apple iPad tools
    • thepluggllc.com    Data center energy efficient floor tiles
    • theq3.com    Data storage security solutions
    • thinkaheadit.com aka Ahead    Value added reseller
    • thinkaheadit.com    Value added reseller (VAR)
    • thirdbrigade.com    Intrusion detection security tools (Bought by Trend Micro)
    • thirdio.com    SSD solutions
    • tiaonline.org    Telecommunications Industry Association
    • tidalsoftware.com    IT Management software tools (Bought by Cisco)
    • timespring.com    Continuous data protection solutions
    • tintri.com    NFS and NAS storage optimized for VMware
    • tivoli.com    Data management software
    • Softbank Telecom Corp.    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • Primary Data and Tonian    Stealth data virtualization startup
    • topgun-tech.com    Data Infrastructure Resource (Server, Storage, SANs)
    • top500.org    Top 500 super compute sites
    • topio.com    Data protection software (Bought by NetApp)
    • topspin.com    InfiniBand Technology (Bought by Cisco)(
    • Toshiba.com    Server and storage solutions
    • tpc.org    Transaction processing performance council
    • translattice.com    Distributed and elastic database and automation tools
    • Tredent.com    WAN optimization solutions
    • TrendMicro.com    Security and anti virus tools
    • trianz.com    VAR
    • tributary.com   Datra protection soultion tools including virtual, disk and tape-
    • trilogytechnologies.ie    Managed services provider
    • tritondata.com    IT services and VAR
    • trunkbow.com    Cloud, mobile and networking services
    • trustedcomputinggroup.org    Trusted computing industry trade group
    • trusteddatasolutions.com    VAR
    • trustedid.com    ID theft protection
    • trustware.com    Internet and data protection security tools
    • turnkeylinux.org   Turnkey Linux appliance –
    • tusc.com    VAR
    • twinstrata.com    BC/DR analysis and cloud access software
    • tw telecom   tw telecom    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
    • TSO logic    DCIM and data center power energy management tools
    • tzolkin.com    DNS and High Availability solutions

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

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

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

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links 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.

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links to Others

    Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links to Others

    IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

    Updated 2/20/2018

    Following are some useful Data Infrastructure IT Industry Resource Links 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

    • www.10gea.org    10Gb Ethernet industry trade organization
    • www.1394ta.org    1394 (Firewire) trade association
    • www.3com.com    Networking equipment (Bought by HP)
    • www.3leafnetworks.com    I/O virtualization
    • www.3par.com    Clustered storage systems (Bought by HP)
    • www.3tera.com    IT Cloud management tools (Bought by CA)
    • www.4blox.com    Data center design services
    • www.4blox.com    Linux iSCSI target optimization stack
    • www.4bridgeworks.com aka Bridgeworks    SAN networking and connectivity solutions
    • www.80plus.org    Energy efficient power supply trade group

    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.

    Cloud and Object storage are in your future, what are some questions?

    Cloud and Object storage are in your future, what are some questions?

    server storage I/O trends

    IMHO there is no doubt that cloud and object storage are in your future, what are some questions?

    Granted, what type of cloud and object storage or service along with for work or entertainment are some questions.

    Likewise, what are your cloud and object storage concerns (assuming you already have heard the benefits)?

    Some other questions include when, where for different applications workload needs, as well as how and with what among others.

    Keep in mind that there are many aspects to cloud storage and they are not all object, likewise, there are many facets to object storage.

    Recently I did a piece over at InfoStor titled Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends that looks at the above among other items including:

    • Is cloud storage cheaper than traditional storage?
    • How do you access cloud object storage from legacy block and file applications?
    • How do you implement on-site cloud storage?
    • Is enterprise file sync and share (EFSS) safe and secure?
    • Does cloud storage need to be backed up and protected?
    • What geographic location requirements or regulations apply to you?

    When it comes to cloud computing and, in particular, cloud storage, context matters. Conversations are necessary to discuss concerns, as well as discuss various considerations, options and alternatives. People often ask me questions about the best cloud storage to use, concerns about privacy, security, performance and cost.

    Some of the most common cloud conversations topics involve context :

    • Public, private or hybrid cloud; turnkey subscription service or do it yourself (DIY)?
    • Storage, compute server, networking, applications or development tools?
    • Storage application such as file sync and share like Dropbox?
    • Storage resources such as table, queues, objects, file or block?
    • Storage for applications in the cloud, on-site or hybrid?

    Continue reading Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends over at InfoStor.

    Where To Learn More

    Additional related content can be found at:

    What This All Means

    As I mentioned above, cloud and object storage are in your future, granted your future may not rely on just cloud or object storage. Take a few minutes to check out some of the conversation topics, tips and trends in my piece over at InfoStor Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends along with more material at www.objectstoragecenter.com.

    Btw, what are your questions, comments, concerns, claims or caveats as part of cloud and object storage conversations?

    Ok, nuff said, for now…

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. 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.

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