Tag: fibre channel

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Use Intel Optane NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 SSD drive in PCIe slot

Use NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 disk drive form factor SSD in PCIe slot

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Need to install or use an Intel Optane NVMe 900P or other Nonvolatile Memory (NVM) Express NVMe based U.2 SFF 8639 disk drive form factor Solid State Device (SSD) into PCIe a slot?

For example, I needed to connect an Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SFF 8639 drive form factor SSD into one of my servers using an available PCIe slot.

The solution I used was an carrier adapter card such as those from Ableconn (PEXU2-132 NVMe 2.5-inch U.2 [SFF-8639] via Amazon.com among other global venues.

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Top Intel 750 NVMe PCIe AiC SSD, bottom Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SSD with Ableconn carrier

The above image shows top an Intel 750 NVMe PCIe Add in Card (AiC) SSD and on the bottom an Intel Optane NVMe 900P 280GB U.2 (SFF 8639) drive form factor SSD mounted on an Ableconn carrier adapter.

NVMe server storage I/O sddc

NVMe Tradecraft Refresher

NVMe is the protocol that is implemented with different topologies including local via PCIe using U.2 aka SFF-8639 (aka disk drive form factor), M.2 aka Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) also known as "gum stick", along with PCIe Add in Card (AiC). NVMe accessed devices can be installed in laptops, ultra books, workstations, servers and storage systems using the various form factors. U.2 drives are also refereed to by some as PCIe drives in that the NVMe command set protocol is implemented using PCIe x4 physical connection to the devices. Jump ahead if you want to skip over the NVMe primer refresh material to learn more about U.2 8639 devices.

data infrastructure nvme u.2 8639 ssd
Various SSD device form factors and interfaces

In addition to form factor, NVMe devices can be direct attached and dedicated, rack and shared, as well as accessed via networks also known as fabrics such as NVMe over Fabrics.

NVMeoF FC-NVMe NVMe fabric SDDC
The many facets of NVMe as a front-end, back-end, direct attach and fabric

Context is important with NVMe in that fabric can mean NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe) where the NVMe command set protocol is used in place of SCSI Fibre Channel Protocol (e.g. SCSI_FCP) aka FCP or what many simply know and refer to as Fibre Channel. NVMe over Fabric can also mean NVMe command set implemented over an RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) based network.

NVM and NVMe accessed flash SCM SSD storage

Another point of context is not to confuse Nonvolatile Memory (NVM) which are the storage or memory media and NVMe which is the interface for accessing storage (e.g. similar to SAS, SATA and others). As a refresher, NVM or the media are the various persistent memories (PM) including NVRAM, NAND Flash, 3D XPoint along with other storage class memories (SCM) used in SSD (in various packaging).

Learn more about 3D XPoint with the following resources:

Learn more (or refresh) your NVMe server storage I/O knowledge, experience tradecraft skill set with this post here. View this piece here looking at NVM vs. NVMe and how one is the media where data is stored, while the other is an access protocol (e.g. NVMe). Also visit www.thenvmeplace.com to view additional NVMe tips, tools, technologies, and related resources.

NVMe U.2 SFF-8639 aka 8639 SSD

On quick glance, an NVMe U.2 SFF-8639 SSD may look like a SAS small form factor (SFF) 2.5" HDD or SSD. Also, keep in mind that HDD and SSD with SAS interface have a small tab to prevent inserting them into a SATA port. As a reminder, SATA devices can plug into SAS ports, however not the other way around which is what the key tab function does (prevents accidental insertion of SAS into SATA). Looking at the left-hand side of the following image you will see an NVMe SFF 8639 aka U.2 backplane connector which looks similar to a SAS port.

Note that depending on how implemented including its internal controller, flash translation layer (FTL), firmware and other considerations, an NVMe U.2 or 8639 x4 SSD should have similar performance to a comparable NVMe x4 PCIe AiC (e.g. card) device. By comparable device, I mean the same type of NVM media (e.g. flash or 3D XPoint), FTL and controller. Likewise generally an PCIe x8 should be faster than an x4, however more PCIe lanes does not mean more performance, its what’s inside and how those lanes are actually used that matter.

NVMe U.2 8639 2.5" 1.8" SSD driveNVMe U.2 8639 2.5 1.8 SSD drive slot pin
NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 Drive (Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials CRC Press)

With U.2 devices the key tab that prevents SAS drives from inserting into a SATA port is where four pins that support PCIe x4 are located. What this all means is that a U.2 8639 port or socket can accept an NVMe, SAS or SATA device depending on how the port is configured. Note that the U.2 8639 port is either connected to a SAS controller for SAS and SATA devices or a PCIe port, riser or adapter.

On the left of the above figure is a view towards the backplane of a storage enclosure in a server that supports SAS, SATA, and NVMe (e.g. 8639). On the right of the above figure is the connector end of an 8639 NVM SSD showing addition pin connectors compared to a SAS or SATA device. Those extra pins give PCIe x4 connectivity to the NVMe devices. The 8639 drive connectors enable a device such as an NVM, or NAND flash SSD to share a common physical storage enclosure with SAS and SATA devices, including optional dual-pathing.

More PCIe lanes may not mean faster performance, verify if those lanes (e.g. x4 x8 x16 etc) are present just for mechanical (e.g. physical) as well as electrical (they are also usable) and actually being used. Also, note that some PCIe storage devices or adapters might be for example an x8 for supporting two channels or devices each at x4. Likewise, some devices might be x16 yet only support four x4 devices.

NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 PCIe Drive SSD FAQ

Some common questions pertaining NVMe U.2 aka SFF 8639 interface and form factor based SSD include:

Why use U.2 type devices?

Compatibility with what’s available for server storage I/O slots in a server, appliance, storage enclosure. Ability to mix and match SAS, SATA and NVMe with some caveats in the same enclosure. Support higher density storage configurations maximizing available PCIe slots and enclosure density.

Is PCIe x4 with NVMe U.2 devices fast enough?

While not as fast as a PCIe AiC that fully supports x8 or x16 or higher, an x4 U.2 NVMe accessed SSD should be plenty fast for many applications. If you need more performance, then go with a faster AiC card.

Why not go with all PCIe AiC?

If you need the speed, simplicity, have available PCIe card slots, then put as many of those in your systems or appliances as possible. Otoh, some servers or appliances are PCIe slot constrained so U.2 devices can be used to increase the number of devices attached to a PCIe backplane while also supporting SAS, SATA based SSD or HDDs.

Why not use M.2 devices?

If your system or appliances supports NVMe M.2 those are good options. Some systems even support a combination of M.2 for local boot, staging, logs, work and other storage space while PCIe AiC are for performance along with U.2 devices.

Why not use NVMeoF?

Good question, why not, that is, if your shared storage system supports NVMeoF or FC-NVMe go ahead and use that, however, you might also need some local NVMe devices. Likewise, if yours is a software-defined storage platform that needs local storage, then NVMe U.2, M.2 and AiC or custom cards are an option. On the other hand, a shared fabric NVMe based solution may support a mixed pool of SAS, SATA along with NVMe U.2, M.2, AiC or custom cards as its back-end storage resources.

When not to use U.2?

If your system, appliance or enclosure does not support U.2 and you do not have a need for it. Or, if you need more performance such as from an x8 or x16 based AiC, or you need shared storage. Granted a shared storage system may have U.2 based SSD drives as back-end storage among other options.

How does the U.2 backplane connector attach to PCIe?

Via enclosures backplane, there is either a direct hardwire connection to the PCIe backplane, or, via a connector cable to a riser card or similar mechanism.

Does NVMe replace SAS, SATA or Fibre Channel as an interface?

The NVMe command set is an alternative to the traditional SCSI command set used in SAS and Fibre Channel. That means it can replace, or co-exist depending on your needs and preferences for access various storage devices.

Who supports U.2 devices?

Dell has supported U.2 aka PCIe drives in some of their servers for many years, as has Intel and many others. Likewise, U.2 8639 SSD drives including 3D Xpoint and NAND flash-based are available from Intel among others.

Can you have AiC, U.2 and M.2 devices in the same system?

If your server or appliance or storage system support them then yes. Likewise, there are M.2 to PCIe AiC, M.2 to SATA along with other adapters available for your servers, workstations or software-defined storage system platform.

NVMe U.2 carrier to PCIe adapter

The following images show examples of mounting an Intel Optane NVMe 900P accessed U.2 8639 SSD on an Ableconn PCIe AiC carrier. Once U.2 SSD is mounted, the Ableconn adapter inserts into an available PCIe slot similar to other AiC devices. From a server or storage appliances software perspective, the Ableconn is a pass-through device so your normal device drivers are used, for example VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 recognizes the Intel Optane device, similar with Windows and other operating systems.

intel optane 900p u.2 8639 nvme drive bottom view
Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SSD and Ableconn PCIe AiC carrier

The above image shows the Ableconn adapter carrier card along with NVMe U.2 8639 pins on the Intel Optane NVMe 900P.

intel optane 900p u.2 8639 nvme drive end view
Views of Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 8639 and Ableconn carrier connectors

The above image shows an edge view of the NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 Intel Optane NVMe 900P SSD along with those on the Ableconn adapter carrier. The following images show an Intel Optane NVMe 900P SSD installed in a PCIe AiC slot using an Ableconn carrier, along with how VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 sees the device using plug and play NVMe device drivers.

NVMe U.2 8639 installed in PCIe AiC Slot
Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SSD installed in PCIe AiC Slot

NVMe U.2 8639 and VMware vSphere ESXi
How VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 sees NVMe U.2 device

Intel NVMe Optane NVMe 3D XPoint based and other SSDs

Here are some Amazon.com links to various Intel Optane NVMe 3D XPoint based SSDs in different packaging form factors:

Here are some Amazon.com links to various Intel and other vendor NAND flash based NVMe accessed SSDs including U.2, M.2 and AiC form factors:

Note in addition to carriers to adapt U.2 8639 devices to PCIe AiC form factor and interfaces, there are also M.2 NGFF to PCIe AiC among others. An example is the Ableconn M.2 NGFF PCIe SSD to PCI Express 3.0 x4 Host Adapter Card.

In addition to Amazon.com, Newegg.com, Ebay and many other venues carry NVMe related technologies.
The Intel Optane NVMe 900P are newer, however the Intel 750 Series along with other Intel NAND Flash based SSDs are still good price performers and as well as provide value. I have accumulated several Intel 750 NVMe devices over past few years as they are great price performers. Check out this related post Get in the NVMe SSD game (if you are not already).

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

NVMe accessed storage is in your future, however there are various questions to address including exploring your options for type of devices, form factors, configurations among other topics. Some NVMe accessed storage is direct attached and dedicated in laptops, ultrabooks, workstations and servers including PCIe AiC, M.2 and U.2 SSDs, while others are shared networked aka fabric based. NVMe over fabric (e.g. NVMeoF) includes RDMA over converged Ethernet (RoCE) as well as NVMe over Fibre Channel (e.g. FC-NVMe). Networked fabric accessed NVMe access of pooled shared storage systems and appliances can also include internal NVMe attached devices (e.g. as part of back-end storage) as well as other SSDs (e.g. SAS, SATA).

General wrap-up (for now) NVMe U.2 8639 and related tips include:

  • Verify the performance of the device vs. how many PCIe lanes exist
  • Update any applicable BIOS/UEFI, device drivers and other software
  • Check the form factor and interface needed (e.g. U.2, M.2 / NGFF, AiC) for a given scenario
  • Look carefully at the NVMe devices being ordered for proper form factor and interface
  • With M.2 verify that it is an NVMe enabled device vs. SATA

Learn more about NVMe at www.thenvmeplace.com including how to use Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SFF 8639 disk drive form factor SSDs in PCIe slots as well as for fabric among other scenarios.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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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.

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

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.

In This Issue

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:

In Case You Missed It #ICYMI

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts 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.

Gs

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

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

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Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Data Storage regardless of if hardware, legacy, new, emerging, cloud service or various software defined storage (SDS) approaches are all fundamental resource components of data infrastructures along with compute server, I/O networking as well as management tools, techniques, processes and procedures.

fundamental Data Infrastructure resource components
Fundamental Data Infrastructure resources

Data infrastructures include legacy along with software defined data infrastructures (SDDI), along with software defined data centers (SDDC), cloud and other environments to support expanding workloads more efficiently as well as effectively (e.g. boosting productivity).

Data Infrastructures and workloads
Data Infrastructure and other IT Layers (stacks and altitude levels)

Various data infrastructures resource components spanning server, storage, I/O networks, tools along with hardware, software, services get defined as well as composed into solutions or services which may in turn be further aggregated into more extensive higher altitude offerings (e.g. further up the stack).

IT and Data Infrastructure Stack Layers
Various IT and Data Infrastructure Stack Layers (Altitude Levels)

Focus on Data Storage Present and Future Predictions

Drew Robb (@Robbdrew) has a good piece over at Enterprise Storage Forum looking at the past, present and future of who will rule the data storage world that includes several perspective predictions comments from myself as well as others. Some of the perspectives and predictions by others are more generic and technology trend and buzzword bingo focus which should not be a surprise. For example including the usual performance, Cloud and Object Storage, DPDK, RDMA/RoCE, Software-Defined, NVM/Flash/SSD, CI/HCI, NVMe among others.

Here are some excerpts from Drews piece along with my perspective and prediction comments of who may rule the data storage roost in a decade:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) – AWS includes cloud and object storage in the form of S3. However, there is more to storage than object and S3 with AWS also having Elastic File Services (EFS), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), database, message queue and on-instance storage, among others. for traditional, emerging and storage for the Internet of Things (IoT).

It is difficult to think of AWS not being a major player in a decade unless they totally screw up their execution in the future. Granted, some of their competitors might be working overtime putting pins and needles into Voodoo Dolls (perhaps bought via Amazon.com) while wishing for the demise of Amazon Web Services, just saying.

Voodoo Dolls via Amazon.com
Voodoo Dolls and image via Amazon.com

Of course, Amazon and AWS could follow the likes of Sears (e.g. some may remember their catalog) and ignore the future ending up on the where are they now list. While talking about Amazon and AWS, one will have to wonder where Wall Mart will end up in a decade with or without a cloud of their own?

Microsoft – With Windows, Hyper-V and Azure (including Azure Stack), if there is any company in the industry outside of AWS or VMware that has quietly expanded its reach and positioning into storage, it is Microsoft, said Schulz.

Microsoft IMHO has many offerings and capabilities across different dimensions as well as playing fields. There is the installed base of Windows Servers (and desktops) that have the ability to leverage Software Defined Storage including Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), ReFS, cache and tiering among other features. In some ways I’m surprised by the number of people in the industry who are not aware of Microsoft’s capabilities from S2D and the ability to configure CI as well as HCI (Hyper Converged Infrastructure) deployments, or of Hyper-V abilities, Azure Stack to Azure among others. On the other hand, I run into Microsoft people who are not aware of the full portfolio offerings or are just focused on Azure. Needless to say, there is a lot in the Microsoft storage related portfolio as well as bigger broader data infrastructure offerings.

NetApp – Schulz thinks NetApp has the staying power to stay among the leading lights of data storage. Assuming it remains as a freestanding company and does not get acquired, he said, NetApp has the potential of expanding its portfolio with some new acquisitions. “NetApp can continue their transformation from a company with a strong focus on selling one or two products to learning how to sell the complete portfolio with diversity,” said Schulz.

NetApp has been around and survived up to now including via various acquisitions, some of which have had mixed results vs. others. However assuming NetApp can continue to reinvent themselves, focusing on selling the entire solution portfolio vs. focus on specific products, along with good execution and some more acquisitions, they have the potential for being a top player through the next decade.

Dell EMC – Dell EMC is another stalwart Schulz thinks will manage to stay on top. “Given their size and focus, Dell EMC should continue to grow, assuming execution goes well,” he said.

There are some who I hear are or have predicted the demise of Dell EMC, granted some of those predicted the demise of Dell and or EMC years ago as well. Top companies can and have faded away over time, and while it is possible Dell EMC could be added to the where are they now list in the future, my bet is that at least while Michael Dell is still involved, they will be a top player through the next decade, unless they mess up on execution.

Cloud and software defined storage data infrastructure
Various Data Infrastructures and Resources involving Data Storage

Huawei – Huawei is one of the emerging giants from China that are steadily gobbling up market share. It is now a top provider in many categories of storage, and its rapid ascendancy is unlikely to stop anytime soon. “Keep an eye on Huawei, particularly outside of the U.S. where they are starting to hit their stride,” said Schulz.

In the US, you have to look or pay attention to see or hear what Huawei is doing involving data storage, however that is different in other parts of the world. For example, I see and hear more about them in Europe than in the US. Will Huawei do more in the US in the future? Good question, keep an eye on them.

VMware – A decade ago, Storage Networking World (SNW) was by far the biggest event in data storage. Everyone who was anyone attended this twice yearly event. And then suddenly, it lost its luster. A new forum known as VMworld had emerged and took precedence. That was just one of the indicators of the disruption caused by VMware. And Schulz expects the company to continue to be a major force in storage. “VMware will remain a dominant player, expanding its role with software-defined storage,” said Schulz.

VMware has a dominant role in data storage not just because of the relationship with Dell EMC, or because of VSAN which continues to gain in popularity, or the soon to be released VMware on AWS solution options among others. Sure all of those matters, however, keep in mind that VMware solutions also tie into and work with other legacies as well as software-defined storage solution, services as well as tools spanning block, file, object for virtual machines as well as containers.

"Someday soon, people are going to wake up like they did with VMware and AWS," said Schulz. "That’s when they will be asking ‘When did Microsoft get into storage like this in such a big way.’"

What the above means is that some environments may not be paying attention to what AWS, Microsoft, VMware among others are doing, perhaps discounting them as the old or existing while focusing on new, emerging what ever is trendy in the news this week. On the other hand, some environments may see the solution offerings from those mentioned as not relevant to their specific needs, or capable of scaling to their requirements.

Keep in mind that it was not that long ago, just a few years that VMware entered the market with what by today’s standard (e.g. VSAN and others) was a relatively small virtual storage appliance offering, not to mention many people discounted and ignored VMware as a practical storage solution provider. Things and technology change, not to mention there are different needs and solution requirements for various environments. While a solution may not be applicable today, give it some time, keep an eye on them to avoid being surprised asking the question, how and when did a particular vendor get into storage in such a big way.

Is Future Data Storage World All Cloud?

Perhaps someday everything involving data storage will be in or part of the cloud.

Does this mean everything is going to the cloud, or at least in the next ten years? IMHO the simple answer is no, even though I see more workloads, applications, and data residing in the cloud, there will also be an increase in hybrid deployments.

Note that those hybrids will span local and on-premises or on-site if you prefer, as well as across different clouds or service providers. Granted some environments are or will become all in on clouds, while others are or will become a hybrid or some variation. Also when it comes to clouds, do not be scared, be prepared. Also keep an eye on what is going on with containers, orchestration, management among other related areas involving persistent storage, a good example is Dell EMCcode RexRay among others.

Server Storage I/O resources
Various data storage focus areas along with data infrastructures.

What About Other Vendors, Solutions or Services?

In addition to those mentioned above, there are plenty of other existing, new and emerging vendors, solutions, and services to keep an eye on, look into, test and conduct a proof of concept (PoC) trial as part of being an informed data infrastructure and data storage shopper (or seller).

Keep in mind that component suppliers some of whom like Cisco also provides turnkey solutions that are also part of other vendors offerings (e.g. Dell EMC VxBlock, NetApp FlexPod among others), Broadcom (which includes Avago/LSI, Brocade Fibre Channel, among others), Intel (servers, I/O adapters, memory and SSDs), Mellanox, Micron, Samsung, Seagate and many others.

E8, Excelero, Elastifile (software defined storage), Enmotus (micro-tiering, read Server StorageIOlab report here), Everspin (persistent and storage class memories including NVDIMM), Hedvig (software defined storage), NooBaa, Nutanix, Pivot3, Rozo (software defined storage), WekaIO (scale out elastic software defined storage, read Server StorageIO report here).

Some other software defined management tools, services, solutions and components I’m keeping an eye on, exploring, digging deeper into (or plan to) include Blue Medora, Datadog, Dell EMCcode and RexRay docker container storage volume management, Google, HPE, IBM Bluemix Cloud aka IBM Softlayer, Kubernetes, Mangstor, OpenStack, Oracle, Retrospect, Rubrix, Quest, Starwind, Solarwinds, Storpool, Turbonomic, Virtuozzo (software defined storage) among many others

What about those not mentioned? Good question, some of those I have mentioned in earlier Server StorageIO Update newsletters, as well as many others mentioned in my new book "Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials" (CRC Press). Then there are those that once I hear something interesting from on a regular basis will get more frequent mentions as well. Of course, there is also a list to be done someday that is basically where are they now, e.g. those that have disappeared, or never lived up to their full hype and marketing (or technology) promises, let’s leave that for another day.

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

Where To Learn More

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

Data Infrastructures and workloads
Data Infrastructures Resources (Servers, Storage, I/O Networks) enabling various services

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

It is safe to say that each new year will bring new trends, techniques, technologies, tools, features, functionality as well as solutions involving data storage as well as data infrastructures. This means a usual safe bet is to say that the current year is the most exciting and has the most new things than in the past when it comes to data infrastructures along with resources such as data storage. Keep in mind that there are many aspects to data infrastructures as well as storage all of which are evolving. Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade? What say you?

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

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June 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructures Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue VI

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

For those of you in the northern hemisphere it is time for summer holidays, while in the southern hemisphere its winter time. That means there is a lot going on outside of work, however June has also seen a lot of activity in and around IT data infrastructure along with data centers. Check out some of the industry trends news and updates below.

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

A quick update following up from the May newsletter is that my new book is now available via Amazon.com, CRC Press and other venues in hardcopy hardcover as well as electronic versions. Think of this as the soft launch with a formal launch and more information being rolled out soon. For now, you can visit the landing page for Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged, and Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft (CRC PRess/Taylor Francis/Auerbach) at storageio.com/book4 to learn more including view table of contents, preface, how organized among other items.

In This Issue

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

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

Cavium announced 10, 25, 50 and 50Gbps Ethernet server storage I/O NIC solutions (e.g. FastLine 41000 series).

The NVMe Express trade group (e.g. nvmexpress.org) announced the completion of NVMe 1.3 specification. New optional features include support for mobile platforms and book, along with scaling for enterprise as well as cloud environments. Learn more about specifications at the NVMexpress.org site as well as more NVMe material at thenvmeplace.com.

Keep in mind that if the answer is NVMe, what are the questions along with various options from front end to back-end, NVMe and PCIe, NVMeoF, U.2/8639, M2/NGFF among others.

The Fibre Channel Industry Association announced FC-NVMe interoperability plugfest and Gen 6 32GFC activity to support next generation data infrastructures and data centers.

Storage vendor Tegile announced they are joining the growing ranks of vendors adding NVMe support with their InteliFlash OS 3.7 along with other enhancements.

For those of you who are involved with Windows Servers environments along with server, storage and I/O networks, check out Darryl VanderPeijl multi-part series on RDMA, DCB, PFC, ETS and related topics.

HPE and Hedvig announced solutions combing forces to address hybrid cloud storage needs.

IBM and Cisco announced enhancements around their converged (Cisco powered servers) solution for VDI and Hybrid cloud workloads.

Big Data and Analytics vendor Mapr announced enhancements to their converged data management platform for cloud scale data fabrics.

Panzura has enhanced its Freedom software defined storage management solution with version 7 to support expanded unstructured data growth while easing management functions, along with performance updates.

Red Hat announced Ceph Storage 2.3 including Ceph 10.2 (Jewel) combing an NFS gateway.

Scality announced enhancements to its Ring software defined storage cloud and object solution including enhanced security along with data protection capabilities.

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

 

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: 5 Hot Storage Technologies to Watch
Storage can be held back by slow I/O performance, which caused expensive compute resources and memory to be consumed. NVMe reduces wait time while increasing the amount of effective work, enabling higher-profitability compute. The storage I/O capabilities of flash can be fed across PCIe faster to enable multi-core processors to complete more useful work in less time.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: 10-Year Review of Data Storage
The adoption of hybrid cloud and hybrid converged server storage has appeared more rapidly than many expected. And despite firm pronouncements of their demise, FC, tape and HDD are still very much with us.

Via CDW: Your IT Department Can Help Your Companys Bottom Line Heres How
Not only are the servers more robust performance wise, but they’ve got more compute capability, can handle more workloads, have more memory and also have better resiliency.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Top 10 Tips for Software-Defined Storage Deployment
Dell 14g PowerEdge Servers give you greater compute and IO capability, as well as the density you need, NVMe and 25 Gig Ethernet on board,

Via CDW: Meeting IoTs Demands for Networking

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

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

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

August 28-30, 2017 – VMworld – Las Vegas

June 22, 2017 – Webinar – GDPR and Microsoft Environments

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

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

Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

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

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.

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

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

Posted on

Despite being declared dead, Fibre Channel continues to evolve with FC-BB-6

Despite being declared dead, Fibre Channel continues to evolve with FC-BB-6

Like many technologies that have been around for more than a decade or two, they often get declared dead when something new appears and Fibre Channel (FC) for networking with your servers and storage falls into that category. It seems like just yesterday when iSCSI was appearing on the storage networking scene in the early 2000s that FC was declared dead yet it remains and continues to evolve including moving over Ethernet with FC over Ethernet (FCoE).

Recently the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) made an announcement on the continued development and enhancements including FC-BB-6 that applies to both "classic" or "legacy" FC as well as the newer and emerging FCoE implementations. FCIA is not alone in the FCIA activity as they are as the name implies the industry consortium that works with the T11 standards folks. T11 is a Technical Committee of the International Committee on Information Technology Standards (INCITS, pronounced "insights").

FCIA Fibre Channel Industry Association

Keep in mind that a couple of pieces to Fibre Channel which are the upper levels and lower level transports.

With FCoE, the upper level portions get mapped natively on Ethernet without having to map on top of IP as happens with distance extension using FCIP.

Likewise FCoE is more than simply mapping one of the FC upper level protocols (ULPs) such as the SCSI command set (aka SCSI_FCP) on IP (e.g. iSCSI). Think of ULPs almost in a way as a guest that gets transported or carried across the network, however lets also be careful not to play the software defined network (SDN) or virtual network, network virtualization or IO virtualization (IOV) card, or at least yet, we will leave that up to some creative marketers ;).

At the heart of the Fibre Channel beyond the cable and encoding scheme are a set of protocols, command sets and one in particular is FC Backbone now in its 6th version (read more here at the T11 site, or here at the SNIA site).

Some of the highlights of the FCIA announcement include:

VN2VN connectivity support enabling direct point to point virtual links (not to be confused with point to point physical cabling) between nodes in an FCoE network simplifying configurations for smaller SAN networks where zoning might not be needed (e.g. remove complexity and cost).

Support for Domain ID scalability including more efficient use by FCoE fabrics enabling large scalability of converged SANs. Also keep an eye on the emerging T11 FC-SW-6 distributed switch architecture for implementation over Ethernet in final stages of development.

Here are my perspectives on this announcement by the FCIA:

"Fibre Channel is a proven protocol for networked data center storage that just got better," said Greg Schulz, founder StorageIO.  "The FC-BB-6 standard helps to unlock the full potential of the Fibre Channel protocol that can be implemented on traditional Fibre Channel as well as via Ethernet based networks. This means FC-BB-6 enabled Fibre Channel protocol based networks give flexibility, scalability and secure high-performance resilient storage networks to be implemented."

Both "classic" or "legacy" Fibre Channel based cabling and networking are still alive with a road map that you can view here.

However FCoE also continues to mature and evolve and in some ways, FC-BB-6 and its associated technologies and capabilities can be seen as the bridge between the past and the future. Thus while the role of both FC and FCoE along with other ways of of networking with your servers and storage continue to evolve, so to does the technology. Also keep in mind that not everything is the same in the data center or information factory which is why we have different types of server, storage and I/O networks to address different needs, requirements and preferences.

Additional reading and viewing on FC, FCoE and storage networking::

  • Where has the FCoE hype and FUD gone? (with poll)
  • More storage and IO metrics that matter
  • Why FC and FCoE vendors get beat up over bandwidth?
  • Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?
  • Has FCoE entered the trough of disillusionment?
  • More on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) which points to this PDF
  • Will 6Gb SAS kill Fibre Channel?
  • From bits to bytes: Decoding Encoding
  • How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do?
  • Can we get a side of context with them IOPS and other storage metrics?
  • Server Storage I/O Network Benchmark Winter Olympic Games
  • Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?
  • SAN, LAN, MAN, WAN, POTS and PANs – Network servers and storage beyond the cable (BrightTalk webinar)
  • Networking With Your Servers and Storage: Cloud, Virtual and Physical Environments (BrightTalk webinar)
  • Cloud and Virtual Storage Networking (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
  • Also check out these tips and articles, industry trends perspectives commentary in the news along with past and upcoming event activities.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    • Posted on

    Dude, is Dell going to buy Brocade?

    Some IT industry buzz this week is around continued speculation (or here) of who will Dell buy next and will it be Brocade.

    Brocade was mentioned as a possible acquisition by some in the IT industry last fall after Dell stepped back from the 3PAR bidding war with HP. Industry rumors or speculations are not new involving Dell and Brocade some going back a year or more (or here or here).

    Dell

    Last fall I did a blog post commenting that I thought Dell would go on to buy someone else (turned out to be Compellent and Insight One). Those acquisitions by Dell followed their purchases of companies including Scalent, Kace, Exanet, Perot, and Ocarina among others. In that post, I also commented that I did not think (at least at that time) that Brocade would be a likely or good fit for Dell given their different business models, go to market strategy and other factors.

    Dell is clearly looking to move further up into the enterprise space which means adding more products and routes to market of which one is via networking and another involves people with associated skill sets. The networking business at Dell has been good for them along with storage to complement their traditional server and workstation business, not to mention their continued expansion into medical, life science and healthcare related solutions. All of those are key building blocks for moving to cloud, virtual and data storage networking environments.

    Dell has also done some interesting acquisitions around management and service or workflow tools with Scalent and Kace not to mention their scale out NAS file system (excuse me, big data) solutions via Exanet and data footprint reduction tools with Ocarina, all of which have plays in the enterprise, cloud and traditional Dell markets.

    But what about Brocade?

    Is it a good fit for Dell?

    Dell certainly could benefit from owning Brocade as a means of expanding their Ethernet and IP businesses beyond OEM partnerships, like HP supplementing their networking business with 3COM and IBM with Blade networks.

    However, would Dell acquiring Brocade disrupt their relationships with Cisco or other networking providers?

    If Dell were to make a bid for Brocade, would Huawei (or here) sit on the sidelines and watch or jump in the game to stir things up?

    Would Cisco counter with a deal Dell could not refuse to tighten their partnership at different levels perhaps even involving something with the UCS that was discussed on a recent Infosmack episode?

    How would EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp and Oracle among others, all of who are partners with Brocade respond to Dell now becoming their OEM supplier for some products?

    Would those OEM partnerships continue or cause some of those vendors to become closer aligned with Cisco or others?

    Again the question, will Huawei sit back or decide to enter the market on a more serious basis or continue to quietly increase their presences around the periphery?

    Brocade could be a good fit for Dell giving them a networking solution (both Ethernet via the Foundry acquisition along with Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)) not to mention many other pieces of IP including some NAS and file management tools collecting dust on some Brocade shelf somewhere. What Dell would also get is a sales force that knows how to sell to OEMs, the channel and to enterprise customers, some of whom are networking (Ethernet or Fibre Channel) focused, some who have broader diverse backgrounds.

    While it is possible that Dell could end up with Brocade along with a later bidding battle (unless others just let a possible deal go as is), Dell would find itself in new and unfamiliar waters similar to Brocade gaining its feet moving into the Ethernet and IP space after having been comfortable in the Fibre Channel storage centric space for over a decade.

    While the networking products would be a good fit for Dell assuming that they were to do such a deal, the diamond in the rough so to speak could be Brocade channel, OEM and direct sales contact team of sales people, business development, systems engineers and support staff on a global basis. Keep in mind that while some of those Brocadians are network focused, many have connected servers and storage from mainframe to open systems across all vendors for years or in some cases decades. Some of those people who I know personally are even talented enough to sell ice to an Eskimo (that is a sales joke btw).

    Sure the Brocadians would have to be leveraged to keep selling what they have done, a task similar to what NetApp is currently facing with their integration of Engenio.

    However that DNA could help Dell set up more presences in organizations where they have not been in the past. In other words, Dell could use networking to pull the rest of their product lines into those accounts, vars or resellers.

    Hmmm, does that sound like another large California based networking company?

    Dell

    After all, June is a popular month for weddings, lets see what happens next week down in Orlando during the Dell Storage Forum as some have speculated might be a launching pad for some type of deal.

    Here are some related links to more material:

  • HP Buys one of the seven networking dwarfs and gets a bargain
  • Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)
  • While HP and Dell make counter bids, exclusive interview with 3PAR CEO David Scott
  • Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment
  • Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?
  • Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles
  • Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize
  • What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?
  • Could Huawei buy Brocade?
  • Has FCoE entered the trough of disillusionment?
  • More on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)
  • Dude, is Dell doing a disk deal again with Compellent?
  • Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?
  • Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage
  • Huawei should buy brocade
  • NetApp buying LSIs Engenio Storage Business Unit

    • Ok, nuff said for now

    Cheers Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?

    Here is an article by Drew Robb over at Enterprise Storage Forum about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and its state of adoption. Drews article includes comments and perspectives from myself around where FCoE is going and why it is on a long road and not a sprint for a short temporal technology play (e.g. not a quick passing fad or bandwagon trend).

    If you measure FCoE adoption in months, sure, its been slow to gain adoption and deployment similar to how Ethernet, Fibre Channel (FC) and even iSCSI took time to evolve. Part of the time involved is for developing the standards, implementing the technology as well as expanding the capabilities of the new tools. Another part of the time required for technologies that are targeted to be around for a decade or more include ecosystem maturity, education not to mention customers being comfortable with along with having budget to buy the new items.

    I have previously said that FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment and depending on your view, that could be either entering, exiting or there to stay. Not surprisingly some cheerleaders thought that saying FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment was being cynical, while some cynics were cheerleading.

    My point around FCoE is that any technology or paradigm that goes through a hype cycle that will actually have long term legs or be around for years if not decades goes through a post initial hype disillusionment phase before reappearing. Technologies or trends that go through the trough of disillusionment that will eventually reappear sometimes go to Some Day Isle for rest and relaxation (R and R). Some Day Isle for those not familiar with it is a visional or fictional place that some day you will go to, a wishful happy place so to speak that is perfect for hyperbole R and R. After some R and R, these trends, technologies or techniques often reappear well rested and ready for the next wave of buzz, fud, hype and activity.

    Certainly there have been and will continue to be more battles or matches tied to early deployments along with plenty of hype or FUD. After all, if FCoE were to simply pack up and go away like some cynics or naysayers suggest, what will they have to talk, blog, write or speak about? Similarly if FCoE magically goes mainstream tomorrow, the cheerleaders will have to find a new bandwagon or Shiny New Toy (SNT) to rally around.

    Also as I have said in the past, its not if, rather when FCoE will be deployed in yours or your customers environment along with how and using what tools or technologies. Another question to pose around FCoE as a converged technology is will you use it in a true converged manner meaning adapting how server, storage and networking resources are managed including best practices? Or, will you use FCoE in a hybrid SAN or LAN mode using traditional SAN and LAN management practice and separate teams perhaps even battling over who owns the tools or technology.

    Fwiw, in case you did not pick up on it from my previous posts, tips, articles and coverage in books, I think that FCoE has a very bright future as does NAS and iSCSI along with shared SAS as complimentary technologies when used for the applicable scenario.

    What is your take, Is FCoE struggling to gain traction?

    Is FCoE on a normal technology evolution path and timeline?

    Is it too early to tell what the future holds for FCoE?

    Is FCoE too little to late and if so why?

    Ok, nuff said for now.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    From bits to bytes: Decoding Encoding

    With networking, care should be taken to understand if a given speed or performance capacity is being specified in bits or bytes as well as in base 2 (binary) or base 10 (decimal).

    Another consideration and potential point of confusion are line rates (GBaud) and link speed which can vary based on encoding and low level frame or packet size. For example 1GbE along with 1, 2, 4 and 8Gb Fibre Channel along with Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) use an 8b/10b encoding scheme. This means that at the lowest physical layer 8bits of data are placed into 10bits for transmission with 2 bits being for data integrity.

    With an 8Gb link using 8b/10b encoding, 2 out of every 10 bits are overhead. To determine the actual data throughput for bandwidth, or, number of IOPS, frames or packets per second is a function of the link speed, encoding and baud rate. For example, 1Gb FC has a 1.0625 Gb per second speed which is multiple by the current generation so 8Gb FC or 8GFC would be 8 x 1.0625 = 8.5Gb per second.

    Remember to factor in that encoding overhead (e.g. 8 of 10 bits are for data with 8b/10b) and usable bandwidth on the 8GFC link is about 6.8Gb per second or about 850Mbytes (6.8Gb / 8 bits) per second. 10GbE uses 64b/66b encoding which means that for every 64 bits of data, only 2 bits are used for data integrity checks thus less overhead.

    What do all of this bits and bytes have to do with clouds and virtual data storage network?

    Quite a bit when you consider what we have talked about the need to support more information processing, moving as well as storing in a denser footprint.

    In order to support higher densities faster servers, storage and networks are not enough and require various approaches to reducing the data footprint impact.

    What this means is for fast networks to be effective they also have to have lower overhead to avoid moving more extra data in the same amount of time instead using that capacity for productive work and data.

    PCIe leverages multiple serial unidirectional point to point links, known as lanes, compared to traditional PCI that used a parallel bus based design. With traditional PCI, the bus width varied from 32 to 64 bits while with PCIe, the number of lanes combined with PCIe version and signaling rate determines performance. PCIe interfaces can have one, two, four, eight, sixteen or thirty two lanes for data movement depending on card or adapter format and form factor.  For example, PCI and PCIx performance can be up to 528 MByte per second with 64 bit 66 MHz signaling rate.

     

    PCIe Gen 1

    PCIe Gen 2

    PCIe Gen 3

    Giga transfers per second

    2.5

    5

    8

    Encoding scheme

    8b/10b

    8b/10b

    128b/130b

    Data rate per lane per second

    250MB

    500MB

    1GB

    x32 lanes

    8GB

    16GBs

    32GB

    Table 1: PCIe generation comparisons

    Table 1 shows performance characteristics of PCIe various generations. With PCIe Gen 3, the effective performance essentially doubles however the actual underlying transfer speed does not double as it has in the past. Instead the improved performance is a combination of about 60 percent link speed and 40 percent efficiency improvements by switching from an 8b/10b to 128b/130b encoding scheme among other optimizations.

    Serial interface

    Encoding

    PCIe Gen 1

    8b/10b

    PCIe Gen 2

    8b/10b

    PCIe Gen 3

    128b/120b

    Ethernet 1Gb

    8b/10b

    Ethernet 10Gb

    64b/66b

    Fibre Channel 1/2/4/8 Gb

    8b/10b

    SAS 6Gb

    8b/10b

    Table 2: Common encoding

    Bringing this all together is that in order to support cloud and virtual computing environments, data networks need to become faster as well as more efficient otherwise you will be paying for more overhead per second vs. productive work being done. For example, with 64b/66b encoding on a 10GbE or FCoE link, 96.96% of the overall bandwidth or about 9.7Gb per second are available for useful work.

    By comparison if an 8b/10b encoding were used, the result would be only 80% of available bandwidth for useful data movement. For environments or applications this means better throughput or bandwidth while for applications that require lower response time or latency it means more IOPS, frames or packets per second.

    The above is an example of where a small change such as the encoding scheme can have large benefit when applied to high volume or large environments.

    Learn more in The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) at https://storageio.com/books

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

    As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

    server storage data infrastructure i/o iop hdd ssd trends

    Updated 2/10/2018

    Despite having been repeatedly declared dead at the hands of some new emerging technology over the past several decades, the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) continues to spin and evolve as it moves towards its 60th birthday.

    More recently HDDs have been declared dead due to flash SSD that according to some predictions, should have caused the HDD to be extinct by now.

    Meanwhile, having not yet died in addition to having qualified for its AARP membership a few years ago, the HDD continues to evolve in capacity, smaller form factor, performance, reliability, density along with cost improvements.

    Back in 2006 I did an article titled Happy 50th, hard drive, but will you make it to 60?

    IMHO it is safe to say that the HDD will be around for at least a few more years if not another decade (or more).

    This is not to say that the HDD has outlived its usefulness or that there are not other tiered storage mediums to do specific jobs or tasks better (there are).

    Instead, the HDD continues to evolve and is complimented by flash SSD in a way that HDDs are complimenting magnetic tape (another declared dead technology) each finding new roles to support more data being stored for longer periods of time.

    After all, there is no such thing as a data or information recession!

    What the importance of this is about technology tiering and resource alignment, matching the applicable technology to the task at hand.

    Technology tiering (Servers, storage, networking, snow removal) is about aligning the applicable resource that is best suited to a particular need in a cost as well as productive manner. The HDD remains a viable tiered storage medium that continues to evolve while taking on new roles coexisting with SSD and tape along with cloud resources. These and other technologies have their place which ideally is finding or expanding into new markets instead of simply trying to cannibalize each other for market share.

    Here is a link to a good story by Lucas Mearian on the history or evolution of the hard disk drive (HDD) including how a 1TB device that costs about $60 today would have cost about a trillion dollars back in the 1950s. FWIW, IMHO the 1 trillion dollars is low and should be more around 2 to 5 trillion for the one TByte if you apply common costs for management, people, care and feeding, power, cooling, backup, BC, DR and other functions.

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

    IMHO, it is safe to say that the HDD is here to stay for at least a few more years (if not decades) or at least until someone decides to try a new creative marketing approach by declaring it dead (again).

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    Dude, is Dell doing a disk deal again with Compellent?

    Over in Eden Prairie (Minneapolis Minnesota suburb) where data storage vendor Compellent (CML) is based, they must be singing in the hallways today that it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.

    Sure we had another dusting of snow this morning here in the Minneapolis area and the temp is actually up in the balmy 20F temperature range (was around 0F yesterday) and holiday shopping is in full swing.

    The other reason I think that the Compellent folks are thinking that it feels a lot like Christmas are the reports that Dell is in exclusive talks to buy them at about $29 per share or about $876 million USD.

    Dell is no stranger to holiday or shopping sprees, check these posts out as examples:

    Dell Will Buy Someone, However Not Brocade (At least for now)

    Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage (we now know Dell was out bid)

    Data footprint reduction (Part 2): Dell, IBM, Ocarina and Storwize

    Data footprint reduction (Part 1): Life beyond dedupe and changing data lifecycles

    Post Holiday IT Shopping Bargains, Dell Buying Exanet?

    Did someone forget to tell Dell that Tape is dead?

    Now some Compellent fans are not going to be happy with only about $29 a share or about $876 million USD price given the recent stock run up into the $30 plus range. Likewise, some of the Compellent fans may be hoping for or expecting a bidding war to drive the stock back up into the $30 range however keep in mind that it was earlier this year when the stock adjusted itself down into the mid teens.

    In the case of 3PAR and the HP Dell budding war, that was a different product and company focused in a different space than where Compellent has a good fit.

    Sure both 3PAR and Compellent do Fibre Channel (FC) where Dells EqualLogic only does iSCSI, however a valuation based just on FC would be like saying Dell has all the storage capabilities they need with their MD3000 series that can do SAS, iSCSI and FC.

    In other words, there are different storage products for different markets or price bands and customer application needs. Kind of like winter here in Minnesota, sure one type of shovel will work for moving snow or you can leverage different technologies and techniques (tiering) to get the job done effectively the same holds for storage solutions.

    Compellent has a good Cadillac product that is a good fit for some SMB environments. However the SMB space is also where Dell has several storage products some of which they own (e.g. EqualLogic), some they OEM (MD3000 series and NX) as well as resell (e.g. EMC CLARiiON).

    Can the Compellent product replace the lowered CLARiiON business that Dell has itself been shifting more to their flagship EqualLogic product?

    Sure however at the risk of revenue cannibalization or worse, introduction of revenue prevention teams.

    Can the Compellent product then be positioned lower down under the EqualLogic product?

    Sure, however why hold it back not to mention force a higher priced product down into that market segment.

    Can the Compellent product be taken up market to compete above the EqualLogic head to head with the larger CLARiiON systems from EMC or comparable solutions from other vendors?

    Sure, however I can hear choruses of its sounding a lot like Christmas from New England, the bay area and Tucson among others.

    Does this mean that Dell is being overly generous and that this is not a good deal?

    No, not at all.

    Sure it is the holiday season and Dell has several billion dollars of cash laying around however that in itself does not guarantee a large handout or government sized bailout (excuse me, infusion). At $30 or more, that would be overly generous simply based on where the technology fits as well as aligns to the market realities. Consequently, at $29, this is a great deal for Compellent and also for Dell.

    Why is it a good deal for Dell?

    I think that it is as much about Dell getting a good deal (ok, paying a premium) to acquire a competitor that they can use to fill some product gaps where they have common VARs. However I also think that this is very much about the channel and the VAR as much if not more than it is just about a storage product. Servers are part of the game here which in turn supports storage, networking, management tools, backup/recovery, archiving and services.

    Sure Dell can maybe take some cost out of the Compellent solution by replacing the Supermicro PCs that are the hardware platform for their storage controllers with Dell servers. However the bigger play is around further developing its channel and VAR ecosystems, some of whom were with EqualLogic before Dell bought them. This can also be seen as a means of Dell getting that partner ecosystem to sell overall, more dell products and solutions instead of those from Apple, EMC, Futjisu, HP, IBM, Oracle and many others.

    Likewise, I doubt that Mr. Dell is paying a premium simply to make the Compellent shareholders and fans happy to create monetary velocity to stimulate holiday shopping and economic stimulus. However, for the fans, sure, while drowning your sorrows in egg nogg of holiday cheer that you are not getting $30 or higher, instead buy a round for your mates and toast Dell for your holiday gift.

    The real reason I think this is a good reason for Dell is that from a business and financial perspective, assuming they stick to the $29 range, it is a good bargain for both parties. Dell gets a company who has been competing with their EqualLogic product in some cases with the same VARs or resellers. Sure it gets a Fibre Channel based product however Dell already has that with the MD3000 series which I realize is less function laden then Compellent or EqualLogic; however it is also more affordable for a different market.

    If Dell can close on the deal sticking to its offer which they have the upper hand on, execute including rolling out a strategy as well as product positioning plan. Then educate their own teams as well as VARs and customers of what products fit where and when in such a manner that does not cause revenue prevention (e.g. one product or team blocking the other) or cannibalization instead expanding markets, they can do well.

    While Compellent gets a huge price multiple based on their revenue (about $125M USD), if Dell can get the product revenue up from the $125 to $150 million plateau to around $250 to $300 million without cannibalizing other Dell products, the deal pays for itself in many ways.

    Keep in mind that a large pile of cash sitting in the bank these days is not exactly yielding the best returns on investment.

    For the Compellent fans and shareholders, congratulations!

    You have gotten or perhaps are about to get a good holiday gift so knock of the complaining that you should be getting more. The option is that instead of $28 per share, you could be getting 28 lumps of coal in your Christmas stocking.

    For the Dell folks, assuming the deal is done on their terms and that they can quickly rationalize the product overlap, convey and then execute on a strategy while keeping the revenue prevention teams on the sidelines you too have a holiday gift to work with (some assembly will be required however). This also is good for Dell outside of storage which may turn out to be one of the gems of the deal in keeping or expanding VARs selling Dell based servers and associated technologies.

    For EMC who was slapped in the face earlier this year when Dell took a run at 3PAR, sure there will be more erosion on the lower end CLARiiOn as has been occurring with the EqualLogic. However Dell still needs a solution to effectively compete with EMC and others at the higher end of the SMB or lower end of the enterprise market.

    Sure the EqualLogic or Compellent products could be deployed into such scenarios; however those solutions are then playing on a different field and out of their market sweet spots.

    Lets see what happens shall we.

    In the meantime, what say you?

    Is this a good deal for Dell, who is the deal good for assuming it goes through and at the terms mentioned, what is your take?

    Who benefits from this proposed deal?

    Note that in the holiday gift giving spirit, Chicago style voting or polling will be enabled.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Has FCoE entered the trough of disillusionment?

    This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs based on what I am seeing and hearing in my conversations with IT professionals on a global basis.

    These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, videos, podcasts, webcasts as well as solution brief content found a www.storageio.com/reports and www.storageio.com/articles.

    Has FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) entered the trough of disillusionment?

    IMHO Yes and that is not a bad thing if you like FCoE (which I do among other technologies).

    The reason I think that it is good that FCoE is in or entering the trough is not that I do not believe in FCoE. Instead, the reason is that most if not all technologies that are more than a passing fad often go through a hype and early adopter phase before taking a breather prior to broader longer term adoption.

    Sure there are FCoE solutions available including switches, CNAs and even storage systems from various vendors. However, FCoE is still very much in its infancy and maturing.

    Based on conversations with IT customer professionals (e.g those that are not vendor, vars, consultants, media or analysts) and hearing their plans, I believe that FCoE has entered the proverbial trough of disillusionment which is a good thing in that FCoE is also ramping up for deployment.

    Another common question that comes up regarding FCoE as well as other IO networking interfaces, transports and protocols is if they are temporal (temporary short life span) technologies.

    Perhaps in the scope that all technologies are temporary however it is their temporal timeframe that should be of interest. Given that FCoE will probably have at least a ten to fifteen year temporal timeline, I would say in technology terms it has a relative long life for supporting coexistence on the continued road to convergence which appears to be around Ethernet.

    That is where I feel FCoE is at currently, taking a break from the initial hype, maturing while IT organizations begin planning for its future deployment.

    I see FCoE as having a bright future coexisting with other complimentary and enabling technologies such as IO Virtualization (IOV) including PCI SIG MRIOV, Converged Networking, iSCSI, SAS and NAS among others.

    Keep in mind that FCoE does not have to be seen as competitive to iSCSI or NAS as they all can coexist on a common DCB/CEE/DCE environment enabling the best of all worlds not to mention choice. FCoE along with DCB/CEE/DCE provides IT professionals with choice options (e.g. tiered I/O and networking) to align the applicable technology to the task at hand for physical or

    Again, the questions pertaining to FCoE for many organizations, particularly those not going to iSCSI or NAS for all or part of their needs should be when, where and how to deploy.

    This means that for those with long lead time planning and deployment cycles, now is the time to putting your strategy into place for what you will be doing over the next couple of years if not sooner.

    For those interested, here is a link (may require registration) to a good conversation taking place over on IT Toolbox regarding FCoE and other related themes that may be of interest.

    Here are some links to additional related material:

    • FCoE Infrastructure Coming Together
    • 2010 and 2011 Trends, Perspectives and Predictions: More of the same?
    • SNWSpotlight: 8G FC and FCoE, Solid State Storage
    • NetApp and Cisco roll out vSphere compatible FCoE solutions
    • Fibre Channel over Ethernet FAQs
    • Fast Fibre Channel and iSCSI switches deliver big pipes to virtualized SAN environments.
    • Poll: Networking Convergence, Ethernet, InfiniBand or both?
    • I/O Virtualization (IOV) Revisited
    • Will 6Gb SAS kill Fibre Channel?
    • Experts Corner: Q and A with Greg Schulz at StorageIO
    • Networking Convergence, Ethernet, Infiniband or both?
    • Vendors hail Fibre Channel over Ethernet spec
    • Cisco, NetApp and VMware combine for ‘end-to-end’ FCoE storage
    • FCoE: The great convergence, or not?
    • I/O virtualization and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): How do they differ?
    • Chapter 9 – Networking with your servers and storage: The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
    • Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier)

    That is all for now, hope you find these ongoing series of current or emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives posts of interest.

    Of course let me know what your thoughts and perspectives are on this and other related topics.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    August 2010 StorageIO News Letter

    StorageIO News Letter Image
    August 2010 Newsletter

    		 Welcome to the August Summer Wrap Up 2010 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the June 2010 edition building on the great feedback received from recipients.
    Items that are new in this expanded edition include:

    • Out and About Update
    • Industry Trends and Perspectives (ITP)
    • Featured Article

    You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions. Click on the following links to view the August 2010 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

    Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

    You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

    Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    Posted on

    Back to school shopping: Dude, Dell Digests 3PAR Disk storage

    Dell

    No sooner has the dust settled from Dells other recent acquisitions, its back to school shopping time and the latest bargain for the Round Rock Texas folks is bay (San Francisco) area storage vendor 3PAR for $1.15B. As a refresh, some of Dells more recent acquisitions including a few years ago $1.4B for EqualLogic, $3.9B for Perot systems not to mention Exanet, Kace and Ocarina earlier this year. For those interested, as of April 2010 reporting figures found here, Dell showed about $10B USD in cash and here is financial information on publicly held 3PAR (PAR).

    Who is 3PAR
    3PAR is a publicly traded company (PAR) that makes a scalable or clustered storage system with many built in advanced features typically associated with high end EMC DMX and VMAX as well as CLARiiON, in addition to Hitachi or HP or IBM enterprise class solutions. The Inserv (3PARs storage solution) combines hardware and software providing a very scalable solution that can be configured for smaller environments or larger enterprise by varying the number of controllers or processing nodes, connectivity (server attachment) ports, cache and disk drives.

    Unlike EqualLogic which is more of a mid market iSCSI only storage system, the 3PAR Inserv is capable of going head to head with the EMC CLARiiON as well as DMC or VMAX systems that support a mix of iSCSI and Fibre Channel or NAS via gateway or appliances. Thus while there were occasional competitive situations between 3PAR and Dell EqualLogic, they for the most part were targeted at different market sectors or customers deployment scenarios.

    What does Dell get with 3PAR?

    • A good deal if not a bargain on one of the last new storage startup pure plays
    • A public company that is actually generating revenue with a large and growing installed base
    • A seasoned sales force who knows how to sell into the enterprise storage space against EMC, HP, IBM, Oracle/SUN, Netapp and others
    • A solution that can scale in terms of functionality, connectivity, performance, availability, capacity and energy efficiency (PACE)
    • Potential route to new markets where 3PAR has had success, or to bridge gaps where both have played and competed in the past
    • Did I say a company with an established footprint of installed 3PAR Inserv storage systems and good list of marquee customers
    • Ability to sell a solution that they own the intellectual property (IP) instead of that of partner EMC
    • Plenty of IP that can be leveraged within other Dell solutions, not to mention combine 3PAR with other recently acquired technologies or companies.

    On a lighter note, Dell picks up once again Marc Farley who was with them briefly after the EqualLogic acquisition who then departed to 3PAR where he became director of social media including launch of Infosmack on Storage Monkeys with co host Greg Knieriemen (@Knieriemen). Of course the twitter world and traditional coconut wires are now speculating where Farley will go next that Dell may end up buying in the future.

    What does this mean for Dell and their data storage portfolio?
    While in no ways all inclusive or comprehensive, table 1 provides a rough framework of different price bands, categories, tiers and market or application segments requiring various types of storage solutions where Dell can sell into.

     

    HP

    Dell

    EMC

    IBM

    Oracle/Sun

    Servers

    Blade systems, rack mount, towers to desktop

    Blade systems, rack mount, towers to desktop

    Virtual servers with VMware, servers via vBlock servers via Cisco

    Blade systems, rack mount, towers to desktop

    Blade systems, rack mount, towers to desktop

    Services

    HP managed services, consulting and hosting supplemented by EDS acquisition

    Bought Perot systems (an EDS spin off/out)

    Partnered with various organizations and services

    Has been doing smaller acquisitions adding tools and capabilities to IBM global services

    Large internal consulting and services as well as Software as a Service (SaaS) hosting, partnered with others

    Enterprise storage

    XP (FC, iSCSI, FICON for mainframe and NAS with gateway) which is OEMed from Hitachi Japan parent of HDS

    3PAR (iSCSI and FICON or NAS with gateway) replaces EMC CLARiiON or perhaps rare DMX/VMAX at high end?

    DMX and VMAX

    DS8000

    Sun resold HDS version of XP/USP however Oracle has since dropped it from lineup

    Data footprint impact reduction

    Dedupe on VTL via Sepaton plus HP developed technology or OEMed products

    Dedupe in OEM or partner software or hardware solutions, recently acquired Ocarina

    Dedupe in Avamar, Datadomain, Networker, Celerra, Centera, Atmos. CLARiiON and Celerra compression

    Dedupe in various hardware and software solutions, source and target, compression with Storwize

    Dedupe via OEM VTLs and other sun solutions

    Data preservation

    Database and other archive tools, archive storage

    OEM solutions from EMC and others

    Centera and other solutions

    Various hardware and software solutions

    Various hardware and software solutions

    General data protection (excluding logical or physical security and DLP)

    Internal Data Protector software plus OEM, partners with other software, various VTL, TL and target solutions as well as services

    OEM and resell partner tools as well as Dell target devices and those of partners. Could this be a future acquisition target area?

    Networker and Avamar software, Datadomain and other targets, DPA management tools and Mozy services

    Tivoli suite of software and various hardware targets, management tools and cloud services

    Various software and partners tools, tape libraries, VTLs and online storage solutions

    Scale out, bulk, or clustered NAS

    eXtreme scale out, bulk and clustered storage for unstructured data applications

    Exanet on Dell servers with shared SAS, iSCSI or FC storage

    Celerra and ATMOS

    IBM SONAS or N series (OEM from NetApp)

    ZFS based solutions including 7000 series

    General purpose NAS

    Various gateways for EVA or MSA or XP, HP IBRIX or Polyserve based as well as Microsoft WSS solutions

    EMC Celerra, Dell Exanet, Microsoft WSS based. Acquisition or partner target area?

    Celerra

    N Series OEMed from Netapp as well as growing awareness of SONAS

    ZFS based solutions. Whatever happened to Procom?

    Mid market multi protocol block

    EVA (FC with iSCSI or NAS gateways), LeftHand (P Series iSCSI) for lowered of this market

    3PAR (FC and iSCSI, NAS with gateway) for mid to upper end of this market, EqualLogic (iSCSI) for the lower end of the market, some residual EMC CX activity phases out over time?

    CLARiiON (FC and iSCSI with NAS via gateway), Some smaller DMX or VMAX configurations for mid to upper end of this market

    DS5000, DS4000 (FC and iSCSI with NAS via a gateway) both OEMed from LSI, XIV and N series (Netapp)

    7000 series (ZFS and Sun storage software running on Sun server with internal storage, optional external storage)

    6000 series

    Scalable SMB iSCSI

    LeftHand (P Series)

    EqualLogic

    Celerra NX, CLARiiON AX/CX

    XIV, DS3000, N Series

    2000
    7000

    Entry level shared block

    MSA2000 (iSCSI, FC, SAS)

    MD3000 (iSCSI, FC, SAS)

    AX (iSCSI, FC)

    DS3000 (iSCSI, FC, SAS), N Series (iSCSI, FC, NAS)

    2000
    7000

    Entry level unified multi function

    X (not to be confused with eXtreme series) HP servers with Windows Storage Software

    Dell servers with Windows Storage Software or EMC Celerra

    Celerra NX, Iomega

    xSeries servers with Microsoft or other software installed

    ZFS based solutions running on Sun servers

    Low end SOHO

    X (not to be confused with eXtreme series) HP servers with Windows Storage Software

    Dell servers with storage and Windows Storage Software. Future acqustion area perhaps?

    Iomega

     

     

    Table 1: Sampling of various tiers, architectures, functionality and storage solution options

    Clarifying some of the above categories in table 1:

    Servers: Application servers or computers running Windows, Linux, HyperV, VMware or other applications, operating systems and hypervisors.

    Services: Professional and consulting services, installation, break fix repair, call center, hosting, managed services or cloud solutions

    Enterprise storage: Large scale (hundreds to thousands of drives, many front end as well as back ports, multiple controllers or storage processing engines (nodes), large amount of cache and equally strong performance, feature rich functionality, resilient and scalable.

    Data footprint impact reduction: Archive, data management, compression, dedupe, thin provision among other techniques. Read more here and here.

    Data preservation: Archiving for compliance and non regulatory applications or data including software, hardware, services.

    General data protection: Excluding physical or logical data security (firewalls, dlp, etc), this would be backup/restore with encryption, replication, snapshots, hardware and software to support BC, DR and normal business operations. Read more about data protection options for virtual and physical storage here.

    Scale out NAS: Clustered NAS, bulk unstructured storage, cloud storage system or file system. Read more about clustered storage here. HP has their eXtreme X series of scale out and bulk storage systems as well as gateways. These leverage IBRIX and Polyserve which were bought by HP as software, or as a solution (HP servers, storage and software), perhaps with optional data reduction software such as Ocarina OEMed by Dell. Dell now has Exanet which they bought recently as software, or as a solution running on Dell servers, with either SAS, iSCSI or FC back end storage plus optional data footprint reduction software such as Ocarina. IBM has GPFS as a software solution running on IBM or other vendors servers with attached storage, or as a solution such as SONAS with IBM servers running software with IBM DS mid range storage. IBM also OEMs Netapp as the N series.

    General purpose NAS: NAS (NFS and CIFS or optional AFP and pNFS) for everyday enterprise (or SME/SMB) file serving and sharing

    Mid market multi protocol block: For SMB to SME environments that need scalable shared (SAN) scalable block storage using iSCSI, FC or FCoE

    Scalable SMB iSCSI: For SMB to SME environments that need scalable iSCSI storage with feature rich functionality including built in virtualization

    Entry level shared block: Block storage with flexibility to support iSCSI, SAS or Fibre Channel with optional NAS support built in or available via a gateway. For example external SAS RAID shared storage between 2 or more servers configured in a HyeprV or VMware clustered that do not need or can afford higher cost of iSCSI. Another example would be shared SAS (or iSCSI or Fibre Channel) storage attached to a server running storage software such as clustered file system (e.g. Exanet) or VTL, Dedupe, Backup, Archiving or data footprint reduction tools or perhaps database software where higher cost or complexity of an iSCSI or Fibre Channel SAN is not needed. Read more about external shared SAS here.

    Entry level unified multifunction: This is storage that can do block and file yet is scaled down to meet ease of acquisition, ease of sale, channel friendly, simplified deployment and installation yet affordable for SMBs or larger SOHOs as well as ROBOs.

    Low end SOHO: Storage that can scale down to consumer, prosumer or lower end of SMB (e.g. SOHO) providing mix of block and file, yet priced and positioned below higher price multifunction systems.

    Wait a minute, are that too many different categories or types of storage?

    Perhaps, however it also enables multiple tools (tiers of technologies) to be in a vendors tool box, or, in an IT professionals tool bin to address different challenges. Lets come back to this in a few moments.

     

    Some Industry trends and perspectives (ITP) thoughts:

    How can Dell with 3PAR be an enterprise play without IBM mainframe FICON support?
    Some would say forget about it, mainframes are dead thus not a Dell objective even though EMC, HDS and IBM sell a ton of storage into those environments. However, fair enough argument and one that 3PAR has faced for years while competing with EMC, HDS, HP, IBM and Fujitsu thus they are versed in how to handle that discussion. Thus the 3PAR teams can help the Dell folks determine where to hunt and farm for business something that many of the Dell folks already know how to do. After all, today they have to flip the business to EMC or worse.

    If truly pressured and in need, Dell could continue reference sales with EMC for DMX and VMAX. Likewise they could also go to Bustech and/or Luminex who have open systems to mainframe gateways (including VTL support) under a custom or special solution sale. Ironically EMC has OEMed in the past Bustech to transform their high end storage into Mainframe VTLs (not to be confused with Falconstor or Quantum for open system) as well as Datadomain partnered with Luminex.

    BTW, did you know that Dell has had for several years a group or team that handles specialized storage solutions addressing needs outside the usual product portfolio?

    Thus IMHO Dells enterprise class focus will be that for open systems large scale out where they will compete with EMC DMX and VMAX, HDS USP or their soon to be announced enhancements, HP and their Hitachi Japan OEMed XP, IBM and the DS8000 as well as the seldom heard about yet equally scalable Fujitsu Eternus systems.

     

    Why only 1.15B, after all they paid 1.4B for EqualLogic?
    IMHO, had this deal occurred a couple of years ago when some valuations were still flying higher than today, and 3PAR were at their current sales run rate, customer deployment situations, it is possible the amount would have been higher, either way, this is still a great value for both Dell and 3PAR investors, customers, employees and partners.

     

    Does this mean Dell dumps EMC?
    Near term I do not think Dell dumps the EMC dudes (or dudettes) as there is still plenty of business in the mid market for the two companies. However, over time, I would expect that Dell will unleash the 3PAR folks into the space where normally a CLARiiON CX would have been positioned such as deals just above where EqualLogic plays, or where Fibre Channel is preferred. Likewise, I would expect Dell to empower the 3PAR team to go after additional higher end deals where a DMX or VMAX would have been the previous option not to mention where 3PAR has had success.

    This would also mean extending into sales against HP EVA and XPs, IBM DS5000 and DS8000 as well as XIV, Oracle/Sun 6000 and 7000s to name a few. In other words there will be some spin around coopition, however longer term you can read the writing on the wall. Oh, btw, lest you forget, Dell is first and foremost a server company who now is getting into storage in a much bigger way and EMC is first and foremost a storage company who is getting into severs via VMware as well as their Cisco partnerships.

    Are shots being fired across each other bows? I will leave that up to you to speculate.

     

    Does this mean Dell MD1000/MD3000 iSCSI, SAS and FC disappears?
    I do not think so as they have had a specific role for entry level below where the EqualLogic iSCSI only solution fits providing mixed iSCSI, SAS and Fibre Channel capabilities to compete with the HP MSA2000 (OEMed by Dothill) and IBM DS3000 (OEMed from LSI). While 3PAR could be taken down into some of these markets, which would also potentially dilute the brand and thus premium margin of those solutions.

    Likewise, there is a play with server vendors to attach shared SAS external storage to small 2 and 4 node clusters for VMware, HyperV, Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and other applications where iSCSI or Fibre Channel are to expensive or not needed or where NAS is not a fit. Another play for the shared external SAS attached is for attaching low cost storage to scale out clustered NAS or bulk storage where software such as Exanet runs on a Dell server. Take a closer look at how HP is supporting their scale out as well as IBM and Oracle among others. Sure you can find iSCSI or Fibre Channel or even NAS back end to file servers. However growing trend of using shared SAS.

     

    Does Dell now have too many different storage systems and solutions in their portfolio?
    Possibly depending upon how you look at it and certainly the potential is there for revenue prevention teams to get in the way of each other instead of competing with external competitors. However if you compare the Dell lineup with those of EMC, HP, IBM and Oracle/Sun among others, it is not all that different. Note that HP, IBM and Oracle also have something in common with Dell in that they are general IT resource providers (servers, storage, networks, services, hardware and software) as compared to other traditional storage vendors.

    Consequently if you look at these vendors in terms of their different markets from consumer to prosumer to SOHO at the low end of the SMB to SME that sits between SMB and enterprise, they have diverse customer needs. Likewise, if you look at these vendors server offerings, they too are diverse ranging from desktops to floor standing towers to racks, high density racks and blade servers that also need various tiers, architectures, price bands and purposed storage functionality.

     

    What will be key for Dell to make this all work?
    The key for Dell will be similar to that of their competitors which is to clearly communicate the value proposition of the various products or solutions, where, who and what their target markets are and then execute on those plans. There will be overlap and conflict despite the best spin as is always the case with diverse portfolios by vendors.

    However if Dell can keep their teams focused on expanding their customer footprints at the expense of their external competition vs. cannibalizing their own internal product lines, not to mention creating or extending into new markets or applications. Consequently Dell now has many tools in their tool box and thus need to educate their solution teams on what to use or sell when, where, why and how instead of just having one tool or a singular focus. In other words, while a great solution, Dell no longer has to respond with the solution to everything is iSCSI based EqualLogic.

    Likewise Dell can leverage the same emotion and momentum behind the EqualLogic teams to invigorate and unleash the best with 3PAR teams and solution into or onto the higher end of the SMB, SME and enterprise environments.

    Im still thinking that Exanet is a diamond in the rough for Dell where they can install the clustered scalable NAS software onto their servers and use either lower end shared SAS RAID (e.g. MD3000), or iSCSI (MD3000, EqualLogic or 3PAR) or higher end Fibre Channel with 3PAR) for scale out, cloud and other bulk solutions competing with HP, Oracle and IBM. Dell still has the Windows based storage server for entry level multi protocol block and file capabilities as well as what they OEM from EMC.

     

    Is Dell done shopping?
    IMHO I do not think so as there are still areas where Dell can extend their portfolio and not just in storage. Likewise there are still some opportunities or perhaps bargains out there for fall and beyond acquisitions.

     

    Does this mean that Dell is not happy with EqualLogic and iSCSI
    Simply put from my perspective talking with Dell customers, prospects, and partners and seeing them all in action nothing could be further from Dell not being happy with iSCSI or EqualLogic. Look at this as being a way to extend the Dell story and capabilities into new markets, granted the EqualLogic folks now have a new sibling to compete with internal marketing and management for love and attention.

     

    Isnt Dell just an iSCSI focused company?
    A couple of years I was quoted in one of the financial analysis reports as saying that Dell needed to remain open to various forms of storage instead of becoming singularly focused on just iSCSI as a result of the EqualLogic deal. I standby that statement in that Dell to be a strong enterprise contender needs to have a balanced portfolio across different price or market bands, from block to file, from shared SAS to iSCSI to Fibre Channel and emerging FCoE.

    This also means supporting traditional NAS across those different price band or market sectors as well as support for emerging and fast growing unstructured data markets where there is a need for scale out and bulk storage. Thus it is great to see Dell remaining open minded and not becoming singularly focused on just iSCSI instead providing the right solution to meet their diverse customer as well as prospect needs or opportunities.

    While EqualLogic was and is a very successfully iSCSI focused storage solution not to mention one that Dell continues to leverage, Dell is more than just iSCSI. Take a look at Dells current storage line up as well as up in table 1 and there is a lot of existing diversity. Granted some of that current diversity is via partners which the 3PAR deal helps to address. What this means is that iSCSI continues to grow in popularity however there are other needs where shared SAS or Fibre Channel or FCoE will be needed opening new markets to Dell.

     

    Bottom line and wrap up (for now)
    This is a great move for Dell (as well as 3PAR) to move up market in the storage space with less reliance on EMC. Assuming that Dell can communicate the what to use when, where, why and how to both their internal teams, partners as well as industry and customers not to mention then execute on, they should have themselves a winner.

    Will this deal end up being an even better bargain than when Dell paid $1.4B for EqualLogic?

    Not sure yet, it certainly has potential if Dell can execute on their plans without losing momentum in any other their other areas (products).

    Whats your take?

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

    Here are some related links to read more

    Posted on

    Industry Trends and Perspectives: Tiered Storage, Systems and Mediums

    This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs.

    These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, solution brief content found at www.storageio.com/reports.

    Two years ago we read about how the magnetic disk drive would be dead in a couple of years at the hand of flash SSD. Guess what, it is a couple of years later and the magnetic disk drive is far from being dead. Granted high performance Fibre Channel disks will continue to be replaced by high performance, small form factor 2.5" SAS drives along with continued adoption of high capacity SAS and SATA devices.

    Likewise, SSD or flash drives continue to be deployed, however outside of iPhone, iPod and other consumer or low end devices, nowhere near the projected or perhaps hoped for level. Rest assured the trend Im seeing and hearing from IT customers is that some will continue to look for places to strategically deploy SSD where possible, practical and affordable, there will continue to be a roll for disk and even tape devices on a go forward basis.

    Also watch for more coverage and discussion around the emergence of the Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) that was discussed about four to five years ago. The HHDD made an appearance and then quietly went away for some time, perhaps more R and D time in the labs while flash SSD garnered the spotlight.

    There could be a good opportunity for HHDD technology leveraging the best of both worlds that is continued pricing decreases for disk with larger capacity using smaller yet more affordable amounts of flash in a solution that is transparent to the server or storage controller making for easier integration.

    Related and companion material:
    Blog: ILM = Has It Losts its Meaning
    Blog: SSD and Storage System Performance
    Blog: Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List
    Blog: Optimize Data Storage for Performance and Capacity Efficiency

    That is all for now, hope you find this ongoing series of current and emerging Industry Trends and Perspectives interesting.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    twitter @storageio

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