Tag: backup

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PACE your Server Storage I/O decision making, its about application requirements

PACE your Server Storage I/O decision making, its about application requirements

PACE your Server Storage I/O decision-making, it’s about application requirements. Regardless of if you are looking for physical, software-defined virtual, cloud or container storage, block, file or object, primary, secondary or protection copies, standalone, converged, hyper-converged, cluster in a box or other forms of storage and packaging, when it comes to server storage I/O decision-making, it’s about the applications.

I often see people deciding on the best storage before the questions of requirements, needs and wants are even mentioned. Sure the technology is important, so too are the techniques and trends including using new things in new ways, as well as old things in new ways. There are lots of buzzwords on the storage scene these days. But don’t even think about buying it until you truly understand your business’ storage needs.

However when it comes down to it unless you have a unique need, most environments server, and storage I/O resources exist to protect preserve and serve applications and their information or data. Recently I did a couple of articles over at Network Computing; these are tied to server and storage I/O decision-making balancing technology buzzwords with business and application requirements.

PACE and common applications characteristics

PACE your server storage decisions

A theme I mention in the above two articles as well as elsewhere on server, storage I/O and applications is PACE. That is, application Performance Availability Capacity Economics (PACE). Different applications will have various attributes, in general, as well as how they are used. For example database transaction activity vs. reporting or analytics, logs and journals vs. redo logs, indices, tables, indices, import/export, scratch and temp space. PACE (figure 2.7) describes the applications and data characters and needs.

Server Storage I/O PACE

Common Application Pace Attributes

All applications have PACE attributes

  • Those PACE attributes vary by application and usage
  • Some applications and their data are more active vs. others
  • PACE characteristics will vary within different parts of an application

Think of an application along with associated data PACE as its personality or how it behaves, what it does, how it does it and when along with value, benefit or cost along with Quality of Service (QoS) attributes. Understanding the applications in different environments, data value and associated PACE attributes is essential for making informed server, storage I/O decisions from configuration to acquisitions or upgrades, when, where, why and how to protect, or performance optimization along with capacity planning, reporting, and troubleshooting, not to mention addressing budget concerns.

Data and Application PACE

Primary PACE attributes for active and inactive applications and data:
P – Performance and activity (how things get used)
A – Availability and durability (resiliency and protection)
C – Capacity and space (what things use or occupy)
E – Energy and Economics (people, budgets and other barriers)

Some applications need more performance (server computer, or storage and network I/O) while others need space capacity (storage, memory, network or I/O connectivity). Likewise, some applications have different availability needs (data protection, durability, security, resiliency, backup, BC, DR) that determine various tools, technologies and techniques to use. Budgets are also a concern which for some applications meaning enabling more performance per cost while others are focused on maximizing space capacity and protection level per cost. PACE attributes also define or influence policies for QoS (performance, availability, capacity), as well as thresholds, limits, quotas, retention and disposition among others.

Where to learn more

Learn more about data infrastructures and tradecraft related trends, tools, technologies and topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

The best storage will be the one that meets or exceeds your application requirements instead of the solution that meets somebody else’s needs or wants. Keep in mind, PACE your Server Storage I/O decision making, it is about application requirements

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2018. Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

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

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March 31st is world backup day; when is world recovery day

March 31st is world backup day; when is world recovery day

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day?

For several years, if not decades, March 31st has been world backup day, a reminder to protect and backup your apps and data. Data protection, including backup, recovery, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), and business resilience (BR), should be a 365-day-a-year focus. If you have regular data protection, including backup, that is great; when was the last time you tested restore?

Some related content

Upcoming and past events including webinars, tips and commentary
World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery
Data Infrastructure Overview, Its What’s Inside of a Data Center
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Protection Diaries Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips

Reminder to Protect your data and apps and settings

Thus, this is also a reminder to protect your data and apps and their settings regularly. What’s even better is evolving from none once a year to more frequent data protection, including backup of your critical and noncritical apps and data. Notice I keep mentioning apps and not just the usual focus of or on data. Program apps are considered broadly data; after all, apps and your settings and metadata are just data when stored and protected.

There is also often a focus on just the data, which can lead to problems when it comes time to recover an app program, settings, or metadata. Also, a reminder that data protection, including backup, is not just for large enterprises; it applies to organizations and entities of all sizes, including small and medium businesses (SMBs), non-profits, and homes (e.g., your photos, worksheets, and other documents).

What About Recovery

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? So far, I have been talking about backup as part of data protection or ensuring your apps, data, and settings are protected; what about recovery?

Sometimes with data protection, discussions can drift into what’s more critical, backup or recovery, which is a bit like a chicken and egg situation. In other words, what’s more important, the chicken or the egg? Similar to data protection, what’s more critical, backup or recovery?

Recovery is only as good as your backup (or snapshot, point-in-time copy, checkpoint, or consistency point), and your backup or protection copy is only as good as its recoverability. Recoverability means that not only is there something to restore from a point in time (e.g., recovery point objective or RPO) in a given amount of time (recovery time objective or RTO).

Recoverability also means that you can pull the data (e.g., bits, bytes, blocks, blobs, objects, files, tables) from the protection medium, media, or service and use it. Recovery means that the data is valid and consistent, has integrity, or is otherwise not bad, missing, damaged, or corrupted (e.g., usable).

What About Recovery Day?

For several years I have mentioned and will continue to do so that if March 31st is world backup day, then April 1st should be a world recovery day. So why April 1st for world recovery day? Simple, you don’t want to look like a fool the day after world backup day if you can’t restore and use data backed up the day before.

If you are not comfortable with April 1st for world recovery day? Then make your world recovery day (or test) a day or so later. The important message is to ensure your apps, data, and settings are protected (e.g., copied, backed up, snapshot, checkpoint, etc.), trust yet verify, and test your restorations.

Why do I mentation apps, data, and settings?

The important message here is that it is good if you are already protecting your data, your spreadsheets, worksheets, databases, files, photos, and the application programs that use them. However, also ensure that you are protecting application settings, configurations, metadata, encryption keys, the backup or protection mechanisms, and their data.

For example, when I accidentally delete a data file or configuration settings, I can restore those without recovering everything. Suppose, for instance, I accidentally or intentionally uninstall an application program. In that case, I can reinstall (assuming I have a copy of the program), then restore my settings and pick up where I resumed.

Who does this apply to?

From organizations of size and type to individuals. If you have or generate or save data, if it is worth having (or you have to keep it), then it should be protected. What how often to protect data (time interval) will be based on what your recovery point objective (RPO) is. Likewise how fast you need to recover with your recovery time objective (RTO).

Remember that it is not if you will need to restore, recover, reload, refresh, or repair your apps, data, and settings instead when. It might be because of accidental or planned deletion, accident, hardware, software, cloud service situation, ransomware, or malware, among other things that can and do happen.

What to do?

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? Ensure you have regular copies of your apps, data, and configuration settings, including encryption keys. Implement a variation of the old school three two one (e.g., 3 2 1) data protection, e.g., backup scheme (e.g., three or more copies, stored on two or more devices, systems, media or mediums, and at least one of them offsite preferably offline including at cloud).

A variation of the new school 4 3 2 1 data protection scheme has:
Have four or more versions of your protected data.
Three or more copies (feel free to swap the number of copies and versions).
Stored on two or more different systems (devices, media, or locations).
At least one copy offsite (preferably with one offline), including cloud.

The big difference between the old school 3 2 1 and the new school 4 3 2 1 is the emphasis and distinction of having multiple copies and various versions (e.g., points in time). For example, storing three copies on two systems with one offsite is good unless all copies are damaged. Having different versions (e.g., point in time) and multiple copies of those versions stored in different places including at least one offline (e.g., air-gapped), is essential.

Trust yet verify, test your backups and recovery

Test to verify your data protection is working and that data (apps, data, settings) can be restored. When testing restores, be careful not to overwrite your good data and cause a disaster. Also, ensure your data is encrypted in multiple locations and layers and that you protect your encryption keys. Finally, make sure your backup, protection software, catalog, and settings are encrypted, secured, and protected.

If you have questions, not sure, learn more here in my book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), Data Infrastructure Management Insight and Strategies (CRC Press), as well as check out these listed below, or reach out to me or others. If you are an individual consumer and just looking to protect some photos, valuable documents, and heirlooms, get in touch with professionals who specialize in these types of things.

What do I do?

Implement 4 3 2 1 type data protection with different granularities and frequencies. For example, my data protection includes regular point-in-time copies, including backups and snapshots, checkpoints, consistency points of systems, volumes, shares, apps, files, data, and settings at different intervals. Having different types of apps and data, some of which are more static vs. others that are changing, protection is also varied to avoid treating everything the same, reduce cost, and increase coverage.

I protect my Apps, data, and settings with multiple versions and copies locally on different systems, devices, mediums, and offsite, including offline and at cloud services. So why do I store data offsite vs. having it all in the cloud? Simple, speed of recovery, and flexibility.

If it’s a few files, perhaps a few GBs of data, it is usually faster for me if I don’t have a good copy locally to get it from Microsoft Azure. Otoh, if I need to restore TBs of data (something terrible happens), then it can be faster to bring an offline, offsite copy back, correct that, then only pull the more recent data I need from the cloud.

What are some of the tools and technologies that I use?

Locally I have multiple Microsoft Windows Servers (Server 2022) with various storage (HDDs and SSDs), including removable devices. In addition to on-prem, I have data stored offsite on removable media and cloud copies. For my cloud copies, I have a mix of files and blobs stored at Microsoft Azure.

A challenge moving from AWS to Azure was Retrospect did not support objects (Azure blobs). I realized, no worries, Retrospect supports storing data on local storage (SSD or HDD) on regular filesystems as files. The solution was set up an Azure file share for Retrospect, and everything has worked fantastic.

Are there things I need and want to improve? Yes, it’s an ongoing process and journey.

What should you do next?

Make sure you have a data backup; if not, march 31st is a good reminder. Trust yet verify your backups are working and you can recover and not be an April 1st fool.

Where to learn more

Learn more about world backup day, recovery and data protection along with other related topics via the following links:

Upcoming and past events including webinars, tips and commentary
Next Generation Hybrid Data Infrastructures Are In Your Future
Cloud File Data Storage Consolidation and Economic Comparison Model
New Book Data Infrastructure Management Insight Strategies
World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery
Virtual, Cloud and IT Availability, it’s a shared responsibility
Don’t Stop Learning Expand Your Skills Experiences Everyday
Data Infrastructure Overview, Its What’s Inside of a Data Center
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Protection Diaries Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O related Tradecraft Overview

Additional learning experiences can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book. Also check out Data Infrastructure Management Insight and Strategies.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC backup restore data protection cloud storage containers data footprint reduction

What this all means

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? Every day should be a backup day (e.g., some protection, backup, copy, snapshot, checkpoint, consistency point). Likewise, every day should be able to be a recovery day. World backup day and recovery apply to organizations of all sizes and individuals. Remember that If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day?

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, ten-time VMware vExpert. Author of Data Infrastructure Insights (CRC Press), Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC). Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier). Visit twitter @storageio as well as www.picturesoverstillwater.com to view various UAS/UAV e.g. drone based aerial content created by Greg Schulz. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com. Any reproduction without attribution 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. Visit our companion site https://picturesoverstillwater.com to view drone based aerial photography and video related topics. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC.

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2020 Holidays Seasons Greetings from StorageIO

2020 Holidays Seasons Greetings from StorageIO

2020 Holidays Seasons Greetings from StorageIO. Here’s a video link from our compansion sister site Pictures Over Stillwater featuring drone based aerial footage from downtown Stillwater Minnesota on the St Croix river and inaugural lighting of the nearly 100 year old historic lift bridge, along with Stillwater Lights.


Downtown Stillwater Lights Night Bridge Lighting

In addition to being an FAA part 107 certified (e.g. licensed) commercial drone operator, Im also authorized for night flying in the U.S with a daylight waiver (107.29). Thus the following night drone images were captured using my daylight waiver. The first 30 seconds or so of the following video was shot in 4K, the remainder in 6K rendered down for subsequent posting.

The following sunset aerial view is from downtown St Paul over looking Rice Park across from the Landmark Center with the Minnesota State Capital in the background (top left). Note that this location is a “0” zero altitude drone no fly zone due to proximity to downtown St Paul Airport, however I have an FAA airspace authorization and applicable state licenses to fly in this area.

Rice Park Landmark Center Downtown St Paul
Rice Park Landmark Center Downtown St Paul

You might wonder what do the above images other than having a holiday theme to them have to do with StorageIO?

Simple, all of the primary big data captured by the IoT devices, sensors, cameras and associated telemetry and metadata need to be moved, stored, processed, and protected somewhere which is one of the focuses of StorageIO. Meanwhile Pictures Over Stillwater has as one of its focuses, capturing and generating  data including 6K video, 360 still and video images, VR, photogrammetry (2D/3D ortho models) among other rich content.

Where to learn more

Learn and view more 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

2020 Happy Holidays Seasons Greetings from StorageIO

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers GS

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, former ten-time VMware vExpert. Author of Data Infrastructure Insights (CRC Press), 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. Also visit www.picturesoverstillwater.com to view various UAS/UAV e.g. drone based aerial content created by Greg Schulz. 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. Visit our companion site https://picturesoverstillwater.com to view drone based aerial photography and video related topics. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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Cloud Ready Data Protection for Hybrid Data Centers Are In Your Future

Cloud Ready Data Protection for Hybrid Data Centers Are In Your Future

Cloud Ready Data Protection for Hybrid Data Centers

Join me for a free webinar Cloud Ready Data Protection for Hybrid Data Centers and Data Infrastructures 11AM PT Thursday July 11th produced by Redmond Magazine sponsored by Quest Software.

Hybrid Data Infrastructure Data Center Cloud Container Software Defined Next Generation Cloud Ready Data Protection for Hybrid Data Centers

Hybrid Data Infrastructures and Data Centers

Hybrid cloud and on-prem data centers are in your future if not already a reality. In addition to using public cloud and on-prem resources, your environment is likely a mix of many different operating systems, applications and servers (virtual and physical), along with multiple backup and recovery technologies.

Cloud Ready Data Protection for Hybrid Data Centers

In this engaging, interactive webinar, we will look at trends, issues, and challenges, as well as provide best practices in what you can do to address them today. You’ll learn how to simplify and streamline your system, application and data protection in both the cloud and data center without compromise, all while removing complexity and cost.

What You Will Learn

Join Microsoft MVP, VMware vExpert and IT analyst Greg Schulz of Server StorageIO along with Michael Gogos, Data Protection expert from Quest, as they discuss how to:

  • Become hybrid and cloud data protection ready
  • Use the cloud for backup and disaster recovery
  • Protecting cloud applications and their data
  • Address different hybrid data protection scenarios
  • Take action today to prepare for tomorrow

 

Where to learn more

Learn more about world backup day, recovery and data protection along with other 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

I look forward to you joining Michael Gogos of Quest Software and myself on Thursday July 11th 11AM PT for our interactive discussion (bring your questions) around Cloud Ready Data Protection for Hybrid Data Centers and what you can do today (Register here).

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers GS

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, ten-time VMware vExpert. Author of Data Infrastructure Insights (CRC Press), 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. Also visit www.picturesoverstillwater.com to view various UAS/UAV e.g. drone based aerial content created by Greg Schulz. 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 2006-2019 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. Visit our companion site https://picturesoverstillwater.com to view drone based aerial photography and video related topics. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery

World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery

World Backup Day Reminder Don't Be an April Fool Plan Your Data Recovery

World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery.

March 31 is the annual world backup day to spotlight awareness around the importance of protecting your data and test your data recovery. The focus of world backup and recovery day spans from the largest enterprise and cloud service providers (e.g., super scalars) to the smallest SMB, SOHO, ROBO and home consumers (including your photos) or other valuable items.

Granted the technology, tools, techniques, trends will differ with a scope as well as scale.

However, the fundamental data protection approaches apply to all. That is, having multiple copies of different points in time spread across separate storage (systems, servers, devices, media, cloud services) as well as offsite (and off-line).

world backup day data protection cloud

Why The Need For Data Protection And Recovery

Data Protection encompasses many different things, from accessibility, durability, resiliency, reliability, and serviceability ( RAS) to security and data protection along with consistency. Availability includes basic, high availability ( HA), business continuance ( BC), business resiliency ( BR), disaster recovery ( DR), archiving, backup, logical and physical security, fault tolerance, isolation and containment spanning systems, applications, data, metadata, settings, and configurations.

From a data infrastructure perspective, availability of data services spans from local to remote, physical to logical and software-defined, virtual, container, and cloud, as well as mobile devices. On the left side of the following figure are various data protection and security threat risks and scenarios that can impact availability, or result in a data loss event ( DLE), data loss access ( DLA), or disaster. The following figure shows various techniques, tools, technologies, and best practices to protect data infrastructures, applications, and data from threat risks.

the need for data protection backup bc dr

Don’t Become An April 1st Recovery Fool

April 1st also known as April Fool’s day should be a reminder to plan as well as test your recovery, so the joke is not on you. Data protection including backup, archiving, security, disaster recovery (DR), business continuance (BC) as well as business resiliency (BR) are not a once a year focus, instead of a 365 day a year continuum. Likewise, the focus needs to expand from just making sure you backed up or made copies of your data to recover. After all, what good is a check box that you did a backup on world backup day only to find out the next day you cannot recover, or, what you thought was protected is not there.

If you already have good backups and data protection copies, verify that they are in fact good-by restoring their contents to a different location. It should go without saying, however all too often common sense needs to be repeated, make sure in the course of testing data protection including restoring that you do not inadvertently cause a disaster. Also, go a step beyond verifying that you can read the data stored on disk, tape, SSD, optical, that is, actually try to use, or open the data. What this does is verify that you can both access and restore the data from the protection medium or cloud location, as well as unlock, decrypt, uncompressed or re-inflate deduped data.

Evolving Data Protection Including Backup and Recovery

While the emphasis of world backup is on the importance of data protection including having backup copies, there also needs to be an emphasis on recovering. It is essential to make sure data is protected which means having multiple copies of different time intervals stored on several mediums or systems across one or more locations. The previous is the basis of 4 3 2 1 data protection, having four or more copies with three or more-time interval versions spread across two or more different systems or storage mediums.

server storageio data infrastructure data protection 4 3 2 1
4 3 2 1 data protection (via Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials)

4    At least four copies of data (or more), Enables durability in case a copy goes bad, deleted, corrupted, failed device, or site.
3    The number (or more) versions of the data to retain, Enables various recovery points in time to restore, resume, restart from.
2    Data located on two or more systems (devices or media/mediums), Enables protection against device, system, server, file system, or other fault/failure.
1    With at least one of those copies being off-premise and not live (isolated from active primary copy), Enables resiliency across sites, as well as space, time, distance gap for protection.

Also, make sure that at least one of those offsite preferably offline. Likewise, it is crucial that whatever is protected, backed up, copied, cloned, snapshot, checkpoint, consistency point, replicated is also usable. In addition to having multiple copies and versions, those data protection copies should also include occurring at various altitude or layers in the data infrastructure stack from applications to database, file systems to virtual machines or containers among others.

What About Individual Data Protection at Home

For consumers and individuals, as well as small business, make sure that you are copying your essential data from your computer to some other storage medium (or multiple). For example, have a local copy on an external hard disk drive (HDD) or a solid-state device (SSD). Better yet, have a couple of copies for different time intervals both on-site as well as off-site. Anything important you have stored on site including copies of photos, images, video, audio, records, spreadsheets, and other documents should have extra copies including off-site or in the cloud.

Likewise, anything you store in the cloud should have at least one other copy stored elsewhere. Don’t be scared of the cloud, however, do your homework to be prepared. Similar to only having one copy of your data on site, the other extreme only has one copy in the cloud. Instead, put a copy in the cloud as well as have one on-site (or on-prem if you prefer) or elsewhere.

Don’t Forget Your Home Photos and Movies

Speaking of photos and other documents, for those that are not yet digitized, scanned or electronic copies made, get them converted.  Get in touch with data protection and backup professional, as well as a photo (and digital asset) organizer. They can provide advice on best practices, techniques, as well as tools, technologies, and services to keep your digital data safe and secure. Some photo organizer professionals also can help with converting your old photos, movies, videos to new digital formats. For example, get in touch with Holly Corbid at Capture Your Photos (www.captureyourphotos.com) who is a certified professional photo organizer and member of Association of Professional Photo Organizers.

Where to learn more

Learn more about world backup day, recovery and data protection along with other 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

March 31 world backup day is more than an annual event for vendors to send out press releases on the importance of data protection. The focus should also expand to world recovery day or something similar as well as span 365 days a year. Now is a good time to review and verify your existing data protection including backup and recovery works as expected. Keep in mind, world backup day reminder don’t be an April fool test your data recovery before you need it.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers GS

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, ten-time VMware vExpert. Author of Data Infrastructure Insights (CRC Press), 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. Also visit www.picturesoverstillwater.com to view various UAS/UAV e.g. drone based aerial content created by Greg Schulz. 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. Visit our companion site https://picturesoverstillwater.com to view drone based aerial photography and video related topics. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO.

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Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

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

Major data infrastructure technology announcements include:

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

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

Dell Technology World Buzzword Bingo Lineup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

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

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

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

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

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

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

Powering up the Modern Data Center and Future of Work

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

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

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

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

Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcements Include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Dell PowerMax Visual Studio (Image via Dell.com)

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

Dell Technology World 2018 XtremIO X2

XtremIO X2

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

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

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

What about Dell Midrange Storage Unity and SC?

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

Dell Bulk and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)

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

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

Dell Data Protection

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

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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

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

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

Introducing PowerEdge MX Composable Infrastructure (the other CI)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Server StorageIO data infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 18, Issue 4 (April 2018) Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter.

In cased you missed it, the March 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter can be viewed here (HTML and PDF).

In this issue themes include life beyond world backup day, focus on recovery, restoration and resiliency, as well as getting ready for GDPR. Also covered in this issue are themes of NVMe along with NVMe over Fabric (NVMeoF), Storage Class Memories (SCM) and related technologies covered in the March 2018 newsletter. Recent VMware public, private and hybrid cloud along with vSphere v6.7 are covered as well as other topics including:

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news, tips and articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via SearchStorage: Comments on Dell EMC storage strategy talk buzzes Dell Tech World
Via GizModo: Comments Can a Loud Noise Really Bring Down a Data Center?
Via StateTech: Comments IT Ingenuity Lets State and Local Agencies Do More with Less
Via StateTech: Comments State and Local Agencies See Power in the VDI, HCI Combination
Via StateTech: Comments How Local Governments Can Meet the Demands of IoT Networking
Via IronMountain: Comments Hybrid cloud deployment demands a change in security mindset
Via IronMountain: Hybrid 4 3 2 1 Data Protection
Via IronMountain InfoGoto: The growing Trend of Secondary Data Storage
Via IronMountain InfoGoto: World Backup Day Best Practices For a Hybrid Approach
Via BizTech: Why Hybrid (SSD and HDD) Storage Might Be Fit for SMB environments

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

Server StorageIOblog Data Infrastructure Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary
VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details
VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements
Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?
Data Protection Recovery Life Post World Backup Day Pre GDPR
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview
March 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Application Data Availability 4 3 2 1 Data Protection
VMware continues cloud construction with March announcements
World Backup Day 2018 Data Protection Readiness Reminder
Use Intel Optane NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 SSD drive in PCIe slot
Data Infrastructure Resource Links cloud data protection tradecraft trends
IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps Podcast
Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
AWS Announces New S3 Cloud Storage Security Encryption Features
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview #blogtober
Hot Popular New Trending Data Infrastructure Vendors To Watch

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

April 25, 2018 – Webinar – SDDC and Data Protection Discussion

April 24, 2018 – Webinar – AWS and on-site, on-premises hybrid data protection

March 27, 2018 – Webinar – Veeams Road to GDPR compliance The 5 Lessons Learned

Feb 28, 2018 – Webinar – Benefits of Moving Hyper-V Disaster Recovery to the Cloud

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Various useful links and resources:

Data Infrastructure Recommend Reading and watching list
Microsoft TechNet – Various Microsoft related from Azure to Docker to Windows
storageio.com/links – Various industry links (over 1,000 with more to be added soon)
objectstoragecenter.com – Cloud and object storage topics, tips and news items
OpenStack.org – Various OpenStack related items
storageio.com/downloads – Various presentations and other download material
storageio.com/protect – Various data protection items and topics
thenvmeplace.com – Focus on NVMe trends and technologies
thessdplace.com – NVM and Solid State Disk topics, tips and techniques
storageio.com/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

Connect and Converse With Us

Storage IO RSS storageio linkedin storageio facebook Server StorageIO on twitter @StorageIO   Google+  Server StorageIO email storageio youtube  storageio instagram

Subscribe to Newsletter – Newsletter Archives – StorageIO.com – StorageIOblog.com

What this all means and wrap-up

Data Infrastructures are what exist inside of physical and cloud data centers that in turn support applications that transform data into information. Clouds continue to be a popular topic as well as deployment platform for and of data infrastructures. VMware has made several announcements in support of their public, private and hybrid cloud environments. A fundamental role of data infrastructures is to protect, preserve, secure and serve information via server, storage, I/O network hardware, software as well as services.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary

VMware announced last week vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 among other updates for their software-defined data center (SDDC) and software-defined infrastructure (SDI) solutions. The new April v6.7 announcement updates followed those from this past March when VMware announced cloud enhancements with partner AWS (more on that announcement here).

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vSphere Web Client with vSphere 6.7

For those looking for a more extended version with a closer look and analysis of what VMware announced click here for part two and part three here.

What VMware announced is general availability (GA) meaning you can now download from here the bits (e.g., software) that include:

  • ESXi aka vSphere 6.7 hypervisor build 8169922
  • vCenter Server 6.7 build 8217866
  • vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 build 8217866
  • vSAN 6.7 and other related SDDC management tools
  • vSphere Operations Management (vROps) 6.7
  • Increased the speeds, feeds and other configuration maximum limits

For those not sure or need a refresher, vCenter Server is the software for extended management across multiple vSphere ESXi hypervisors that run on a Windows platform.

Major themes of the VMware April announcement is around increased scalability along with performance enhancements, ease of use, security, as well as extended application support. As part of the v6.7 improvements, VMware is focusing on simplifying, as well as accelerating software-defined data infrastructure along with other SDDC lifecycle operation activities.

Extended application support includes for traditional demanding enterprise IT, along with High-Performance Compute (HPC), Big Data, Little Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), as well as other emerging workloads. Part of supporting demanding workloads includes enhanced support for Graphical Processing Units (GPU) such as those from Nvidia among others.

What Happened to vSphere 6.6?

A question that comes up is that there is a vSphere 6.5 (and its smaller point releases) and now vSphere 6.7 (along with vCenter, vSAN among others). What happened to vSphere 6.6? Good question and not sure what the real or virtual answer from VMware is or would be. My take is that this is a good opportunity for VMware to align their versions of principal components (e.g., vSphere/ESXi, vCenter, vSAN) to a standard or unified numbering scheme.

Where to learn more

Learn more about VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN and related software-defined data center (SDDC); software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI) 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 and wrap-up

Overall the VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 enhancements are a good evolution of their core technologies for enabling hybrid, converged software-defined data infrastructures and software-defined data centers. Continue reading more about  VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary here in part II (focus on management, vCenter plus security) and part III here (focus on server storage I/O and deployment) of this three-part series.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details of announcement summary focus on vCenter, Security, and management. This is part two (part one here) of a three-part (part III here) series looking at VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details of announcement summary.

Last week VMware announced vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 updates as part of enhancing their software-defined data center (SDDC) and software-defined infrastructure (SDI) solutions core components. This is an expanded post as a companion to the Server StorageIO summary piece here. These April updates followed those from this past March when VMware announced cloud enhancements with partner AWS (more on that announcement here).

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vSphere Web Client with vSphere 6.7

What VMware announced is generally available (GA) meaning you can now download from here the bits (e.g., software) that include:

  • ESXi aka vSphere 6.7 hypervisor build 8169922
  • vCenter Server 6.7 build 8217866
  • vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 build 8217866
  • vSAN 6.7 and other related SDDC management tools
  • vSphere Operations Management (vROps) 6.7

For those not sure or need a refresher, vCenter Server is the software for extended management across multiple vSphere ESXi hypervisors that run on a Windows platform.

Major themes of the VMware April announcements are focused around:

  • Increased enterprise and hybrid cloud scalability
  • Resiliency, availability, durable and secure
  • Performance, efficiency and elastic
  • Intuitive, simplified management at scale
  • Expanded support for demanding application workloads

Expanded application support includes for traditional demanding enterprise IT, along with High-Performance Compute (HPC), Big Data, Little Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), as well as other emerging workloads. Part of supporting demanding workloads includes enhanced support for Graphical Processing Units (GPU)such as those from Nvidia among others.

What was announced

As mentioned above and in other posts in this series, VMware announced new versions of their ESXi hypervisor vSphere v6.7, as well as virtual SAN (vSAN) v6.7, virtual Center (vCenter),  v6.7 among other related tools. One of the themes of this announcement by VMware includes hybrid SDDC spanning on-site, on-premises (or on-premisess if you prefer) to the public cloud. Other topics involve increasing scalability, along with stability as well as ease of management along with security, performance updates.

As part of the v6.7 enhancements, VMware is focusing on simplifying, as well as accelerating software-defined data infrastructure along with other SDDC lifecycle operation activities. Additional themes and features focus on server, storage, I/O resource enablement, as well as application extensibility support.

vSphere ESXi hypervisor

With v6.7 ESXi host maintenance times improved with single reboot vs. previous multiple boots for some upgrades, as well as quick boot. Quick boot enables restarting the ESXi hypervisor without rebooting the physical machine skipping time-consuming hardware initialization.

Enhanced HTML5 based vSphere client GUI (along with API and CLI) with increased feature function parity compared to predecessor versions and other VMware tools. Increased functionality includes NSX, vSAN and VMware Upgrade Management (VUM) capabilities among others. In other words, not only are new technologies support, functions you may have in the past resisted using the web-based interfaces due to extensibility are being addressed with this release.

vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

VMware has announced that moving forward the hosted (e.g., running on a Windows server platform) version is being depreciated. What this means is that it is time for those not already doing so to migrate to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). As a refresher, VCSA is a turnkey software-defined virtual appliance that includes vCenter Server software running on VMware Photon Linux operating system as a virtual machine. VMware vCenter.

As part of the update, the enhanced vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) supports new efficient, effective API management along with multiple vCenters as well as performance improvements. VMware cites 2x faster vCenter operations per second, 3x reduction in memory usage along with 3x quicker Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) related activities across powered on VMs).

What this means is that VCSA is a self-contained virtual appliance that can be configured for very large, large, medium and small environments in various configurations. With v6.7 vCenter Server Appliance emphasis on scaling, as well as performance along with security and ease of use features, VCSA is better positioned to support large enterprise deployments along with hybrid cloud. VCSA v6.7 is more than just a UI enhancement with v6.5 shown below followed by an image of v6.7 UI.

VMware vSphere 6.5
VMware vCenter Appliance v6.5 main UI

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vCenter Appliance v6.7 main UI

Besides UI enhancements (along with API and CLI) for vCenter, other updates include more robust data protection (aka backup) capability for the vCenter Server environment. In the prior v6.5 version there was a fundamental capability to specify a destination for sending vCenter configuration information to for backup data protection (See image below).

vCenter 6.5 backup
VMware vCenter Appliance 6.5 backup

Note that the VCSA backup only provides data protection for the vCenter Appliance, its configuration, settings along with data collected of the VMware hosts (and VMs) being managed. VCSA backup does not provide data protection of the individual VMware hosts or VMs which is accomplished via other data protection techniques, tools and technologies.

In v6.7 vCenter now has enhanced capabilities (shown below) for enabling data protection of configuration, settings, performance and other metrics. What this means is that with improved UI it is now possible to setup backup schedules as part of enabling automation for data protection of vCenter servers.

vCenter 6.7 backup
VMware VCSA v6.7 enhanced UI and data protection aka backup

The following shows some of the configuration sizing options as part of VCSA deployment. Note that the vCPU, Memory, and Storage are for the VCSA itself to support a given number of VMware hosts (e.g., physical machines) as well as guest virtual machines (VM).

 

VCSA

VCSA

VCSA

VM

 

Size

vCPU

Memory

Storage

Hosts

VMs

Tiny

2

10GB

300GB

10

100

Small

4

16GB

340GB

100

1000

Medium

8GB

24

525GB

400

4000

Large

16

32GB

740GB

1000

10000

Extra Large

24

48GB

1180GB

2000

35000

vCenter 6.7 sizing and number of the physical machine (e.g., VM hosts) and virtual machines supported

Keep in mind that in addition to the above individual VCSA configuration limits, multiple vCenters can be grouped including linked mode spanning onsite, on-premisess (on-prem if you prefer) as well as the cloud. VMware vCenter server hybrid linked mode enables seamless visibility and insight across on-site, on-premises (or on-premisess if you prefer) as well as public clouds such as AWS among others.

In other words, vCenter with hybrid linked mode enables you to have situational awareness and avoid flying blind in and among clouds. As part of hybrid vCenter environment support, cross-cloud (public, private) hot and cold migration including clone as well as vMotion across mixed VMware version provisioning is supported. Using linked mode multiple roles, permissions, tags, policies can be managed across different groups (e.g., unified management) as well as locations.

VMware and vSphere Security

Security is a big push for VMware with this release including Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 along with Virtual TPM 2.0 for protecting both the hypervisors and guest operating systems. Data encryption was introduced in vSphere 6.5 and is enhanced with increased management simplicities along with protection of data at rest and in flight (while in motion).

In other words, encrypted vMotion across different vCenter instances and versions are supported, as well as across hybrid environments (e.g., on-premises and public cloud). Other security enhancements include tighter collaboration and integration with Microsoft for Windows VMs, as well as vSAN, NSX and vRealize for a secure software-defined data infrastructure aka SDDC. For example, VMware has enhanced support for Microsoft Virtualization Based Security (VBS) including credential Guard where vSphere is providing a secure virtual hardware platform.

Additional VMware 6.7 security enhancements include Multiple SYSLOG targets, FIPS 140-2 Validated modules. Note that there is a difference between FIPS certified and FIPS validated, of which VMware vCenter and ESXi leverage two modules (VM Kernel Cryptographic, and OpenSSL) are currently validated. VMware is not playing games like some vendors when it comes to disclosing FIPS 140-2 validated vs. certified. Other VMware security enhancements include

Note, when a vendor mentions FIPS 140-2 and imply or says certified, ask them if they indeed are certified. Any vendor who is actually FIPS 140-2 certified should not get upset if you press them politely. Instead, they should thank you for asking. Otoh, if a vendor gives you a used car salesperson style dance or get upset, ask them why so sensitive, or, perhaps, what are they ashamed of or hiding, just saying. Learn more here.

vRealize Operations Manager (vROps)

vRealize Operations Manager (vROps) v6.7 dashboard for vSphere client plugin provides an overview of cluster view and alerts of both vCenter and vSAN. What this means is that you will want to upgrade vROps to v6.7. The vROps benefit being dashboards for optimal performance, capacity, troubleshooting, and management configuration.

Where to learn more

Learn more about VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN and related software-defined data center (SDDC); software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI) 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 and wrap-up

VMware continues to enhance their core SDDC data infrastructure resources to support new and emerging, as well as legacy enterprise applications at scale. VMware enhancements include management, security along with other updates to support the demanding needs of various applications and workloads, along with supporting application developers.

Some examples of demanding workloads include among others AL, Big Data, Machine Learning, In memory and high-performance compute (HPC) among other resource-intensive new workloads, as well as existing applications. This includes enhanced support for Nvidia physical and virtual Graphical Processing Units (GPU) that are used in support for compute-intensive graphics, as well as non-graphic processing (e.g., AI, ML) workloads.

With the v6.7 announcements, VMware is providing proof points that they are continuing to invest in their core SDDC enabling technologies. VMware is also demonstrating the evolution of vSphere ESXi hypervisor along with associated management tools for hybrid environments with ease of use management at scale, along with security.  View more about VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details in part three of this three-part series here ((focus on server storage I/O, deployment information and analysis).

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements

This is part three of a three-part series looking at last weeks v6.7 VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements. The focus of this post is on server, storage, I/O along with deployment and other wrap up items. In case you missed them, read part one here, and part two here.

VMware as part of updates to, vSAN and vCenter introduced several server storage I/O enhancements some of which have already been mentioned.

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vSphere Web Client with vSphere 6.7

Server Storage I/O enhancements for vSphere, vSAN, and vCenter include:

  • Native 4K (4kn) block sector size for HDD and SSD devices
  • Intel Volume Management Device (VMD) for NVMe flash SSD
  • Support for Persistent Memory (PMEM) aka Storage Class Memory (SCM)
  • SCSI UNMAP (similar to TRIM) for SSD space reclamation
  • XCOPY and VAAI enhancements
  • VMFS-5 is now default file system
  • VMFS-6 SESparse vSphere snapshot space reclamation
  • VVOL supporting SCSI-3 persistent reservations and IPv6
  • Reduce dependences on RDMs with VVOL enhancements
  • Software-based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) initiator
  • Para Virtualized RDMA (PV-RDMA)
  • Various speeds and feeds enhancements

VMware vSphere 6.7 also adds native 4KN sector size (e.g., 4096 block size) in addition to traditional native and emulated 512-byte sectors for HDD as well as SSD. The larger block size means performance improvements along with better storage allocation for applications, particularly for large capacity devices. Other server storage I/O updates include RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) enabled Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) as well as Intel VMD for NVMe. Learn more about NVMe here.

Other storage-related enhancements include SCSI UNMAP (e.g., SCSI equivalent of SSD TRIM) with the selectable priority of none or low for SSD space reclamation. Also enhanced are SESparse of vSphere snapshot virtual disk space reclamation (for VMFS-6). VMware XCOPY (Extended Copy) now works with vendor-specific VMware API for Array Integration (VAAI) primitives along with SCSI T10 standard used for cloning, zeroing and copy offload to storage systems. Virtual Volumes (VVOL) have been enhanced to support IPv6 and SCSI-3 persistent reservations to help reduce dependency or use of RDMs.

VMware configuration maximums (e.g., speeds and feeds) including server storage I/O enhancements including boosting from 512 to 1024 LUNs per host. Other speeds and feeds improvements include going from 2048 to 4096  server storage I/O paths per host, PVSCSI adapters now support up to 256 disks vs. 64 (virtual disks or Raw Device Mapped aka RDM). Also note that VMFS-3 is now the end of life (EOL) and will be automatically upgraded to VMFS-5 during the upgrade to vSphere 6.7, while the default datastore type is VMFS-6.

Additional server storage I/O enhancements include RoCE for RDMA enabling low latency server to server memory-based data movement access, along with Para-virtualized RDMA (PV-RDMA) on Linux guest OS. ESXi has been enhanced with iSER (iSCSI Extension for RDMA) leveraging faster server I/O interconnects and CPU offload. Another server storage I/O enhancement is Software based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (e.g., SW-FCoE) initiator using loss less Ethernet fabrics.

Note as a reminder or refresher that VMware also has para (e.g., virtualization-optimized) drivers for Ethernet and other networks, NVMe as well as SCSI in addition to standard devices. For example, you can access from a VM an NVMe backed datastore using standard VMware SATA, SCSI Controller, LSI Logic SAS, LSI Logic Parallel, VMware Paravirtual, native NVMe driver (virtual machine type 6.5 or higher) for better performance. Likewise, instead of using the standard SAS and SCSI VM devices, the VMware para-virtualized

Besides the previously mentioned items, other enhancements including for vSAN include support for logical clusters such as Oracle RAC, Microsoft SQL Server Availability Groups, Microsoft Exchange Data Availability Groups as well as Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC) using vSAN iSCSI service. Note that as a proof point of continued vSAN deployment customer adoption, VMware is claiming 10,000 deployments. For performance, vSAN enhancement also includes updates for adaptive placement, adaptive resync, as well as faster cache destage. The benefit of quicker destage is that cache can be drained or written to disk to eliminate or prevent I/O bottlenecks.

As part of supporting expanding, more demanding enterprise among other workloads, vSAN enhancements also include resiliency updates, physical resource and configuration checks, health and monitoring checks. Other vSAN improvements include streamlined workflows, converged management views across vCenter as well as vRealize tools. Read more from VMware about server storage I/O enhancements to vSphere, vSAN, and vCenter here.

VMware Server Storage I/O Memory Matters

VMware is also joining others with support for evolving persistent memory (PMEM) leveraging so-called storage class memories (SCM). Note, some refer to SCM as persistent memory as PM, however, context needs to be used as PM also means Physical Machine, Physical Memory, Primary Memory among others. With the new PMEM support for server memory, VMware is laying the foundation for guest operating systems as well as applications to leverage the technology.

For example, Microsoft with Windows Server 2016 supports SCMs as a block addressable storage medium and file system, as well as for Direct Access (e.g., DAX). What this means is that fast file systems can be backed by persistent faster than traditional SSD storage, as well as applications such as SQL Server that support DAX can do direct persistent I/O.

As a refresher, Non-Volatile DIMM enable server memory by combing traditional DRAM with some persistent storage class memory. By combing DRAM and storage class memory (SCM) also known as PMEM servers can use the RAM as a fast read/write memory, with the data destaged to persistent memory. Examples of SCM include Micron 3D Xpoint also known as Intel Optane along with others such as Everspin NVDIMM among others (available from Dell, HPE among others. Learn more SSD and storage class memories (SCM) along with PMEM here, as well as NVMe here.

Deployment, be prepared before you grab the bits and install the software

For those of you who want or need to download the bits here is a link to VMware software download. However, before racing off to install the new software in your production (or perhaps even lab), do your homework. Read the important information from VMware before upgrading to vSphere here (e.g., KB53704) as well as release notes, and review VMware’s best practices for upgrading to vCenter here.

Some of the things to be aware of including upgrade order and dependencies, as well as make sure you have good current backups of your vSphere ESXi configuration, vCenter appliance. In addition to viewing the vSphere ESXi and vCenter 6.7 release notes here, also.

There are some hardware compatibility items you need to be aware of, both for this as well as future versions. Check out the VMware hardware (and software) compatibility list (HCL), along with partner product interoperability matrices, as well as release notes. Pay attention to devices depreciated and no longer supported in ESXi 6.7 (e.g., VMware KB52583) as well as those that may not work in future releases to avoid surprises.

Where to learn more

Learn more about VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN and related software-defined data center (SDDC); software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI) 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 and wrap-up

In case you missed them, read part one here and click here for part two of this series.

Some will say what’s the big deal why all the noise, coverage and discussion for a point release?

My view is that this is a big evolutionary package of upgrade enhancements and new features, even if a so-called point release (e.g., going from 6.5 to 6.7). Some vendors might have done this type of updates as a significant, e.g., version 6.x to 7.x upgrade to make more noise, get increased coverage or merely enhance the appearance of software maturity (e.g., V1.x to V2.x to V3.x, and so forth).

In the case of VMware, what some might refer to point release that is smaller, are the ones such as vSphere 6.5.0 to 6.5.x among others. Thus, there is a lot in this package of updates from VMware and good to see continued enhancements.

I also think that VMware is getting challenges from different fronts including Microsoft as well as cloud partners among others which is good. The reason I believe that it is okay VMware is being challenged is given their history; they tend to step up their game playing harder as well as stronger with the competition.

VMware is continuing to invest and extend its core SDDC technologies to meet the expanding demands of various organizations, from small to ultra large enterprises. What this means is that VMware is addressing ease of use for smaller, as well as removing complexity to enable simplified scaling from on-site (or on-premises and on-prem if you prefer) to the public cloud.

Overall the VMware Announced version 6.7 of vSphere vSAN vCenter SDDC core components are a useful extension of their existing technology. VMware Announced release 6.7 of vSphere vSAN vCenter SDDC core components enhancements enable customers more flexibility, scalability, resiliency, and security to meet their various needs.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?

Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?

new CLOUD Act data regulation

Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?

The new CLOUD Act data regulation became law as part of the recent $1.3 Trillion (USD) omnibus U.S. government budget spending bill passed by Congress on March 23, 2018 and signed by President of the U.S. (POTUS) Donald Trump in March.

CLOUD Act is the acronym for Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data, not to be confused with initiatives such as U.S. federal governments CLOUD First among others which are focused on using cloud, securing and complying (e.g. FedRAMP among others). In other words, the new CLOUD Act data regulation pertains to how data stored by cloud or other service providers can be accessed by law environment officials (LEO).

U.S. Supreme court
Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) Image via https://www.supremecourt.gov/

CLOUD Act background and Stored Communications Act

After the signing into law of CLOUD Act, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) to dismiss the pending case against Microsoft (e.g., Azure Cloud). The case or question in front of SCOTUS pertained to whether LEO can search as well as seize information or data that is stored overseas or in foreign counties.

As a refresher, or if you had not heard, SCOTUS was asked to resolve if a service provider who is responding to a warrant based on probable cause under the 1986 era Stored Communications Act, is required to provide data in its custody, control or possession, regardless of if stored inside, or, outside the US.

Microsoft Azure Regions and software defined data infrastructures
Microsoft Azure Regions via Microsoft.com

This particular case in front of SCOTUS centered on whether Microsoft (a U.S. Technology firm) had to comply with a court order to produce emails (as part of an LEO drug investigation) even if those were stored outside of the US. In this particular situation, the emails were alleged to have been stored in a Microsoft Azure Cloud Dublin Ireland data center.

For its part, Microsoft senior attorney Hasan Ali said via FCW “This bill is a significant step forward in the larger global debate on what our privacy laws should look like, even if it does not go to the highest threshold". Here are some additional perspectives via Microsoft Brad Smith on his blog along with a video.

What is CLOUD Act

Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data is the new CLOUD Act data regulation approved by Congress (House and Senate) details can be read here and here respectively with additional perspectives here.

The new CLOUD Act law allows for POTUS to enter into executive agreements with foreign governments about data on criminal suspects. Granted what is or is not a crime in a given country will likely open Pandora’s box of issues. For example, in the case of Microsoft, if an agreement between the U.S. and Ireland were in place, and, Ireland agreed to release the data, it could then be accessed.

Now, for some who might be hyperventilating after reading the last sentence, keep this in mind that if you are overseas, it is up to your government to protect your privacy. The foreign government must have an agreement in place with the U.S. and that a crime has or had been committed, a crime that both parties concur with.

Also, keep in mind that is also appeal processes for providers including that the customer is not a U.S. person and does not reside in the U.S. and the disclosure would put the provider at risk of violating foreign law. Also, keep in mind that various provisions must be met before a cloud or service provider has to hand over your data regardless of what country you reside, or where the data resides.

Where to learn more

Learn more about CLOUD Act, cloud, data protection, world backup day, recovery, restoration, GDPR along with related data infrastructure topics for cloud, legacy and other software defined environments 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 and wrap-up

Is the new CLOUD Act data regulation unique to Microsoft Azure Cloud?

No, it also applies to Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, IBM Softlayer Cloud, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the long list of other service providers.

What about GDPR?

Keep in mind that the new Global Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) go into effect May 25, 2018, that while based out of the European Union (EU), have global applicability across organizations of all size, scope, and type. Learn more about GDPR, Data Protection and its global impact here.

Thus, if you have not heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation, now is the time to become aware of it.

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.