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November 26, 2017November 26, 2023

Data Protection Diaries Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes LRC Deep Dive

Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes including LRC Deep Dive

Companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 26, 2017

This is Part 3 of a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Part 2 Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals, and click here to view the next post Part 4 Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions).

Post in the series includes excerpts from Software Defined Data Infrastructure (SDDI) pertaining to data protection for legacy along with software defined data centers ( SDDC), data infrastructures in general along with related topics. In addition to excerpts, the posts also contain links to articles, tips, posts, videos, webinars, events and other companion material. Note that figure numbers in this series are those from the SDDI book and not in the order that they appear in the posts.

In this post part of the Data Protection diaries series as well as companion to Chapter 9 of SDDI Essentials book, we are going on a longer, deeper dive. We are going to look at availability, access and durability including mirror, replication, RAID including various traditional and newer parity approaches such as Erasure Codes ( EC), Local Reconstruction Code (LRC), Reed Solomon (RS) also known as RAID 2 among others. Later posts in this series look at point in time data protection to support recovery to a given time (e.g. RPO), while this and the previous post look at maintaining access and availability.

Keep in mind that if something can fail, it probably will, also that everything is not the same meaning different environments, application workloads (along with their data). Different environments and applications have diverse performance, availability, capacity economic (PACE) attributes, along with service level objectives ( SLOs). Various SLOs include PACE attributes, recovery point objectives ( RPO), recovery time objective ( RTO) among others.

Availability, accessibility and durability (see part two in this series) along with associated RAS topics are part of what enable RTO, as well as meet Faults (or failures) to tolerate ( FTT). This means that different fault tolerance modes ( FTM) determine what technologies, tools, trends and techniques to use to meet different RTO, FTT and application PACE needs.

Maintaining access and availability along with durability (e.g. how many copies of data as well as where stored) protects against loss or failure of a component device ( SSD, HDDs, adapters, power supply, controller), node or system, appliance, server, rack, clusters, stamps, data center, availability zones, regions, or other Fault or Failure domains spanning hardware, software, and services.

Figure 1.5 Data Infrastructures and other IT Infrastructure Layers

Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes

This is a good place to mention some context for RAID and RAID array, which can mean different things pertaining to Data Protection. Some people associate RAID with a hardware storage array, or with a RAID card. Other people consider an array to be a storage array that is a RAID enabled storage system. A trend is to refer to legacy storage systems as RAID arrays or hardware-based RAID, to differentiate from newer implementations.

Context comes into play in that a RAID group (i.e., a collection of HDDs or SSD that is part of a RAID set) can be referred to as an array, a RAID array, or a virtual array. What this means is that while some RAID implementations may not be relevant, there are many new and evolving variations extending parity based protection making at least software-defined RAID still relevant

Keep context in mind, and don’t be afraid to ask what someone is referring to: a particular vendor storage system, a RAID implementation or packaging, a storage array, or a virtual array. Also keep the context of the virtual array in perspective vs. storage virtualization and virtual storage. RAID as a term is used to refer to different modes such as mirroring or parity, and parity can be legacy RAID 4, 5, or 6 along with erasure codes (EC). Note some people refer to erasure codes in the context of not being a RAID system, which can be an inference to not being a legacy storage system running hardware RAID (e.g. not software or software defined).

The following figure (9.13) shows various availability protection schemes (e.g. not recovery point) that maintain access while protecting against loss of a component, device, system, server, site, region or other part of a fault domain. Since everything is not the same with environments and applications having different Performance Availability Capacity Economic ( PACE) attributes, there are various approaches for enabling availability along with accessibility.

Keep in mind that RAID and Erasure codes along with their various, as well as replication and mirroring by themselves are not a replacement for backup or other point in time (e.g. enable recovery point) protection.

Instead, availability technologies such as RAID and erasure code along with mirror as well as replication need to be combined with snapshots, point in time copies, consistency points, checkpoints, backups among other recovery point protection for complete data protection.

Speaking of replacement for backup, while many vendors and their pundits claIm or want to see backup as being dead, as long as they keep talking about backup instead of broader data protection backup will remain alive.

SDDC SDDI RAID Parity Erasure Code EC
Figure 9.13 Various RAID, Mirror, Parity and Erasure Code (EC) approaches

Different RAID levels (including parity, EC, LRC and RS based) will affect storage energy effectiveness, similar to various SSD or HDD performance capacity characteristics; however, a balance of performance, availability, capacity, and energy needs to occur to meet application service needs. For example, RAID 1 mirroring or RAID 10 mirroring and striping use more HDDs and, thus, power, but will yield better performance than RAID 6 and erasure code parity protection.

	Normal performance	Availability	Performance overhead	Rebuild overhead	Availability overhead
RAID 0 (stripe)	Very good read & write	None	None	Full volume restore	None
RAID 1 (mirror or replicate)	Good reads; writes = device speed	Very good; two or more copies	Multiple copies can benefit reads	Re-synchronize with existing volume	2:1 for dual, 3:1 for three-way copies
RAID 4 (stripe with dedicated parity, i.e., 4 + 1 = 5 drives total)	Poor writes without cache	Good for smaller drive groups and devices	High on write without cache (i.e., parity)	Moderate to high, based on number and type of drives	Varies; 1 Parity/N, where N = number of devices
RAID 5 (stripe with rotating parity, 4 + 1 = 5 drives)	Poor writes without cache	Good for smaller drive groups and devices	High on write without cache (i.e., parity)	Moderate to high, based on number and type of drives	Varies 1 Parity/N, where N = number of devices
RAID 6 (stripe with dual parity, 4 + 2 = 6 drives)	Poor writes without cache	Better for larger drive groups and devices	High on write without cache (i.e., parity)	Moderate to high, based on number and type of drives	Varies; 2 Parity/N, where N = number of devices
RAID 10 (mirror and stripe)	Good	Good	Minimum	Re-synchronize with existing volume	Twice mirror capacity stripe drives
Reed-Solomon (RS) parity, also known as erasure code (EC), local reconstruction code (LRC), and SHEC	Ok for reads, slow writes; good for static and cold data with front-end cache	Good	High on writes (CPU for parity calculation, extra I/O operations)	Moderate to high, based on number and type of drives, how implemented, extra I/Os for reconstruction	Varies, low overhead when using large number of devices; CPU, I/O, and network overhead.

Table 9.3 Common RAID Characteristics

Besides those shown in table 9.3, other RAID including parity based approaches include 2 (Reed Solomon), 3 (synchronized stripe and dedicated parity) along with others including combinations such as 10, 01, 50, 60 among others.

Similar to legacy parity-based RAID, some erasure code implementations use narrow drive groups while others use larger ones to increase protection and reduce capacity overhead. For example, some larger enterprise-class storage systems (RAID arrays) use narrow 3 + 1 or 4 + 1 RAID 5 or 4 + 2 or 6 + 2 RAID 6, which have higher protection storage capacity overhead and fault=impact footprint.

On the other hand, many smaller mid-range and scale-out storage systems, appliances, and solutions support wide stripes such as 7 + 1, 15 + 1, or larger RAID 5, or 14 + 2 or larger RAID 6. These solutions trade the lower storage capacity protection overhead for risk of a multiple drive failures or impacts. Similarly, some EC implementations use relatively small groups such as 6, 2 (8 drives) or 4, 2 (6 drives), while others use 14, 4 (18 drives), 16, 4 (20 drives), or larger.

Table 9.4 shows options for a number of data devices (k) vs. a number of protect devices (m).

k (data devices)	m (protect devices)	Availability; Resiliency	Space capacity overhead	Normal performance	FTT	Comments; Examples
Narrow	Wide	Very good; Low impact of rebuild	Very high	Good (R/W)	Very good	Trade space for RAS; Larger m vs. k; 1, 1; 1, 2; 2, 2; 4, 5
Narrow	Narrow	Good	Good	Good (R/W)	Good	Use with smaller drive groups; 2, 1; 3, 1; 6, 2
Wide	Narrow	Ok to good; With larger m value	Low as m gets larger	Good (read); Writes can be slow	Ok to good	Smaller m can impact rebuild; 3, 1; 7, 1; 14, 2; 13, 3
Wide	Wide	Very good; Balanced	High	Good	Very good	Trade space for RAS; 2, 2; 4, 4; 8, 4; 18, 6

Table 9.4. Comparing Various Data Device vs. Protect Device Configurations

Note that wide k with no m, such as 4, 0, would not have protection. If you are focused on reducing costs and storage space capacity overhead, then a wider (i.e., more devices) with fewer protect devices might make sense. On the other hand, if performance, availability, and minimal to no impact during rebuild or reconstruction are important, then a narrower drive set, or a smaller ratio of data to protect drives, might make sense.

Also note that the higher or larger the RAID number, or parity scheme, or number of "m" devices in a parity and erasure code group may not be better, likewise smaller may not be better. What is better is which approach meets your specific application performance, availability, capacity, economic (PACE) needs, along with SLO, RTO, RPO requirements. What can also be good is to use hybrid approaches combining different technologies and tools to facilitate both access, availability, durability along with point in time recovery across different layers of granularity (e.g. device, drive, adapter, controller, cabinet, file system, data center, etc).

Some focus on the lower level RAID as the single or primary point of protection, however watch out for that being your single point of failure as well. For example, instead of building a resilient RAID 10 and then neglecting to have adequate higher level access, as well as recovery point protection, combine different techniques including file system protection, snapshots, and backups among others.

Figure 9.14 shows various options and considerations for balancing between too many or too few data (k) and protect (m) devices. The balance is about enabling particular FTT along with PACE attributes and SLO. This means, for some environments or applications, using different failure-tolerant modes ( FTM) in various combinations as well as configurations.

SDDC SDDI Data Protection
Figure 9.14 Comparing various data drive to protection devices

Figure 9.14 top shows no protection overhead (with no protection); the bottom shows 13 data drives and three protection drives in an EC (RS or LRC among others) configuration that could tolerate three devices failing before loss of data or access occurs. In between are various options that can also be scaled up or down across a different number of devices ( HDDs, SSD, or systems).

Some solutions allow the user or administrator to configure the I/O chunk, slabs, shard, or stripe size, for example, from 8 KB to 256 KB to 1 MB (or larger), aligning with application workload and I/O profiles. Other options include the ability to set or disable read-ahead, write-through vs. write-back cache (with battery-protected cache), among other options.

The width or number of devices in a RAID parity or erasure group is based on a combination of factor, including how much data is to be stored and what your FTT objective is, along with spreading out protection overhead. Another consideration is whether you have large or small files and objects.

For example, if you have many small files and a wide stripe, parity, or erasure code set with a large chunk or shard size, you may not have an optimal configuration from a performance perspective.

The following figure shows combing various data protection availability and accessibility technologies including local as well as remote mirroring and replication, along with parity or erasure code (including LRC, RS, SHEC among others) approaches. Instead of just using one technology, a hybrid approach is used leveraging mirror (local on SSD) and replication across sites including asynchronous and synchronous. Replication modes include Asynchronous (time-delayed, eventual consistency) for longer distance, higher latency networks, and synchronous (strong consistency, real-time) for short distance or low-latency networks.

Note that the mirror and replication can be done in software deployed as part of a storage system, appliance or as tin-wrapped software, virtual machine, virtual storage appliance, container or some other deployment mode. Likewise RAID, parity and erasure code software can be deployed and packaged in different ways.

In addition to mirror and replication, solutions are also using parity based including erasure code variations for lower cost, less active data. In other words, the mirror on SSD handles active hot data, as well as any buffering or cache, while lower performance, higher capacity, lower cost data gets de-staged or migrated to a parity erasure code tier. Some vendors, service provider and solutions leveraging variations of the approach in figure 9.15 include Microsoft ( Azure and Windows) and VMware among others.

SDDC SDDI Data Protection
Figure 9.15 Combining various availability data protection techniques

A tradecraft skill is finding the balance, knowing your applications, the data, and how the data is allocated as well as used, then leveraging that insight and your experience to configure to meet your application PACE requirements.

Consider:

Number of drives (width) in a group, along with protection copies or parity
Balance rebuild performance impact and time vs. storage space overhead savings
Ability to mix and match various devices in different drive groups in a system
Management interface, tools, wizards, GUIs, CLIs, APIs, and plug-ins
Different approaches for various applications and environments
Context of a physical RAID array, system, appliance, or solution vs. logical

Erasure Codes (EC)

Erasure Codes ( EC) combines advanced protection with variable space capacity overhead over many drives, devices, or systems using large parity chunks, shards compared to traditional parity RAID approaches. There are many variations of EC as well as parity based approaches, some are tied to Reed Solomon (RS) codes while others use different approaches.

Note that some EC are optimized for reducing the overhead and cost of storing data (e.g. less space capacity) for inactive, or primarily read data. Likewise, some EC or variations are optimized for performance of reads/writes as well as reducing overhead of rebuild, reconstructions, repairs with least impact. Which EC or parity derivative approach is best depends on what you are trying to do or impact to avoid.

Reed Solomon (RS) codes

Reed Solomon (RS) codes are advanced parity protection mathematical algorithm technique that works well on large amounts of data providing protection with lower space capacity overhead depending on how configured. Many Erasure Codes (EC) are based on derivatives of RS. Btw, did you know (or remember) that RAID 2 (rarely used with few legacy implementations) has ties to RS codes? Here are some additional links to RS including via Backblaze, CMU, and Dr Dobbs.

Local Reconstruction Codes (LRC)

Microsoft leverages LRC in Azure as well as in Windows Servers. LRC are optimized for a balance of protection, space capacity savings, normal performance as well as reducing impact on running workloads during a repair, rebuild or reconstruction. One of the tradeoffs that LRC uses is to add some amount of additional space capacity in exchange for normal and abnormal (e.g. during repair) performance improvements. Where RS, EC and other parity based derivatives typically use a (k,m) nomenclature (e.g. data, protection), LRC adds an extra variable to help with constructions (k,m,n).

Some might argue that LRC are not as space efficient as other EC, RS or parity derivative variations of which the counter argument can be that some of those approaches are not as performance effective. In other words, everything is not the same, one approach does not or should not have to be applied to all, unless of course your preferred solution approach can only do one thing.

Additional LRC related material includes:

(PDF by Microsoft) LRC Erasure Coding in Windows Storage Spaces
(Microsoft Usenix Paper) Best Paper Award Erasure Coding in Azure
(Via MSDN Shared) Azure Storage Erasure Coding with LRC
(Via Microsoft) Azure Storage with Strong Consistency
(Paper via Microsoft) 23rd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP)
(Microsoft) Erasure Coding in Azure with LRC
(Via Microsoft) Good collection of EC, RS, LRC and related material
(Via Microsoft) Storage Spaces Fault Tolerance
(Via Microsoft) Better Way To Store Data with EC/LRC
(Via Microsoft) Volume resiliency and efficiency in Storage Spaces

Shingled Erasure Code (SHEC)

Shingled Erasure Codes (SHEC) are a variation of Erasure Codes leveraging shingled overlay approach similar to what is being used in Shingled Magnetic Recording (SMR) on some HDDs. Ceph has been an early promoter of SHEC, read more here, and here.

Replication and Mirroring

Replication and Mirroring create a mirror or replica copy of data across different devices, systems, servers, clusters, sites or regions. In addition to keeping a copy, mirror and replication can occur on different time intervals such as real-time ( synchronous) and time deferred (Asynchronous). Besides time intervals, mirror and replication are implemented in different locations at various altitudes or stack layers from lower level hardware adapter or storage systems and appliances, to operating systems, hypervisors, software defined storage, volume managers, databases and applications themselves.

Covered in more detail in chapters 5 and 6, synchronous provides real-time, strong consistency, although high-latency local or remote interfaces can impact primary application performance. Note there is a common myth that high-latency networks are only long distance when in fact some local networks can also be high-latency. Asynchronous (also discussed in more depth in chapters 5 and 6) enables local and remote high-latency communications to be spanned, facilitating protection over a distance without impacting primary application performance, albeit with lower consistency, time deferred, also known as eventual consistency.

Mirroring (also known as RAID 1) and replication creates a copy (a mirror or replica) across two or more storage targets (devices, systems, file systems, cloud storage service, applications such as a database). The reason for using mirrors is to provide a faster (for normal running and during recovery) failure-tolerant mode for enabling availability, resiliency, and data protection, particularly for active data.

Figure 9.10 shows general replication scenarios. Illustrated are two basic mirror scenarios: At the top, a device, volume, file system, or object bucket is replicated to two other targets (i.e., three-way or three replicas); At the bottom, is a primary storage device using a hybrid replica and dispersal technique where multiple data chunks, shards, fragments, or extents are spread across devices in different locations.

SDDC SDDI Mirror and Replication
Figure 9.10 Various Mirror and Replication Approaches

Mirroring and replication can be done locally inside a system (server, storage system, or appliance), within a cabinet, rack, or data center, or remotely, including at cloud services. Mirroring can also be implemented inside a server in software or using RAID and HBA cards to off-load the processing.

SDDC SDDI Mirror Replication Techniques
Figure 9.11 Mirror or Replication combined with Snapshots or other PiT protection

Keep in mind that mirroring and replication by themselves are not a replacement for backups, versions, snapshots, or another recovery point, time-interval (time-gap) protection. The reason is that replication and mirroring maintain a copy of the source at one or more destination targets. What this means is that anything that changes on the primary source also gets applied to the target destination (mirror or replica). However, it also means that anything changed, deleted, corrupted, or damaged on the source is also impacted on the mirror replica (assuming the mirror or replicas were or are mounted and accessible on-line).

implementations in various locations (hardware, software, cloud) include:

Applications and databases such as SQL Server, Oracle among others
File systems, volume manager, Software-defined storage managers
Third-party storage software utilities and drivers
Operating systems and hypervisors
Hardware adapter and off-load devices
Storage systems and appliances
Cloud and managed services

Where To Learn More

Continue reading additional posts in this series of Data Infrastructure Data Protection fundamentals and companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) book, as well as the following links covering technology, trends, tools, techniques, tradecraft and tips.

Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC
Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)
Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest
Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined
Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends
Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk
Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)
Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More
Revisiting RAID storage remains relevant and resources
Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf
Data Protection Diaries series
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

There are various data protection technologies, tools and techniques for enabling availability of information resources including applications, data and data Infrastructure resources. Likewise there are many different aspects of RAID as well as context from legacy hardware based to cloud, virtual, container and software defined. In other words, not all RAID is in legacy storage systems, and there is a lot of FUD about RAID in general that is probably actually targeted more at specific implementations or products.

There are different approaches to meet various needs from stripe for performance with no protection by itself, to mirror and replication, as well as many parity approaches from legacy to erasure codes including Reed Solomon based as well as LRC among others. Which approach is best depends on your objects including balancing performance, availability, capacity economic (PACE) for normal running behavior as well as during faults and failure modes.

Get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials here at Amazon.com, at CRC Press among other locations and learn more here. Meanwhile, continue reading with the next post in this series, Part 4 Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions).

Ok, nuff said, for now.

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.

November 26, 2017November 26, 2023

Data Protection Fundamentals Recovery Points (Backup, Snapshots, Versions)

Enabling Recovery Points (Backup, Snapshots, Versions)

Updated 1/7/18

Companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 26, 2017

This is Part 4 of a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Part 3 Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes (EC) including LRC, and click here to view the next post Part 5 Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest.

In this post the focus is around Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions) from Chapter 10 .

Figure 1.5 Data Infrastructures and other IT Infrastructure Layers

Enabling RPO (Archive, Backup, CDP, PIT Copy, Snapshots, Versions)

SDDC SDDI Data Protection Points of Interests
Figure 9.5 Data Protection and Availability Points of Interest

RAID, including parity and erasure code (EC) along with mirroring and replication, provide availability and accessibility. These by themselves, however, are not a replacement for backup (or other point in time data protection) to support recovery points. For complete data protection the solution is to combine resiliency technology with point-in-time tools enabling availability and facilitate going back to a previous consistency time.

Recovery point protection is implemented within applications using checkpoint and consistency points as well as log and journal switches or flush. Other places where recovery-point protection occurs include in middleware, database, key-value stores and repositories, file systems, volume managers, and software-defined storage, in addition to hypervisors, operating systems, containers, utilities, storage systems, appliances, and service providers.

In addition to where, there are also different approaches, technologies, techniques, and tools, including archive, backup, continuous data protection, point-in-time copies, or clones such as snapshots, along with versioning.

Common recovery point Data Protection related terms, technologies, techniques, trends and topics pertaining to data protection from availability and access to durability and consistency to point in time protection and security are shown below.

Time interval protection for example with Snapshot, backup/restore, point in time copies, checkpoints, consistency point among other approaches can be scheduled or dynamic. They can also vary by how they copy data for example full copy or clone, or incremental and differential (e.g. what has changed) among other techniques to support 4 3 2 1 data protection. Other variations include how many concurrent copies, snapshots or versions can take place, along with how many stored and for how long (retention).

Additional Data Protection Terms

Copy Data Management ( CDM) as its name implies is associated managing various data copies for data protection, analytics among other activities. This includes being able to identify what copies exist (along with versions), where they are located among other insight.

Data Protection Management ( DPM) as its name implies is the management of data protection from backup/restore, to snapshots and other recovery point in time protection, to replication. This includes configuration, monitoring, reporting, analytics, insight into what is protected, how well it is protected, versions, retention, expiration, disposition, access control among other items.

Number of 9s Availability – Availability (access or durability or access and availability) can be expressed in number of nines. For example, 99.99 (four nines), indicates the level of availability (downtime does not exceed) objective. For example, 99.99% availability means that in a 24-hour day there could be about 9 seconds of downtime, or about 52 minutes and 34 seconds per year. Note that numbers can vary depending on whether you are using 30 days for a month vs. 365/12 days, or 52 weeks vs. 365/7 for weeks, along with rounding and number decimal places as shown in Table 9.1.

Uptime	24-hour Day	Week	Month	Year
99	0 h 14 m 24 s	1 h 40 m 48 s	7 h 18 m 17 s	3 d 15 h 36 m 15 s
99.9	0 h 01 m 27 s	0 h 10 m 05 s	0 h 43 m 26 s	0 d 08 h 45 m 36 s
99.99	0 h 00 m 09 s	0 h 01 m 01 s	0 h 04 m 12 s	0 d 00 h 52 m 34 s
99.999	0 h 00 m 01s	0 h 00 m 07 s	0 h 00 m 36 s	0 d 00 h 05 m 15 s

Table 9.1 Number of 9’s Availability Shown as Downtime per Time Interval

Service Level Objectives SLOs are metrics and key performance indicators (KPI) that guide meeting performance, availability, capacity, and economic targets. For example, some number of 9’s availability or durability, a specific number of transactions per second, or recovery and restart of applications. Service-level agreement (SLA) – SLA specifies various service level objectives such as PACE requirements including RTO and RPO, among others that define the expected level of service and any remediation for loss of service. SLA can also specify availability objectives as well as penalties or remuneration should SLO be missed.

Recovery Time Objective RTO is how much time is allowed before applications, data, or data infrastructure components need to be accessible, consistent, and usable. An RTO = 0 (zero) means no loss of access or service disruption, i.e., continuous availability. One example is an application end-to-end RTO of 4 hours, meaning that all components (application server, databases, file systems, settings, associated storage, networks) must be restored, rolled back, and restarted for use in 4 hours or less.

Another RTO example is component level for different data infrastructure layers as well as cumulative or end to end. In this scenario, the 4 hours includes time to recover, restart, and rebuild a server, application software, storage devices, databases, networks, and other items. In this scenario, there are not 4 hours available to restore the database, or 4 hours to restore the storage, as some time is needed for all pieces to be verified along with their dependencies.

Data Loss Access DLA occurs when data still exists, is consistent, durable, and safe, but it cannot be accessed due to network, application, or other problem. Note that the inverse is data that can be accessed, but it is damaged. Data Loss Event DLE is an incident that results in loss or damage to data. Note that some context is needed in a scenario in which data is stolen via a copy but the data still exists, vs. the actual data is taken and is now missing (no copies exist). Also note that there can be different granularity as well as scope of DLE for example all data or just some data lost (or damaged). Data Loss Prevention DLP encompasses the activities, techniques, technologies, tools, best practices, and tradecraft skills used to protect data from DLE or DLA.

Point in Time (PiT) such as PiT copy or data protection refers to a recovery or consistency point where data can be restored from or to (i.e., RPO), such as from a copy, snapshot, backup, sync, or clone. Essentially, as its name implies, it is the state of the data at that particular point in time.

Recovery Point Objective RPO is the point in time to which data needs to be recoverable (i.e., when it was last protected). Another way of looking at RPO is how much data you can afford to lose, with RPO = 0 (zero) meaning no data loss, or, for example, RPO = 5 minutes being up to 5 minutes of lost data.

SDDC SDDI RTO RPO
Figure 9.8 Recovery Points (point in time to recover from), and Recovery Time (how long recovery takes)

Frequency refers to how often and on what time interval protection is performed.

4 3 2 1 and 3 2 1 data protection rule
Figure 9.4 Data Protection 4 3 2 1 and 3 2 1 rule

In the context of the 4 3 2 1 rule, enabling RPO is associated with durability, meaning number of copies and versions. Simply having more copies is not sufficient because if they are all corrupted, damaged, infected, or contain deleted data, or data with latent nefarious bugs or root kits, then they could all be bad. The solution is to have multiple versions and copies of the versions in different locations to provided data protection to a given point in time.

Timeline and delta or recovery points are when data can be recovered from to move forward. They are consistent points in the context of what is/was protected. Figure 10.1 shows on the left vertical axis different granularity, along with protection and consistency points that occur over time (horizontal axis). For example, data “Hello” is written to storage (A) and then (B), an update is made “Oh Hello,” followed by (C) full backup, clone, and master snapshot or a gold copy is made.

SDDC SDDI Data Protection Recovery consistency points
Figure 10.1 Recovery and consistency points

Next, data is changed (D) to “Oh, Hello,” followed by, at time-1 (E), an incremental backup, copy, snapshot. At (F) a full copy, the master snapshot, is made, which now includes (H) “Hello” and “Oh, Hello.” Note that the previous full contained “Hello” and “Oh Hello,” while the new full (H) contains “Hello” and “Oh, Hello.” Next (G) data is changed to “Oh, Hello there,” then changed (I) to “Oh, Hello there I’m here.” Next (J) another incremental snapshot or copy is made, date is changed (K) to “Oh, Hello there I’m over here,” followed by another incremental (L), and other incremental (M) made a short time later.

At (N) there is a problem with the file, object, or stored item requiring a restore, rollback, or recovery from a previous point in time. Since the incremental (M) was too close to the recovery point (RP) or consistency point (CP), and perhaps damaged or its consistency questionable, it is decided to go to (O), the previous snapshot, copy, or backup. Alternatively, if needed, one can go back to (P) or (Q).

Note that simply having multiple copies and different versions is not enough for resiliency; some of those copies and versions need to be dispersed or placed in different systems or locations away from the source. How many copies, versions, systems, and locations are needed for your applications will depend on the applicable threat risks along with associated business impact.

The solution is to combine techniques for enabling copies with versions and point-in-time protection intervals. PIT intervals enable recovering or access to data back in time, which is a RPO. That RPO can be an application, transactional, system, or other consistency point, or some other time interval. Some context here is that there are gaps in protection coverage, meaning something was not protected.

A good data protection gap is a time interval enabling RPO, or simply a physical and logical break and the distance between the active or protection copy, and alternate versions and copies. For example, a gap in coverage (e.g. bad data protection gap) means something was not protected.

A protection air or distance gap is having one of those versions and copies on another system, in a different location and not directly accessible. In other words, if you delete, or data gets damaged locally, the protection copies are safe. Furthermore, if the local protection copies are also damaged, an air or distance gap means that the remote or alternate copies, which may be on-line or off-line, are also safe.

Good Data Protection Gaps
Figure 9.9 Air Gaps and Data Protection

Figure 10.2 shows on the left various data infrastructure layers moving from low altitude (lower in the stack) host servers or bare metal (BM) physical machine (PM) and up to higher levels with applications. At each layer or altitude, there are different hardware and software components to protect, with various policy attributes. These attributes, besides PACE, FTT, RTO, RPO, and SLOs, include granularity (full or incremental), consistency points, coverage, frequency (when protected), and retention.

SDDC SDDI Data Protection Granularity
Figure 10.2 Protecting data infrastructure granularity and enabling resiliency at various stack layers (or altitude)

Also shown in the top left of Figure 10.2 are protections for various data infrastructure management tools and resources, including active directory (AD), Azure AD (AAD), domain controllers (DC), group policy objects (GPO) and organizational units (OU), network DNS, routing and firewall, among others. Also included are protecting management systems such as VMware vCenter and related servers, Microsoft System Center, OpenStack, as well as data protection tools along with their associated configurations, metadata, and catalogs.

The center of Figure 10.2 lists various items that get protected along with associated technologies, techniques, and tools. On the right-hand side of Figure 10.2 is an example of how different layers get protected at various times, granularity, and what is protected.

For example, the PM or host server BIOS and UEFI as well as other related settings seldom change, so they do not have to be protected as often. Also shown on the right of Figure 10.2 are what can be a series of full and incremental backups, as well as differential or synthetic ones.

Figure 10.3 is a variation of Figure 10.2 showing on the left different frequencies and intervals, with a granularity of focus or scope of coverage on the right. The middle shows how different layers or applications and data focus have various protection intervals, type of protection (full, incremental, snap, differentials), along with retention, as well as some copies to keep.

SDDC SDDI Data Protection Granularity
Figure 10.3 Protecting different focus areas with various granularities

Protection in Figures 10.2 and 10.3 for the PM could be as simple as documentation of what settings to configure, versions, and other related information. A hypervisors may have changes, such as patches, upgrades, or new drivers, more frequently than a PM. How you go about protecting may involve reinstalling from your standard or custom distribution software, then applying patches, drivers, and settings.

You might also have a master copy of a hypervisors on a USB thumb drive or another storage device that can be cloned, customized with the server name, IP address, log location, and other information. Some backup and data protection tools also provide protection of hypervisors (or containers and cloud machine instances) in addition to the virtual machine (VM), guest operating systems, applications, and data.

The point is that as you go up the stack, higher in altitude (layers), the granularity and frequency of protection increases. What this means is that you may have more frequent smaller protection copies and consistency points higher up at the application layer, while lower down, less frequent, yet larger full image, volume, or VM protection, combining different tools, technology, and techniques.

Where To Learn More

Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC
Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)
Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest
Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined
Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends
Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk
Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)
Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More
Data Protection Diaries series
Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

Everything is not the same across different environments, data centers, data infrastructures, applications and their workloads (along with data, and its value). Likewise there are different approaches for enabling data protection to meet various SLO needs including RTO, RPO, RAS, FTT and PACE attributes among others. What this means is that complete data protection requires using different new (and old) tools, technologies, trends, services (e.g. cloud) in new ways. This also means leveraging existing and new techniques, learning from lessons of the past to prevent making the same errors.

RAID (mirror, replicate, parity including erasure codes) regardless of where and how implemented (hardware, software, legacy, virtual, cloud) by itself is not a replacement for backup, they need to be combined with recovery point protection of some type (backup, checkpoint, consistency point, snapshots). Also protection should occur at multiple levels of granularity (device, system, application, database, table) to meet various SLO requirements as well as different time intervals enabling 4 3 2 1 data protection.

Keep in mind what is it that you are protecting, why are you protecting it and against what, what is likely to happen, also if something happens what will its impact be, what are your SLO requirements, as well as minimize impact to normal operating, as well as during failure scenarios. For example do you need to have a full system backup to support recovery of an individual database table, or can that table be protected and recovered via checkpoints, snapshots or other fine-grained routine protection? Everything is not the same, why treat and protect everything the same way?

Get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials here at Amazon.com, at CRC Press among other locations and learn more here. Meanwhile, continue reading with the next post in this series, Part 5 Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 26, 2017November 26, 2023

Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Point In Time Granularity Points of Interest

Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Point In Time Granularity

Companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 26, 2017

This is Part 5 of a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Part 4 Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions), and click here to view the next post Part 6 Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined.

In this post the focus is around Data Protection points of granularity, addressing different layers and stack altitude (higher application and lower system level) Chapter 10 . among others.

Point-in-Time Protection Granularity Points of Interest

SDDC SDDI Data Protection Recovery consistency points
Figure 10.1 Recovery and consistency points

Figure 10.1 above is a refresh from previous posts about the role and importance of having various recovery points at different time intervals to enable data protection (and restoration). Building upon figure 10.1, figure 10.5 looks at different granularity of where and how data should be protected. Keep in mind that everything is not the same, so why treat everything the same with the same type of protection?

Figure 10.5 shows backup and Data Protection focus, granularity, and coverage. For example, at the top left is less frequent protection of the operating system, hypervisors, and BIOS, UEFI settings. At the middle left is volume, or device level protection (full, incremental, differential), along with various views on the right ranging from protecting everything, to different granularity such as file system, database, database logs and journals, and operating system (OS) and application software, along with settings.

SDDC SDDI Different Protection Granularity
Figure 10.5 Backup and data protection focus, granularity, and coverage

In Figure 10.5, note that the different recovery point focus and granularity also take into consideration application and data consistency (as well as checkpoints), along with different frequencies and coverage (e.g. full, partial, incremental, incremental forever, differential) as well as retention.

Tip – Some context is needed about object backup and backing up objects, which can mean different things. As mentioned elsewhere, objects refer to many different things, including cloud and object storage buckets, containers, blobs, and objects accessed via S3 or Swift, among other APIs. There are also database objects and entities, which are different from cloud or object storage objects.

Another context factor is that an object backup can refer to protecting different systems, servers, storage devices, volumes, and entities that collectively comprise an application such as accounting, payroll, or engineering, vs. focusing on the individual components. An object backup may, in fact, be a collection of individual backups, PIT copies, and snapshots that combined represent what’s needed to restore an application or system.

On the other hand, the content of a cloud or object storage repository ( buckets, containers, blobs, objects, and metadata) can be backed up, as well as serve as a destination target for protection.

Backups can be cold and off-line like archives, as well as on-line and accessible. However, the difference between the two, besides intended use and scope, is granularity. Archives are intended to be coarser and less frequently accessed, while backups can be more frequently and granular accessed. Can you use a backup for an archive and vice versa? A qualified yes, as an archive could be a master gold copy such as an annual protection copy, in addition to functioning in its role as a compliance and retention copy. Likewise, a full backup set to long-term retention can provide and enable some archive functions.

Where To Learn More

Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC
Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)
Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest
Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined
Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends
Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk
Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)
Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More
Data Protection Diaries series
Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

A common theme in this series as well as in my books, webinars, seminars and general approach to data infrastructures, data centers and IT in general is that everything is not the same, why treat it all the same? What this means is that there are differences across various environments, data centers, data infrastructures, applications, workloads and data. There are also different threat risks scenarios (e.g. threat vectors and attack surface if you like vendor industry talk) to protect against.

Rethinking and modernizing data protection means using new (and old) tools in new ways, stepping back and rethinking what to protect, when, where, why, how, with what. This also means protecting in different ways at various granularity, time intervals, as well as multiple layers or altitude (higher up the application stack, or lower level).

Get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials here at Amazon.com, at CRC Press among other locations and learn more here. Meanwhile, continue reading with the next post in this series, Part 6 Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 26, 2017November 3, 2024

Data Infrastructure Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Security Logical Physical

Data Infrastructure Data Protection Security Logical Physical

Companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 26, 2017

This is Part 6 of a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest, and click here to view the next post Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends.

In this post the focus is around Data Infrastructure and Data Protection security including logical as well as physical from chapter 10 , 13 and 14 among others.

Figure 1.5 Data Infrastructures and other IT Infrastructure Layers

There are many different aspects of security pertaining to data infrastructures that span various technology domains or focus areas from higher level application software to lower level hardware, from legacy to cloud an software-defined, from servers to storage and I/O networking, logical and physical, from access control to intrusion detection, monitoring, analytics, audit, monitoring, telemetry logs, encryption, digital forensics among many others. Security should not be an after thought of something done independent of other data infrastructure, data center and IT functions, rather integrated.

Security Logical Physical Software Defined

Physical security includes locked doors of facilities, rooms, cabinets or devices to prevent un-authorized access. In addition to locked doors, physical security also includes safeguards to prevent accidental or intentional acts that would compromise the contents of a data center including data Infrastructure resources (servers, storage, I/O networks, hardware, software, services) along with the applications that they support.

Logical security includes access controls, passwords, event and access logs, encryption among others technologies, tools, techniques. Figure 10.11 shows various data infrastructure security–related items from cloud to virtual, hardware and software, as well as network services. Also shown are mobile and edge devices as well as network connectivity between on-premises and remote cloud services. Cloud services include public, private, as well as hybrid and virtual private clouds (VPC) along with virtual private networks (VPN). Access logs for telemetry are also used to track who has accessed what and when, as well as success along with failed attempts.

Certificates (public or private), Encryption, Access keys including .pem and RSA files via a service provider or self-generated with a tool such as Putty or ssh-keygen among many others. Some additional terms including Two Factor Authentication (2FA), Subordinated, Role based and delegated management, Single Sign On (SSO), Shared Access Signature (SAS) that is used by Microsoft Azure for access control, Server Side Encryption (SSE) with various Key Management System (KMS) attributes including customer managed or via a third-party.

SDDC SDDI Data Protection Security
Figure 10.11 Various physical and logical security and access controls

Also shown in figure 10.11 are encryption enabled at various layers, levels or altitude that can range from simple to complex. Also shown are iSCSI IPsec and CHAP along with firewalls, Active Directory (AD) along with Azure AD (AAD), and Domain Controllers (DC), Group Policies Objects (GPO) and Roles. Note that firewalls can exist in various locations both in hardware appliances in the network, as well as software defined network (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), as well as higher up.

For example there are firewalls in network routers and appliances, as well as within operating systems, hypervisors, and further up in web blogs platforms such as WordPress among many others. Likewise further up the stack or higher in altitude access to applications as well as database among other resources is also controlled via their own, or in conjunction with other authentication, rights and access control including ADs among others.

A term that might be new for some is attestation which basically means to authenticate and be validated by a server or service, for example, a host guarded server attests with a attestation server. What this means is that the host guarded server (for example Microsoft Windows Server) attests with a known attestation server, that looks at the Windows server comparing it to known good fingerprints, profiles, making sure it is safe to run as a guarded resources.

Other security concerns for legacy and software defined environments include secure boot, shield VMs, host guarded servers and fabrics (networks or clusters of servers) for on-premises, as well as cloud. The following image via Microsoft shows an example of shielded VMs in a Windows Server 2016 environment along with host guarded service (HGS) components ( see how to deploy here).

Via Microsoft.com Guarded Hosts, Shielded VMs and Key Protection Services

Encryption can be done in different locations ranging from data in flight or transit over networks (local and remote), as well as data at rest or while stored. Strength of encryption is determined by different hash and cipher codes algorithms including SHA among others ranging from simple to more complex. The encryption can be done by networks, servers, storage systems, hypervisors, operating systems, databases, email, word and many other tools at granularity from device, file systems, folder, file, database, table, object or blob.

Virtual machine and their virtual disks ( VHDX and VMDK) can be encrypted, as well as migration or movements such as vMotions among other activities. Here are some VMware vSphere encryption topics, along with deep dive previews from VMworld 2016 among other resources here, VMware hardening guides here (NSX, vSphere), and a VMware security white paper (PDF) here.

Other security-related items shown in Figure 10.11 include Lightweight Direct Access Protocol (LDAP), Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS), and Kerberos network authentication. Also shown are VPN along with Secure Socket Layer (SSL) network security, along with security and authentication keys, credentials for SSH remote access including SSO. The cloud shown in figure 10.11 could be your own private using AzureStack, VMware (on-site, or public cloud such as IBM or AWS), OpenStack among others, or a public cloud such as AWS, Azure or Google (among others).

Where To Learn More

Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC
Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)
Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest
Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined
Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends
Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk
Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)
Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More
Data Protection Diaries series
Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

There are many different aspects, as well as layers of security from logical to physical pertaining to data centers, applications and associated data Infrastructure resources, both on-premises and cloud. Security for legacy and software defined environments needs to be integrated as part of various technology domain focus areas, as well as across them including data protection. The above is a small sampling of security related topics with more covered in various chapters of SDDI Essentials as well as in my other books, webinars, presentations and content.

From a data protection focus, security needs to be addressed from a physical who has access to primary and protection copies, what is being protected against and where, as well as who can access logically protection copes, as well as the configuration, settings, certificates involved in data protection. In other words, how are you protecting your data protection environment, configuration and deployment. Data protection copies need to be encrypted to meet regulations, compliance and other requirements to guard against loss or theft, accidental or intentional. Likewise access control needs to be managed including granting of roles, security, authentication, monitoring of access, along with revocation.

Get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials here at Amazon.com, at CRC Press among other locations and learn more here. Meanwhile, continue reading with the next post in this series, Part 7 Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 26, 2017October 18, 2024

Data Protection Diaries Tools Technologies Toolbox Buzzword Bingo Trends

Fundamental Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends

Companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

This is Part 7 of a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Part 6 Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined, and click here to view the next post Part 8 Walking The Data Protection Talk What I Do.

In this post the focus is around Data Protection related tools, technologies, trends as companion to other posts in this series, as well as across various chapters from the SDDI book.

Figure 1.5 Data Infrastructures and other IT Infrastructure Layers

Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends

There are many data Infrastructure related topics, technologies, tools, trends, techniques and tips that pertain to data protection, many of which have been covered in this series of posts already, as well as in the SDDI Essentials book, and elsewhere. The following are some additional related data Infrastructure data protection topics, tools, technologies.

Buzzword Bingo is a popular industry activity involving terms, trends, tools and more, read more here, here, and here. The basic idea of buzzword bingo is when somebody starts mentioning lots of buzzwords, buzz terms, buzz trends at some point just say bingo. Sometimes you will get somebody who asks what that means, while others will know, perhaps get the point to move on to what’s relevant vs. talking the talk or showing how current they are on industry activity, trends and terms.

Just as everything is not the same across different environments, there are various size and focus from hyper-scale clouds and managed service providers (MSP) server (and storage along with applications focus), smaller and regional cloud, hosting and MSPs, as well as large enterprise, small medium enterprise (SME), small medium business (SMB), remote office branch office (ROBO), small office home office (SOHO), prosumer, consumer and client or edge. Sometimes you will hear server vs. edge or client focus, thus context is important.

Data protection just like data infrastructures span servers, storage, I/O networks, hardware, software, clouds, containers, virtual, hypervisors and related topics. Otoh, some might view data protection as unique to a particular technology focus area or domain. For example, I once had backup vendor tell me that backups and data protection was not a storage topic, can you guess which vendor did not get recommend for data protection of data stored on storage?

Data gets protected to different target media, mediums or services including HDDs, SSD, tape, cloud, bulk and object storage among others in various format from native to encapsulated in save sets, zips, tar ball among others.

Bulk storage can be on-site, on-premises low-cost tape, disk (file, block or object) as well as off-site including cloud services such as AWS S3 (buckets and objects), Microsoft Azure (containers and blobs), Google among others using various Access ( Protocols, Personalities, Front-end, Back-end) technologies. Which type of data protection storage medium, location or service is best depends on what you are trying to do, along with other requirements.

SDDC SDDI data center data protection toolbox
Data Protection Toolbox

Figure 3.18 Generic Object (and Blob) architecture with Buckets (and Containers)

Object Storage

Before discussing Object Storage lets take a step back and look at some context that can clarify some confusion around the term object. The word object has many different meanings and context, both inside of the IT world as well as outside. Context matters with the term object such as a verb being a thing that can be seen or touched as well as a person or thing of action or feeling directed towards.

Besides a person, place or physical thing, an object can be a software defined data structure that describes something. For example, a database record describing somebody’s contact or banking information, or a file descriptor with name, index ID, date and time stamps, permissions and access control lists along with other attributes or metadata. Another example is an object or blob stored in a cloud or object storage system repository, as well as an item in a hypervisor, operating system, container image or other application.

Besides being a verb, object can also be a noun such as disapproval or disagreement with something or someone. From an IT context perspective, object can also refer to a programming method (e.g. object oriented programming [oop], or Java [among other environments] objects and class’s) and systems development in addition to describing entities with data structures.

In other words, a data structure describes an object that can be a simple variable, constant, complex descriptor of something being processed by a program, as well as a function or unit of work. There are also objects unique or with context to specific environments besides Java or databases, operating systems, hypervisors, file systems, cloud and other things.

Figure 3.19 AWS S3 Object storage example, objects left and descriptive names on right

The role of object storage (view more at www.objectstoragecenter.com) is to provide low-cost, scalable capacity, durable availability of data including data protection copies on-premises or off-site. Note that not all object storage solutions or services are the same, some are immutable with write once read many (WORM) like attributes, while others non-immutable meaning that they can be not only appended to, also updated to page or block level granularity.

Also keep in mind that some solutions and services refer to items being stored as objects while others as blobs, and the name space those are part of as a bucket or container. Note that context is important not to confuse an object container with a docker, kubernetes or micro services container.

Many applications and storage systems as well as appliances support as back-end targets cloud access using AWS S3 API (of AWS S3 service or other solutions), as well as OpenStack Switch API among others. There are also many open source and third-party tools for working with cloud storage including objects and blobs. Learn more about object storage, cloud storage at www.objectstoragecenter.com as well as in chapters 3, 4, 13 and 14 in SDDI Essentials book.

S3 Simple Storage Service

Simple Storage Service ( S3) is the Amazon Web Service (AWS) cloud object storage service that can be used for bulk and other storage needs. The S3 service can be accessed from within AWS as well as externally via different tools. AWS S3 supports large number of buckets and objects across different regions and availability zones. Objects can be stored in a hierarchical directory structure format for compatibility with existing file systems or as a simple flat name space.

Context is important with data protection and S3 which can mean the access API, or AWS service. Likewise context is important in that some solutions, software and services support S3 API access as part of their front-end (e.g. how servers or clients access their service), as well as a back-end target (what they can store data on).

Additional AWS S3 (service) and related resources include:

Data Infrastructure Environments and Applications

Data Infrastructure environments that need to be protected include legacy, software defined (SDDC, SDDI, SDS), cloud, virtual and container based, as well as clustered, scale-out, converged Infrastructure (CI), hyper-converged Infrastructure (HCI) among others. In addition to data protection related topics already converged in the posts in this series (as well as those to follow), a related topic is Data Footprint Reduction ( DFR). DFR comprises several different technologies and techniques including archiving, compression, compaction, deduplication (dedupe), single instance storage, normalization, factoring, zip, tiering and thin provisioning among many others.

Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) Including Dedupe

There is a long-term relationship with data protection and DFR in that to reduce the impact of storing more data, traditional techniques such as compression and compaction have been used, along with archive and more recently dedupe among others. In the Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book there is an entire chapter on DFR ( chapter 11), as well as related topics in chapters 8 and 13 among others. For those interested in DFR and related topics, there is additional material in my books Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), along with in The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), as well as various posts on StorageIOblog.com and storageio.com. Figure 11.4 is from Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials showing big picture of various places where DFR can be implemented along with different technologies, tools and techniques.

Figure 11.4 Various points of interest where DFR techniques and technology can be applied

Just as everything is not the same, there are different DFR techniques along with implementations to address various application workload and data performance, availability, capacity, economics (PACE) needs. Where is the best location for DFR that depends on your objectives as well as what your particular technology can support. However in general, I recommend putting DFR as close to where the data is created and stored as possible to maximize its effectiveness which can be on the host server. That however also means leveraging DFR techniques downstream where data gets sent to be stored or protected. In other words, a hybrid DFR approach as a companion to data protection should use various techniques, technologies in different locations. Granted, your preferred vendor might only work in a given location or functionality so you can pretty much guess what the recommendations will be ;) .

Tips, Recommendations and Considerations

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), appendices, as well as tips can be found here.

General action items, tips, considerations and recommendations include:

- Everything is not the same; different applications with SLO, PACE, FTT, FTM needs
- Understand the 4 3 2 1 data protection rule and how to implement it.
- Balance rebuild performance impact and time vs. storage space overhead savings.
- Use different approaches for various applications and environments.
- What is best for somebody else may not be best for you and your applications.
- You cant go forward in the future after a disaster if you cant go back
- Data protection is a shared responsibility between vendors, service providers and yourself
- There are various aspects to data protection and data Infrastructure management

Where To Learn More

- Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals
- Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals
- Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC
- Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)
- Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest
- Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined
- Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends
- Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk
- Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)
- Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More
- Data Protection Diaries series
- Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf
- Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

There are many different buzzword, buzz terms, buzz trends pertaining to data infrastructure and data protection. These technologies span legacy and emerging, software-defined, cloud, virtual, container, hardware and software. Key point is what technology is best fit for your needs and applications, as well as how to use the tools in different ways (e.g. skill craft techniques and tradecraft). Keep context in mind when looking at and discussing different technologies such as objects among others.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 26, 2017November 26, 2023

Data Protection Diaries Fundamentals Walking The Data Protection Talk

Data Protection Diaries Walking The Data Protection Talk

Companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 26, 2017

This is Part 8 of a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends, and click here to view the next post who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools).

In this post the focus is around what I (and Server StorageIO) does for Data Protection besides just talking the talk and is a work in progress that is being updated over time with additional insights.

Walking The Data Protection Talk What I Do

A couple of years back I did the first post as part of the Data Protection Diaries series ( view here), that included the following image showing some data protection needs and requirements, as well as what being done, along with areas for improvement. Part of what I and Server StorageIO does involves consulting (strategy, design, assessment), advising and other influencers activities (e.g. blog, write articles, create reports, webinars, seminars, videos, podcasts) pertaining to data Infrastructure topics as well as data protection.

What this means is knowing about the trends, tools, technologies, what’s old and new, who’s doing what, what should be in the data protection toolbox, as well as how to use those for different scenarios. Its one thing to talk the talk, however I also prefer to walk the talk including eating my own dog food applying various techniques, approaches, tools and technologies discussed.

The following are from a previous Data Protection Diaries post where I discuss my data protection needs (and wants) some of which have evolved since then. Note the image on the left is my Livescribe Echo digital pen and paper tablet. On the right is an example of the digital image created and imported into my computer from the Livescribe. In other words, Im able to protect my hand written notes, diagrams and figures.

Via my Livescribe Echo digital pen ( get your Livescribe here at Amazon.com)

My Environment and data protection is always evolving, some based on changing projects, others that are more stable. Likewise the applications along with data are varied after all, everything is not the same. My data protection includes snapshots, replication, mirror, sync, versions, backup, archive, RAID, erasure code among others technologies, tools, and techniques.

Applications range from desktop, office, email, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, video, audio and related items in support of day-to-day activities. Then there are items part of various projects that range from physical to virtual, cloud and container leveraging various tools. This means having protection copies (sync, backup, snapshots, consistency points) of virtual machines, physical machine instances, applications and databases such as SQL Server among many others. Other application workloads include web, word press blog and email among others.

The Server StorageIO environment consists of a mix of legacy on-premises technologies from servers, storage, hardware, software, networks, tools as well as software defined virtual (e.g. VMware, Hyper-V, Docker among others), as well as cloud. The StorageIO data Infrastructure environment consists of dedicated private server (DPS) that I have had for several years now that supports this blog as well as other sites and activity. I also have a passive standby site used for testing of the WordPress based blog on an AWS Lightsail server. I use tools such as Updraft Plus Premium to routinely create a complete data protection view (database, plugins, templates, settings, configuration, core) of my WordPress site (runs on DPS) that is stored in various locations, including at AWS.

Some of my past data protection requirements (they have evolved)

Currently the Lightsail Virtual Private Server (VPS) is in passive mode, however plans are to enable it as a warm or active standby fail over site for some of the DPS functions. One of the tools I have for monitoring and insight besides those in WordPress and the DPS are AWS Route 53 alerts that I have set up to monitor endpoints. AWS Route 53 is a handy resource for monitoring your endpoints such as a website, blog among other things and have it notify you, or take action including facilitating DNS fail over if needed. For now, Im simply using Route 53 besides as a secondary DNS as a notification tool.

Speaking of AWS, I have compute instances in Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) along with associated Elastic Block Storage (EBS) volumes as well as their snapshots. I also have AWS S3 buckets in different regions that are on various tiers from standard to infrequent access (IA), as well as some data on Glacier. Data from my DPS at Bluehost gets protected to a AWS S3 bucket that I can access from AWS EC2, as well as via other locations including Microsoft Azure as needed.

Some on-premises data also gets protected to AWS S3 (as well as to elsewhere) using various tools, for different granularity, frequency, access and retention. After all, everything is not the same, why treat it the same. Some of the data protected to AWS S3 buckets is in native format (e.g. they appear as objects to S3 or object enabled applications), as well as file to file based applications with appropriate tools.

Other data that is also protected to AWS S3 from different data protection or backup tools are stored in vendor neutral or vendor specific save set, zip, tar ball or other formats. In other words, I need the tool or compatible tool that knows the format of the saved data to retrieve individual data files, items or objects. Note that this is similar to storing data on tape, HDDs, SSD or other media in native format vs. in some type of encapsulate save set or other format.

In addition to protecting data to AWS, I also have data at Microsoft Azure among other locations. Other locations include non-cloud based off-site where encrypted removable media is periodically taken to a safe secure place as a master, gold in case of major emergency, ransomeware copy.

Why not just rely on cloud copies?

Simple, I can pull individual files or relatively small amounts of data back from the cloud sometimes faster (or easier) than from on-site copies, let alone my off-site, off-line, air gap copies. On the other hand, if I need to restore large amounts of data, without a fast network, it can be quicker to get the air gap off-line, off-site copy, do the large restore, then apply incremental or changed data via cloud. In other a hybrid approach.

Now a common question I get is why not just do one or the other and save some money. Good point, I would save some money, however by doing the above among other things, they are part of being able to test, try new and different things, gain insight, experience not to mention walk the talk vs. simply talking the talk.

Of course Im always looking for ways to streamline to make my data protection more efficient, as well as effective (along with remove complexity and costs).

Everything is not the same, so why treat it all the same with common SLO, RTO, RPO and retention?
Likewise why treat and store all data the same way, on the same tiers of technology
Gain insight and awareness into environment, applications, workloads, PACE needs
Applications, data, systems or devices are protected with different granularity and frequency
Apply applicable technology and tools to the task at hand
Any data I have in cloud has a copy elsewhere, likewise, any data on-premises has a copy in the cloud or elsewhere
I implement the 4 3 2 1 rule by having multiple copies, versions, data in different locations, on and off-line including cloud
From a security standpoint, many different things are implemented on a logical as well as physical basis including encryption
Ability to restore data as well as applications or image instances locally as well as into cloud environments
Leverage different insight and awareness, reporting, analytics and monitoring tools
Mix of local storage configured with different RAID and other protection
Test, find, fix, remediate improve the environment including leveraging lessons learned

Where To Learn More

Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC
Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)
Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest
Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined
Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends
Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk
Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)
Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More
Data Protection Diaries series
Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

Everything is not the same, thats why in my environment I use different technologies, tools and techniques to protect my data. This also means having different RTO, RPO across various applications, data and systems as well as devices. Data that is more important has more copies, versions in different locations as well as occurring more frequently as part of 4 3 2 1 data protection. Other data that does not change as frequently, or time sensitive have alternate RTO and RPO along with corresponding frequency of protection.

Get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials here at Amazon.com, at CRC Press among other locations and learn more here. Meanwhile, continue reading with the next post in this series Part 9 who’s Doing What (Toolbox Technology Tools).

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 26, 2017November 26, 2023

Data Protection Diaries Fundamentals Who Is Doing What Toolbox Technology Tools

Data Protection Toolbox Whos Doing What Technology Tools

Updated 1/17/2018

Data protection toolbox is a companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 26, 2017

This is Part 9 of a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Part 8 Walking The Data Protection Talk, and click here to view the next post Part 10 Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More.

In this post the focus is around Data Protection who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools).

Figure 1.5 Data Infrastructures and other IT Infrastructure Layers

who’s Doing What (Toolbox Technology Tools)

SDDC SDDI data center data protection toolbox
Data Protection Toolbox

Note that this post is evolving with additional tools, technologies, techniques, hardware, software, services being added over time along with applicable industry links.

The following are a sampling of some hardware, software, solution and component vendors along with service providers involved with data protection from RAID, Erasure Codes (EC) to snapshots, backup, BC, BR, DR, archive, security, cloud, bulk object storage, HDDs, SSD, tape among others including buzzword (and buzz term trends) bingo. Acronis, Actifio, Arcserve, ATTO, AWS, Backblaze, Barracuda, Broadcom, Caringo, Chelsio (offload), Code42/Crashplan, Cray, Ceph, Cisco, Cloudian, Cohesity, Compuverde, Commvault, Datadog, Datrium, Datos IO, DDN, Dell EMC, Druva, E8, Elastifile, Exagrid, Excelero, Fujifilm, Fujutsu, Google, HPE, Huawei, Hedvig, IBM, Intel, Iomega, Iron Mountain, IBM, Jungledisk, Kinetic key value drives (Seagate), Lenovo, LTO organization, Mangstor, Maxta, Mellanox (offload), Micron, Microsoft (Azure, Windows, Storage Spaces), Microsemi, Nakivo, NetApp, NooBaa, Nexsan, Nutanix, OpenIO, OpenStack (Swift), Oracle, Panasas, Panzura, Promise, Pure, Quantum, Quest, Qumulo, Retrospect, Riverbed, Rozo, Rubrik, Samsung, Scale, Scality, Seagate (DotHill), Sony, Solarwinds, Spectralogic, Starwind, Storpool, Strongbox, Sureline, Swiftstack, Synology, Toshiba, Tintri, Turbonomics, Unitrends, Unix and Linux platforms, Vantara, Veeam, VMware, Western Digital (Amplidata, Tegile and others), WekaIO, X-IO, Zadara and Zmanda among many others.

Note if you dont see yours, or your favorite, preferred or clients listed above or in the data Infrastructure industry related links send us a note for consideration to be included in future updates, or having a link, or sponsor spot pointing to your site added. Feel free to add a non sales marketing pitch to courteous comments to the comment section below.

View additional IT, data center and data Infrastructure along with data protection related vendors, services, tools, technologies links here.

Where To Learn More

Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals
Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC
Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)
Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest
Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined
Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends
Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk
Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)
Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More
Data Protection Diaries series
Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

Part of modernizing data protection for various data center and data infrastructure environments is to know the tools, technologies and trends that are part of your data protection toolbox. The other part of modernizing data is protection is knowing the techniques of how to use different tools, technologies to meet various application workload performance, availability, capacity economic (PACE) needs.

Also keep in mind that information services requires applications (e.g. programs) and that programs are a combination of algorithms (code, rules, policies) and data structures (e.g. data and how it is organized including unstructured). What this means is that data protection needs to address not only data, also the applications, configuration settings, metadata as well as protecting the protection tools and its data.

Get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials here at Amazon.com, at CRC Press among other locations and learn more here. Meanwhile, continue reading with the next post in this series, Part 10 Data Protection Fundamental Resources Where to Learn More.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 26, 2017November 19, 2024

Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Resources Where to Learn More

Companion to Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft ( CRC Press 2017)

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 26, 2017

This is the last in a multi-part series on Data Protection fundamental tools topics techniques terms technologies trends tradecraft tips as a follow-up to my Data Protection Diaries series, as well as a companion to my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, Virtual Server Storage I/O Fundamental tradecraft (CRC Press 2017).

Click here to view the previous post Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools).

In this post the focus is around Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More.

Figure 1.5 Data Infrastructures and other IT Infrastructure Layers

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Table of Contents (TOC)

Here is a link (PDF) to the table of contents (TOC) for Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials.

The following is a Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book TOC summary:

Chapter 1: Server Storage I/O and Data Infrastructure Fundamentals
Chapter 2: Application and IT Environments
Chapter 3: Bits, Bytes, Blobs, and Software-Defined Building Blocks
Chapter 4: Servers: Physical, Virtual, Cloud, and Containers
Chapter 5: Server I/O and Networking
Chapter 6: Servers and Storage-Defined Networking
Chapter 7: Storage Mediums and Component Devices
Chapter 8: Data Infrastructure Services: Access and Performance
Chapter 9: Data Infrastructure Services: Availability, RAS, and RAID
Chapter 10: Data Infrastructure Services: Availability, Recovery-Point Objective, and Security
Chapter 11: Data Infrastructure Services: Capacity and Data Reduction
Chapter 12: Storage Systems and Solutions (Products and Cloud)
Chapter 13: Data Infrastructure and Software-Defined Management
Chapter 14: Data Infrastructure Deployment Considerations
Chapter 15: Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Futures, Wrap-up, and Summary
Appendix A: Learning Experiences
Appendix B: Additional Learning, Tools, and tradecraft Tricks
Appendix C: Frequently Asked Questions
Appendix D: Book Shelf and Recommended Reading
Appendix E: Tools and Technologies Used in Support of This Book
Appendix F: How to Use This Book for Various Audiences
Appendix G: Companion Website and Where to Learn More
Glossary
Index

Click here to view (PDF) table of contents (TOC).

Data Protection Resources Where To Learn More

Learn more about Data Infrastructure and Data Protection related technology, trends, tools, techniques, tradecraft and tips with the following links.

The following are the various posts that are part of this data protection series:

Part 1 – Data Infrastructure Data Protection Fundamentals

Part 2 – Reliability, Availability, Serviceability ( RAS) Data Protection Fundamentals

Part 3 – Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes ( EC) including LRC

Part 4 – Data Protection Recovery Points (Archive, Backup, Snapshots, Versions)

Part 5 – Point In Time Data Protection Granularity Points of Interest

Part 6 – Data Protection Security Logical Physical Software Defined

Part 7 – Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends

Part 8 – Data Protection Diaries Walking Data Protection Talk

Part 9 – who’s Doing What ( Toolbox Technology Tools)

Part 10 – Data Protection Resources Where to Learn More

The following are various data protection blog posts:

Welcome to the Data Protection Diaries

Until the focus expands to data protection, backup is staying alive!

The blame game, Does cloud storage result in data loss?

Loss of data access vs. data loss

Revisiting RAID storage remains relevant and resources

Only you can prevent cloud (or other) data loss

Data protection is a shared responsibility

Time for CDP (Commonsense Data Protection)?

Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O Tradecraft Trends (skills, experiences, knowledge)

My copies were corrupted: The [4] 3-2-1 rule and more about 4 3 2 1 as well as 3 2 1 here and here

The following are various data protection tips and articles:

Via Infostor Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends

Via Network World What’s a data infrastructure?

Via Infostor Data Protection Gaps, Some Good, Some Not So Good

Via Infostor Object Storage is in your future

Via Iron Mountain Preventing Unexpected Disasters

Via InfoStor – The Many Variations of RAID Storage

Via InfoStor – RAID Remains Relevant, Really!

Via WservNews Cloud Storage Considerations (Microsoft Azure)

Via ComputerWeekly Time to restore from backup: Do you know where your data is?

Via Network World Ensure your data infrastructure remains available and resilient

The following are various data protection related webinars and events:

BrightTalk Webinar Data Protection Modernization – Protect, Preserve and Serve you Information

BrightTalk Webinar BCDR and Cloud Backup Protect Preserve and Secure Your Data Infrastructure

TechAdvisor Webinar (Free with registration) All You Need To Know about ROBO data protection

TechAdvisor Webinar (Free with registration) Tips for Moving from Backup to Full Disaster Recovery

The following are various data protection tools, technologies, services, vendor and industry resource links:

Various Data Infrastructure related news commentary, events, tips and articles

Data Center and Data Infrastructure industry links (vendors, services, tools, technologies, hardware, software)

Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

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

What This All Means

Everything is not the same across environments, data centers, data infrastructures including SDDC, SDX and SDDI as well as applications along with their data.

Likewise everything is and does not have to be the same when it comes to Data Protection.

Since everything is not the same, various data protection approaches are needed to address various application performance, availability, capacity economic (PACE) needs, as well as SLO and SLAs.

Data protection encompasses many different hardware, software, services including cloud technologies, tools, techniques, best practices, policies and tradecraft experience skills (e.g. knowing what to use when, where, why and how).

Context is important as different terms have various meanings depending on what they are being discussed with. Likewise different technologies and topics such as object, blob, backup, replication, RAID, erasure code (EC), mirroring, gaps (good, bad, ugly), snapshot, checkpoint, availability, durability among others have various meanings depending on context, as well as implementation approach.

In most cases there is no bad technology or tool, granted there are some poor or bad (even ugly) implementations, as well as deployment or configuration decisions. What this means is the best technology or approach for your needs may be different from somebody else’s and vice versa.

Some other points include there is no such thing as an information recession with more data generated every day, granted, how that data is transformed or stored can be in a smaller footprint. Likewise there is an increase in the size of data including unstructured big data, as well as the volume (how much data), as well as velocity (speed at which it is created, moved, processed, stored). This also means there is an increased dependency on data being available, accessible and intact with consistency. Thus the fundamental role of data Infrastructures (e.g. what’s inside the data center or cloud) is to combine resources, technologies, tools, techniques, best practices, policies, people skill set, experiences (e.g. tradecraft) to protect, preserve, secure and serve information (applications and data).

modernizing data protection including backup, availability and related topics means more than swapping out one hardware, software, service or cloud for whatever is new, and then using it in old ways.

What this means is to start using new (and old) things in new ways, for example move beyond using SSD or HDDs like tape as targets for backup or other data protection approaches. Instead use SSD, HDDs or cloud as a tier, yet also to enable faster protection and recovery by stepping back and rethinking what to protect, when, where, why, how and apply applicable techniques, tools and technologies. Find a balance between knowing all about the tools and trends while not understanding how to use those toolbox items, as well as knowing all about the techniques of how to use the tools, yet not knowing what the tools are.

Want to learn more, have questions about specific tools, technologies, trends, vendors, products, services or techniques discussed in this series, send a note (info at storageio dot com) or via our contact page. We can set up a time to discuss your questions or needs pertaining to Data Protection as well as data infrastructures related topics from legacy to software defined virtual, cloud, container among others. For example consulting, advisory services, architecture strategy design, technology selection and acquisition coaching, education knowledge transfer sessions, seminars, webinars, special projects, test drive lab reviews or audits, content generation, videos, podcasts, custom content, chapter excerpts, demand generation among many other things.

Get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials here at Amazon.com, at CRC Press among other locations and learn more here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 20, 2017November 26, 2023

HPE Announces AMD Powered Gen 10 ProLiant DL385 For Software Defined Workloads

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

By Greg Schulz – www.storageioblog.com November 20, 2017

HPE Announced today a new AMD EPYC 7000 Powered Gen 10 ProLiant DL385 for Software Defined Workloads including server virtualization, software-defined data center (SDDC), software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI), software-defined storage among others. These new servers are part of a broader Gen10 HPE portfolio of ProLiant DL systems.

HPE AMD EPYC Gen10 DL385
24 Small Form Factor Drive front view DL385 Gen 10 Via HPE

The value proposition being promoted by HPE of these new AMD powered Gen 10 DL385 servers besides supporting software-defined, SDDI, SDDC, and related workloads are security, density and lower price than others. HPE is claiming with the new AMD EPYC system on a chip (SoC) processor powered Gen 10 DL385 that it is offering up to 50 percent lower cost per virtual machine (VM) than traditional server solutions.

About HPE AMD Powered Gen 10 DL385

HPE AMD EPYC 7000 Gen 10 DL385 features:

2U (height) form factor
HPE OneView and iLO management
Flexible HPE finance options
Data Infrastructure Security
AMD EPYC 7000 System on Chip (SoC) processors
NVMe storage (Embedded M.2 and U.2/8639 Small Form Factor (SFF) e.g. drive form factor)
Address server I/O and memory bottlenecks

These new HPE servers are positioned for:

Software Defined, Server Virtualization
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) workspaces
HPC, Cloud and other general high-density workloads
General Data Infrastructure workloads that benefit from memory-centric or GPUs

Different AMD Powered DL385 ProLiant Gen 10 Packaging Options

Common across AMD EPYC 7000 powered Gen 10 DL385 servers are 2U high form factor, iLO management software and interfaces, flexible LAN on Motherboard (LOM) options, MicroSD (optional dual MicroSD), NVMe (embedded M.2 and SFF U.2) server storage I/O interface and drives, health and status LEDs, GPU support, single or dual socket processors.

HPE AMD EPYC Gen10 DL385 Look Inside
HPE DL385 Gen10 Inside View Via HPE

HPE AMD EPYC Gen10 DL385 Rear View
HPE DL385 Gen10 Rear View Via HPE

Other up to three storage drive bays, support for Large Form Factor (LFF) and Small Form Factor (SFF) devices (HDD and SSD) including SFF NVMe (e.g., U.2) SSD. Up to 4 x Gbe NICs, PCIe riser for GPU (optional second riser requires the second processor). Other features and options include HPE SmartArray (RAID), up to 6 cooling fans, internal and external USB 3. Optional universal media bay that can also add a front display, optional Optical Disc Drive (ODD), optional 2 x U.2 NVMe SFF SSD. Note media bay occupies one of three storage drive bays.

HPE AMD EPYC Gen10 DL385 Form Factor
HPE DL385 Form Factor Via HPE

Up to 3 x Drive Bays
Up to 12 LFF drives (2 per bay)
Up to 24 SFF drives ( 3 x 8 drive bays, 6 SFF + 2 NVMe U.2 or 8 x NVMe)

AMD EPYC 7000 Series

The AMD EPYC 7000 series is available in the single and dual socket. View additional AMD EPYC speeds and feeds in this data sheet (PDF), along with AMD server benchmarks here.

HPE AMD EPYC Specifications
HPE DL385 Gen 10 AMD EPYC Specifications Via HPE

AMD EPYC 7000 General Features

Single and dual socket
Up to 32 cores, 64 threads per socket
Up to 16 DDR4 DIMMS over eight channels per socket (e.g., up to 2TB RAM)
Up to 128 PCIe Gen 3 lanes (e.g. combination of x4, x8, x16 etc)
Future 128GB DIMM support

AMD EPYC 7000 Security Features

Secure processor and secure boot for malware rootkit protection
System memory encryption (SME)
Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV) hypervisors and guest virtual machine memory protection
Secure move (e.g., encrypted) between enabled servers

Where To Learn More

Learn more about Data Infrastructure and related server technology, trends, tools, techniques, tradecraft and tips with the following links.

AMD EPYC 7000 System on Chip (SoC) processors

Gen10 HPE portfolio and ProLiant DL systems.

Various Data Infrastructure related news commentary, events, tips and articles

Data Center and Data Infrastructure industry links

Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading List Book Shelf

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC 2017) Book

What This All Means

With the flexible options including HDD, SSD as well as NVMe accessible SSDs, large memory capacity along with computing cores, these new solutions provide good data infrastructure server density (e.g., CPU, memory, I/O, storage) per cubic foot or meter per cost.

I look forward to trying one of these systems out for software-defined scenarios including virtualization, software-defined storage (SDS) among others workload scenarios. Overall the HPE announcement of the new AMD EPYC 7000 Powered Gen 10 ProLiant DL385 looks to be a good option for many environments.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

November 14, 2017November 26, 2023

AWS Announces New S3 Cloud Storage Security Encryption Features

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Updated 1/17/2018

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced new Simple Storage Service (S3) e.g. AWS S3 encryption and security enhancements including Default Encryption, Permission Checks, Cross-Region Replication ACL Overwrite, Cross-Region Replication with KMS and Detailed Inventory Report. Another recent announcement by AWS is for PrivateLinks endpoints within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

AWS Dashboard
AWS Service Dashboard

Default Encryption

Extending previous security features, now you can mandate all objects stored in a given S3 bucket be encrypted without specifying a bucket policy that rejects non-encrypted objects. There are three server-side encryption (SSE) options for S3 objects including keys managed by S3, AWS KMS and SSE Customer ( SSE-C) managed keys. These options provide more flexibility as well as control for different environments along with increased granularity. Note that encryption can be forced on all objects in a bucket by specifying a bucket encryption configuration. When an unencrypted object is stored in an encrypted bucket, it will inherit the same encryption as the bucket, or, alternately specified by a PUT required.

AWS S3 Bucket Encryption
AWS S3 Buckets

Permission Checks

There is now an indicator on the S3 console dashboard prominently indicating which S3 buckets are publicly accessible. In the above image, some of my AWS S3 buckets are shown including one that is public facing. Note in the image above how there is a notion next to buckets that are open to public.

Cross-Region Replication ACL Overwrite and KMS

AWS Key Management Service (KMS) keys can be used for encrypting objects. Building on previous cross-region replication capabilities, now when you replicate objects across AWS accounts, a new ACL providing full access to the destination account can be specified.

Detailed Inventory Report

The S3 Inventory report ( which can also be encrypted) now includes the encryption status of each object.

PrivateLink for AWS Services

PrivateLinks enable AWS customers to access services from a VPC without using a public IP as well as traffic not having to go across the internet (e.g. keeps traffic within the AWS network. PrivateLink endpoints appear in Elastic Network Interface (ENI) with private IPs in your VPC and are highly available, resiliency and scalable. Besides scaling and resiliency, PrivateLink eliminates the need for white listing of public IPs as well as managing internet gateway, NAT and firewall proxies to connect to AWS services (Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), Elastic Load Balancer (ELB), Kinesis Streams, Service Catalog, EC2 Systems Manager). Learn more about AWS PrivateLink for services here including VPC Endpoint Pricing here.

Where To Learn More

Learn more about related technology, trends, tools, techniques, and tips with the following links.

What This All Means

Common cloud concern considerations include privacy and security. AWS S3 among other industry cloud service and storage providers have had their share of not so pleasant news coverage involving security.

Keep in mind that data protection including security is a shared responsibility (and only you can prevent data loss). This means that the vendor or service provider has to take care of their responsibility making sure their solutions have proper data protection and security features by default, as well as extensions, and making those capabilities known to consumers.

The other part of shared responsibility is that consumers and users of cloud services need to know what the capabilities are, defaults and options as well as when to use various approaches. Ultimately it is up to the user of a cloud service to implement best practices to leverage cloud as well as their own on-premises technologies so that they can support data infrastructure that in turn protect, preserve, secure and serve information (along with their applications and data).

These are good enhancements by AWS to make their S3 cloud storage security encryption features available as well as provide options and awareness for users on how to use those capabilities.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

October 30, 2017November 26, 2023

October 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Server StorageIO October 2017 Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue 10 (October 2017)

Hello and welcome to the October 2017 issue of the Server StorageIO data infrastructure update newsletter.

October has been a busy month pertaining data infrastructure including server storage I/O related trends, activities, news, perspectives and related topics, so let’s have a look at them.

Recommended Reading
Various Events and Webinars
Industry Resources and Links
Connect and Converse With Us

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO data infrastructure update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

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

Startup Aparavi launched with a SaaS platform for managing long-term data retention. As part of a move to streamline the acquisition of Brocade by Broadcom (formerly known as Avago), the Brocade data center Ethernet networking business is being sold to Extreme networks. Datacore also updated their software defined storage solutions in October.

Cisco announced new storage networking products and acquisition of Brodsoft (cloud calling and contact center solutions). As part of continued support for Fibre Channel based data infrastructure environments, Cisco has announced a 1U MDS 9132T 32 port 32 Gbps Fibre Channel Switch with FCP (SCSI Fibre Channel Protocol) now, and emerging FC-NVMe future support. Also announced are SAN telemetry activity monitoring, insight and event streaming for analysis in MDS 9700 32Gbps module.

Cisco also announced interoperability for data center and data infrastructure insight, activity monitoring and telemetry with Virtual Instruments Virtual Wisdom technology eliminating the reliance on hardware based probes, along with Fibre Channel N-Port virtualization on Nexus 9300-FX DC switch.

Commvault announced scale-out data protection with ScaleProtect for Cisco UCS platforms, along with their HyperScale appliance and HyperScale software.

IBM had several October announcements include LTO 8 related, FlashSystem V9000 updates (e.g. All Flash Array) enclosure as well as hardware based compression, FlashSystem A9000 leveraging 3D TLC NAND flash (lower cost, higher capacity) among others.

There is plenty of content (blogs, articles, podcasts, webinars, videos, white papers, presentations) on when to do containers, microservices and serverless compute including mesos, kubernetes and docker among others. What about when not to use those approaches or caveats to be aware of, here is such a piece (via Redhat) to have a look at.

Granted if you are part of the micro services cheerleading bandwagon crowd you might not agree with the authors points, after all, everything is not the same in data centers and data infrastructures. Speaking of serverless, containers, here is a good post about Docker Swarm vs. Kubernetes management over at Upcloud.

In Microsoft and Azure related activity, despite some early speculation in some venues that Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) was being discontinued as it was not part of Server release 1709, the reality is S2D is very much alive.

Microsoft LTSC and SAC release cycles
Image via Microsoft.com

However some clarification is needed that might have lead to some initial speculation due to lack of understanding the new Microsoft release cycle.

Microsoft has gone to Semi Annual Channel (SAC) releases that introduce new features in advance of the Long Term Support Channel (LTSC). LTSC are what you might be familiar with Windows and Windows Server releases that are updates spread out over time for a given major version (e.g. going from Server 2012 to Server 2012 R2 and so forth). The current Windows Server LTSC is the base introduced fall of 2016 along with incremental updates.

By comparison, think of SAC as a branch channel for early adopters to get new features and with 1709 (e.g. September 2017), the focus is on containers. A mistake that has been made is to assume that a SAC release is actually a new major LTSC release, thus probably why some thought S2D was dead as it is not in SAC 1709. Indications from Microsoft are that there will be S2D enhancements in the next SAC, as well as future LTSC.

For those interested in IoT, check out this Microsoft Azure IoT Hub and device twin document. Here is a post by Thomas Mauer looking at 10 hidden Hyper-V features to know about.

In other activity, Minio announced experimental AWS S3 API support for Backblaze storage service. Software Defined Serverless Storage startup OpenIO gets $5M USD in additional funding. Quantum and other LTO Organization vendors have announced support for the new LTO version 8 tape drives and media. In addition to LTO 8, new roadmaps including out to LTO 12 are outlined here, and VMware vCloud Air is hosted by OVH. Western Digital Corporation (WDC) announced Microwave Assisted Magnetic Recording (MAMR) enabled Hard Disk Drives (HDD) that will enable future, larger capacity devices to be brought to market.

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

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via HPE Insights: Comments on Public cloud versus on-prem storage
Via arsTechnica: Comments on cloud backup disaster recovery
Via Gizmodo: Comments on WDC 40TB HDD
Via CDW: Comments on Is Your Network About To Fail?
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Trends for Data Storage with Big Data Analytics
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on 8 ways to save on cloud storage
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Google Cloud Platform and Storage

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

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading #blogtober
The following is an evolving recommended reading list of data infrastructure topics including, server, storage I/O, networking, cloud, virtual, container, data protection and related topics that includes books, blogs, podcast’s, events and industry links among other resources.
Read more here.
PCIe Server Storage I/O Network Fundamentals #blogtober
Peripheral Computer Interconnect Express aka PCIe is a Server, Storage, I/O networking fundamental component. This post is an excerpt from chapter 4 (Chapter 4: Servers: Physical, Virtual, Cloud, and Containers) of my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged and Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft (CRC Press 2017) Available via Amazon.com and other global venues. In this post, we look various PCIe fundamentals to learn and expand or refresh your server, storage, and I/O and networking tradecraft skills experience.
Read more here.
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview #blogtober
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL and Overview. Microsoft has been increasing their support of Linux across Azure public cloud, Hyper-V and Linux Integration Services (LIS) and Windows platforms including Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) as well as Server along with Docker support. Read more here.
Fixing the Microsoft Windows 10 1709 post upgrade restart loop
Recently I needed to upgrade one of my systems to Microsoft Windows 10 1709 (e.g. the September 2017) release that post upgrade resulted in Windows Explorer, desktop and taskbar going into an endless loop. For those not familiar with Windows 10 1709 learn more here, and here including on how to get the bits (e.g. software). Windows 10 1709 is a semi-annual channel (SAC) Microsoft is following to enable a faster cadence or pace of releases making new features available faster. Note that there is a Windows 10 1709 SAC, as well as Windows Server 2017 SAC (more on that here).
Read more here.
Cloud Conversations Azure AWS Service Maps
Microsoft has created an Azure and Amazon Web Service (AWS) Service Maps (corresponding services from both providers). Read more here.

Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Tips and Articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Who Will Rule the Storage World?
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Google Cloud Platform Gaining Data Storage Momentum
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Singapore High Rise Data Centers
Via InfoGoto: Comments on New Tape Storage Capacity
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on 8 ways to save on cloud storage
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Google Cloud Platform and Storage

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

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

In addition to my own books including Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017), the following are Server StorageIO recommended reading, watching and listening list items. The list includes various IT, Data Infrastructure and related topics.

Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out.

Its October which means that it is also Blogtober, check out some of the blogs and posts occurring during October here.

For those involved with VMware, check out Frank Denneman VMware vSphere 6.5 host resource guide-book here at Amazon.com.

Docker: Up & Running: Shipping Reliable Containers in Production by Karl Matthias & Sean P. Kane via Amazon.com here.

Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN): Administrator’s Guide to VMware Virtual SAN,2nd ed. by Cormac Hogan & Duncan Epping via Amazon.com here.

Hadoop: The Definitive Guide: Storage and Analysis at Internet Scale by Tom White via Amazon.com here.

Cisco IOS Cookbook: Field tested solutions to Cisco Router Problems by Kevin Dooley and Ian Brown Via Amazon.com here.

Watch for more items to be added to the recommended reading list book shelf soon.

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

Nov. 9, 2017 – Webinar – All You Need To Know about ROBO Data Protection Backup
Nov. 2, 2017 – Webinar – Modern Data Protection for Hyper-Convergence
Sep. 21, 2017 – MSP CMG – Minneapolis MN
Sep. 20, 2017 – Webinar – BC, DR and Business Resiliency (BR) tips
Sep. 14, 2017 – Fujifilm IT Executive Summit – Seattle WA
Sep. 12, 2017 – SNIA Software Developers Conference (SDC) – Santa Clara CA
Sep. 7, 2017 – Wipro SDX – Enabling, Planning Your Software Defined Journey

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

Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Useful links and pages:
Microsoft TechNet – Various Microsoft related from Azure to Docker to Windows
storageio.com/links – Various industry links (over 1,000 with more to be added soon)
objectstoragecenter.com – Cloud and object storage topics, tips and news items
OpenStack.org – Various OpenStack related items
storageio.com/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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

October 11, 2017November 3, 2024

Dell EMC VMware September 2017 Software Defined Data Infrastructure Updates

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Dell EMC VMware September 2017 Software Defined Data Infrastructure Updates

vmworld 2017

September was a busy month including VMworld in Las Vegas that featured many Dell EMC VMware (among other) software defined data infrastructure updates and announcements.

A summary of September VMware (and partner) related announcements include:

Workspace, security and endpoint solutions
Pivotal Container Service (PKS) with Google for Kubernetes serverless container management,
DXC partnership for hybrid cloud management
Security enablement via AppDefense
Data infrastructure platform enhancements (integrated OpenStack, vRealize management tools, vSAN)
Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud support along with VMware on AWS
Dell EMC data protection for VMware and AWS environments.

VMware and AWS via Amazon Web Services

VMware and AWS

Some of you might recall VMware earlier attempt at public cloud with vCloud Air service (see Server StorageIO lab test drive here) which has since been depreciated (e.g. retired). This new approach by VMware leverages the large global presence of AWS enabling customers to set up public or hybrid vSphere, vSAN and NSX based clouds, as well as software defined data centers (SDDC) and software defined data infrastructures (SDDI).

VMware Cloud on AWS exists on a dedicated, single-tenant (unlike Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) multi-tenant instances or VMs) that supports from 4 to 16 underlying host per cluster. Unlike EC2 virtual machine instances, VMware Cloud on AWS is delivered on elastic bare-metal (e.g. dedicated private servers aka DPS). Note AWS EC2 is more commonly known, AWS also has other options for server compute including Lambda micro services serverless containers, as well as Lightsail virtual private servers (VPS).

Besides servers with storage optimized I/O featuring low latency NVMe accessed SSDs, and applicable underlying server I/O networking, VMware Cloud on AWS leverages the VMware software stack directly on underlying host servers (e.g. there is no virtualization nesting taking place). This means more robust performance should be expected like in your on premise VMware environment. VM workloads can move between your onsite VMware systems and VMware Cloud on AWS using various tools. The VMware Cloud on AWS is delivered and managed by VMware, including pricing. Learn more about VMware Cloud on AWS here, and here (VMware PDF) and here (VMware Hands On Lab aka HOL).

Read more about AWS September news and related updates here in this StorageIOblog post.

VMware and Pivotal PKS via VMware.com

Pivotal Container Service (PKS) and Google Kubernetes Partnership

During VMworld VMware, Pivotal and Google announced a partnership for enabling Kubernetes container management called PKS (Pivotal Container Service). Kubernetes is evolving as a popular open source container microservice serverless management orchestration platform that has roots within Google. What this means is that what is good for Google and others for managing containers, is now good for VMware and Pivotal. In related news, VMware has become a platinum sponsor of the Cloud Native Compute Foundation (CNCF). If you are not familiar with CNCF, add it to your vocabulary and learn more here at www.cncf.io.

Other VMworld and September VMware related announcements

Hyper converged data infrastructure provider Maxta has announced a VMware vSphere Escape Pod (parachute not included ;) ) to facilitate migration from ESXi based to Red Hat Linux hypervisor environments. IBM and VMware for cloud partnership, along with Dell EMC, IBM and VMware joint cloud solutions. White listing of VMware vSphere VMs for enhanced security combine with earlier announced capabilities.

Note that both VMware with vSphere ESXi and Microsoft with Hyper-V (Windows and Azure based) are supporting various approaches for securing Virtual Machines (VMs) and the hosts they run on. These enhancements are moving beyond simply encrypting the VMDK or VHDX virtual disks the VMs reside in or use, as well as more than password, ssh and other security measures. For example Microsoft is adding support for host guarded fabrics (and machine hosts) as well as shielded VMs. Keep an eye on how both VMware and Microsoft extend the data protection and security capabilities for software defined data infrastructures for their solutions and services.

Dell EMC Announcements

At VMworld in September Dell EMC announcements included:

Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI) and Hybrid Cloud enhancements
Data Protection, Goverence and Management suite updates
XtremIO X2 all flash array (AFA) availability optimized for vSphere and VDI

HCI and Hybrid Cloud enhancements include VxRail Appliance, VxRack SDDC (vSphere 6.5, vSAN 6.6, NSX 6.3) along with hybrid cloud platforms (Enterprise Hybrid Cloud and Native Hybrid Cloud) along with vSAN Ready Nodes (vSAN 6.6 and encryption) and VMware Ready System. Note that Dell EMC in addition to supporting VMware hybrid clouds also previously announced solutions for Microsoft Azure Stack back in May.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials at VMworld Bookstore

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press) at VMworld bookstore

My new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press) made its public debut in the VMware book store where I did a book signing event. You can get your copy of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials which includes Software Defined Data Centers (SDDC) along with hybrid, multi-cloud, serverless, converged and related topics at Amazon among other venues. Learn more here.

Where To Learn More

Learn more about related technology, trends, tools, techniques, and tips with the following links.

What’s a data infrastructure? (Via NetworkWorld)
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press) book companion page
Top 10 things to know about vSAN (Via Yellow Bricks)
VMware vSAN Management Today and Future (Via Yellow Bricks)
Integrated Data Protection for vSAN (Via Yellow Bricks)
VMworld 2017 Video on demand (Via VMware)
Top 10 VMworld 2017 hands on labs (HOL) via VMware
Top VMworld 2017 sessions via VMware
Amazon Web Service AWS September 2017 Updates
Microsoft September 2017 Updates
Dell EMC VMware September 2017 Updates
Getting Caught Up What Happened In September 2017

What This All Means

A year ago at VMworld the initial conversations were started around what would become the VMware Cloud on AWS solution. Also a year ago besides VMware Integrated Containers (VIC) and some other pieces, the overall container and in particular related management story was a bit cloudy (pun intended). However, now the fog and cloud seem to be clearing with the PKS solution, along with details of VMware Cloud on AWS. Likewise vSphere, vSAN and NSX along with associated vRealize tools continue to evolve as well as customer deployment growing. All in all, VMware continues to evolve, let’s see how things progress now over the year until the next VMworld.

By the way, if you have not heard, its Blogtober, check out some of the other blogs and posts occurring during October here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert 2010-2017 (and vSAN). 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.

October 11, 2017November 26, 2023

September 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Server StorageIO September 2017 Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue IX (September 2017)

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

With September being generally known as back to school month, the two September event bookends were VMware VMworld and Microsoft Ignite with many other things in between. Needless to say, a lot has happened in and around data infrastructure topic areas since the August newsletter (here if you missed it). Here is a post covering some of the things that I participated with during September including presentations at events in Las Vegas (VMworld), New York City (Wipro SDx Summit), SNIA SDC in Santa Clara, Fujifilm Executive Summitt in Seattle, Minneapolis/St. Paul CMG along with other activities.

One of the activities I participated in with while at VMworld in Las Vegas was a book signing event at the VMware bookstore of my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press) available at Amazon.com and other global venues.

September has been a busy month pertaining data infrastructure including server storage I/O related trends, activities, news, perspectives and related topics, so let’s have a look at them.

In This Issue

Server StorageIO trends
Server StorageIO News Commentary
Server StorageIOblog posts
Tips and Articles

Recommended Reading
Various Events and Webinars
Industry Resources and Links
Connect and Converse With Us

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO data infrastructure update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

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

The month started out with VMworld in Las Vegas (e.g. one of the event bookends for the month). Rather than a long list of announcements in this newsletter, check out this StorageIOblog post covering VMworld, VMware and Dell EMC and related news. As part of VMworld, VMware and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced news about their partnership. AWS also had several other enhancements and new product announcements during september that can be found in this StorageIOblog post here.

AWS, Dell EMC and VMware were not the only ones making news or announcements during September. Startup NVMe based storage startup Apeiron has announced a Splunk appliance to boost log and analytics processing performance. Gigamon has extended its public cloud monitoring, insight awareness and analytics capabilities including support for Microsoft Azure.

For those looking for the latest new emerging data infrastructure vendors to watch, add Vexta to your list of NVMe based storage systems. Vexta talks a lot about NVMe particular for their backend (e.g. where data stored on NVM based devices accessed via NVMe), access of their storage system is via traditional Fibre Channel (FC) or emerging NVMe over fabric.

Long time data infrastructure server and storage vendor HDS (Hitachi Data Systems) is no more (at least in name) having re branded themselves as Vantara focusing on IoT and Cloud analytics besides their traditional data center focus. Vantara combines what was HDS, Hitachi Insight Group and Pentaho into a single unit effectively based in what was HDS as a new, repackaged, refocused business unit.

Another longtime data infrastructure solution and service provider IBM announced a new Linux only zSeries (ZED) mainframe solution. Some might think the Mainframe is dead, others that it can only run Linux as a virtual guest in a virtual machine. On the other hand some might recall that there are native Linux implementations on the ZED including Ubuntu among others.

Also note that while IBM zOS mainframe operating systems use FICON for storage access, native ZED Linux systems can use open systems based Fibre Channel (FC) e.g. SCSI command set protocols. Is the ZED based Linux for everybody or every environment? Probably not, however for those who have large-scale Linux needs, it might be worth a look to do a total cost of ownership analysis. If nothing else, do your homework, play your cards right and you might have some leverage with the x86 based server crowd when it comes to negotiating leverage.

Cloud storage gateway vendor Nasuni has landed another $38 Million USD in funding, hopefully that will enable them to start landing some new and larger customer revenues growing their business. Meanwhile storage startup Qumulo has announced extending their global file fabric name space to include spanning AWS.

Attala Systems has announced next generation software defined storage for data infrastructures for Telco environments. Percona has added an experimental release of their MySQL engine enhancing performance for high volume, write intensive workloads along with improved cost effectiveness.

Software defined storage vendor Datacore announced enhancements to support fast databases for online transaction processing (OLTP) along with analytics. Meanwhile Linux provider SUSE continues to expand its software defined storage story based around Ceph. Panasas has enhanced its scale out high performance cluster file system global name space for HPC environments with 20 PByte support. Another longtime storage vendor X-IO (formerly known as Xiotech) announced their 4th generation of their Intelligent Storage Element (ISE).

September wrapped up with Microsoft Ignite conference along with many updated, enhancements and new features for Azure, Azure Stack, Windows among others. Read more about those and other Microsoft September announcements here in this StorageIOblog post.

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

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via CDW: Comments on Is Your Network About To Fail?
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Data Storage and Big Data Analytics
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Cloud FOMO (Fear of missing out)
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Building a Modern Data Strategy
Via InfoGoto: Comments on the future of Multi-Cloud Computing
Via InfoGoto: Comments on AI, Machine Learning and Data management
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Your riskiest data might be in plain sight
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Data Management Too Much To Handle
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Google Cloud Platform Gaining Data Storage Momentum
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Singapore High Rise Data Centers
Via InfoGoto: Comments on New Tape Storage Capacity
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on 8 ways to save on cloud storage
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Google Cloud Platform and Storage

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

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

Getting Caught Up, What Happened to September
Seems like just yesterday it was the end of August with the start of VMworld, now its the end of September and Microsoft Ignite in Orlando is wrapping up. Microsoft has made several announcements this week at Ignite including Azure cloud-related, AI, IoT, Windows platforms, O365 among others. More about Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack, Windows Server, Hyper-V and related data infrastructure topics in future posts.
Read more here.
Amazon Web Service AWS September 2017 Updates
Microsoft September 2017 Updates
Dell EMC VMware September 2017 Updates

Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Tips and Articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

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

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out.

Its October which means that it is also Blogtober, check out some of the blogs and posts occurring during October here.

Preston De Guise aka @backupbear is Author of several books has an interesting new site Foolsrushin.info that looks at topics including Ethics in IT among others. Check out his new book Data Protection: Ensuring Data Availability (CRC Press 2017).

Brendan Gregg has a great site for Linux performance related topics here.

Greg Knieriemen has a must read weekly blog, post, column collection of whats going on in and around the IT and data infrastructure related industries, Check it out here.

Interested in file systems, CIFS, SMB, SAMBA and related topics then check out Chris Hertels book on implementing CIFS here at Amazon.com

For those involved with VMware, check out Frank Denneman VMware vSphere 6.5 host resource guide-book here at Amazon.com.

I often mention in presentations a must have for anybody involved with software defined anything, or programming for that matter which is the Niklaus Wirth classic Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs that you can get on Amazon.com here.

Another great book to have is Seven Databases in Seven Weeks which not only provides an overview of popular NoSQL databases such as Cassandra, Mongo, HBASE among others, lots of good examples and hands on guides. Get your copy here at Amazon.com.

Watch for more more items to be added to the book shelf soon.

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

Nov. 2, 2017 – Webinar – Modern Data Protection for Hyper-Convergence
Sep. 21, 2017 – MSP CMG – Minneapolis MN
Sep. 20, 2017 – Webinar – BC, DR and Business Resiliency (BR) tips
Sep. 14, 2017 – Fujifilm IT Executive Summit – Seattle WA
Sep. 12, 2017 – SNIA Software Developers Conference (SDC) – Santa Clara CA
Sep. 7, 2017 – Wipro SDX – Enabling, Planning Your Software Defined Journey
August 28-30, 2017 – VMworld – Las Vegas

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

Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). 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.

August 26, 2017November 26, 2023

Hot Popular New Trending Data Infrastructure Vendors To Watch

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Updated 1/21/2018

A common question I get asked is who are the hot popular new trending data infrastructure vendors to watch. This post looks at some data infrastructure vendors to watch and keep an eye on.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between industry adoption and customer deployment, the former being what the industry (e.g. Vendors, resellers, integrators, investors, consultants, analyst, press, media, analysts, bloggers or other influences) like, want and need to talk about. Then there is customer adoption and deployment which is what is being bought, installed and used.

Some Popular Trending Vendors To Watch

The following is far from an exhaustive list however here are some that come to mind that I’m watching.

Apcera – Enterprise class containers and management tools
AWS – Rolls our new services like a startup with size momentum of a legacy player
Blue Medora – Data Infrastructure insight, software defined management
Broadcom – Avago/LSI, legacy Broadcom, Emulex, Brocade acquisition interesting portfolio
Chelsio – Server, storage and data Infrastructure I/O technologies
Commvault – Data protection and backup solutions
Compuverde – Software defined storage
Data Direct Networks (DDN) – Scale out and high performance storage
Datadog – Software defined management, data infrastructure insight, analytics, reporting
Datrium – Converged software defined data infrastructure solutions
Dell EMC Code – Rexray container persistent storage management
Docker – Container and management tools
E8 Storage – NVMe based storage solutions
Elastifile – Scale out software defined storage and file system
Enmotus – MicroTiering that works with Windows, Linux and various cloud platforms
Everspin – storage class memories and NVDIMM
Excelero – NVMe based storage
Hedvig – Scale out software defined storage
Huawei – While not common in the US, in Europe and elsewhere they are gaining momentum
Intel – Watch what they do with Optane and storage class memories
Kubernetes – Container software defined management
Liqid – Stealth Colorado startup focusing on PCIe fabrics and composable infrastructure
Maxta – Hyper converged infrastructure (HCI) and software defined data infrastructure vendor
Mellanox – While not a startup, keep an eye on what they are doing with their adapters
Micron – Watch what they do with 3D XPoint storage class memory and SSD
Microsoft – Not a startup, however keep an eye on Azure, Azure Stack, Window Server with S2D, ReFS, tiering, CI/HCI as well as Linux services on Windows.
Minio – Software defined storage solutions
NetApp – While FAS/Ontap and Solidfire get the headlines, E series generates revenue, keep an eye on StorageGrid and AltaVault
Neuvector – Container management and security
Noobaa – Software defined storage and more
NVIDA – No longer just another graphics process unit based company
Pivot3 – An original HCI software defined players, granted, some of their competitors might not think so
Pluribus Networks – Software Defined Networks for Software Defined Data Infrastructures
Portwork – Container management and persistent storage
Rozo Systems – Scale out software defined storage and file system
Rubrik – Data Protection software, reminds me of a startup called Commvault 20 years ago.
ScaleMP – Composable scale out software defined servers
Storpool – Scale out software defined storage
Stratoscale – Software defined data infrastructure and hybrid solutions
SUSE – Linux distribution looking to expand their offerings, gain more insight
Tidalscale – Composable software defined data infrastructures
Turbonomic – Software Defined Management, insight, analytics and automation
Ubuntu – Known for their Linux distribution, check out their Metal as a Service (MaaS) technology
Veeam – Data protection and backup solutions
technology
Virtuozzo – Software defined storage and data infrastructure technologies
VMware – AWS, vSAN, NSX, Integrated Containers and much more
WekaIO – Scale out software defined storage and file system

Some Popular Trending Technology Trends

ARM, ASIC, FPGA, GPU servers among others
Converged Infrastructure (CI), Hyper Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Composable Infrastructure
Analytics, reporting, insight, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), automation
Software Defined including Cloud, Virtual, Containers, Docker, kubernetes, mesos, serverless, micro services
Data protection, backup/restore, archive, security, business resiliency (BR), business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR)
Non-volatile memory (NMV), NVM Express (NVMe), storage class memories (SCM), persistent memory, nand flash, SSD

Where To Learn More

Learn more about related technology, trends, tools, techniques, and tips with the following links.

Server StorageIO IT Data Infrastructure Industry Links A to E
Server Storage I/O Benchmarking Performance Resource Tools
What’s a data infrastructure? (Via NetworkWorld)
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press) book companion page (includes various images, sample figures and added content)
Object and Cloud Storage Center (www.objectstoragecenter.com)
www.thessdplace.com – NVM, flash, SSD, SCM and related topics
www.thenvmeplace.com – NVM Express (NVMe) related topics

Various IT and Cloud Infrastructure Layers including Data Infrastructures

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

What This All Means

There are always more hot popular new or trending data infrastructure vendors to watch, which ones are you keeping an eye on?

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes including LRC Deep Dive

Data Protection Access Availability RAID Erasure Codes

Erasure Codes (EC)

Reed Solomon (RS) codes

Local Reconstruction Codes (LRC)

Shingled Erasure Code (SHEC)

Replication and Mirroring

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

Share this:

Enabling Recovery Points (Backup, Snapshots, Versions)

Enabling RPO (Archive, Backup, CDP, PIT Copy, Snapshots, Versions)

Additional Data Protection Terms

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

Share this:

Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Point In Time Granularity

Point-in-Time Protection Granularity Points of Interest

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

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Data Infrastructure Data Protection Security Logical Physical

Security Logical Physical Software Defined

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Fundamental Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends

Data Protection Tools, Technologies, Toolbox, Buzzword Bingo Trends

Object Storage

S3 Simple Storage Service

Data Infrastructure Environments and Applications

Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) Including Dedupe

Tips, Recommendations and Considerations

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

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Data Protection Diaries Walking The Data Protection Talk

Walking The Data Protection Talk What I Do

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Data Protection Toolbox Whos Doing What Technology Tools

who’s Doing What (Toolbox Technology Tools)

Where To Learn More

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Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Resources Where to Learn More

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Table of Contents (TOC)

Data Protection Resources Where To Learn More

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HPE Announces AMD Powered Gen 10 ProLiant DL385 For Software Defined Workloads

About HPE AMD Powered Gen 10 DL385

Different AMD Powered DL385 ProLiant Gen 10 Packaging Options

AMD EPYC 7000 Series

AMD EPYC 7000 General Features

AMD EPYC 7000 Security Features

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

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AWS Announces New S3 Cloud Storage Security Encryption Features

Default Encryption

Permission Checks

Cross-Region Replication ACL Overwrite and KMS

Detailed Inventory Report

PrivateLink for AWS Services

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

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Volume 17, Issue 10 (October 2017)

In This Issue

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Tips and Articles

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

Events and Activities

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Dell EMC VMware September 2017 Software Defined Data Infrastructure Updates

VMware and AWS