Tag: file

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Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from Cloud to On-Prem

What is Azure Elastic SAN

Azure Elastic SAN (AES) is a new (now GA) Azure Cloud native storage service that provides scalable, resilient, easy management with rapid provisioning, high performance, and cost-effective storage. AES (figure 1) supports many workloads and computing resources. Workloads that benefit from AES include tier 1 and tier 2, such as Mission Critical, Database, and VDI, among others traditionally relying upon consolidated Storage Area Network (SAN) shared storage.

Compute resources that can use AES, including bare metal (BM) physical machines (PM), virtual machines (VM), and containers, among others, using iSCSI for access. AES is accessible by computing resources and services within the Azure Cloud in various regions (check Azure Website for specific region availability) and from on-prem core and edge locations using iSCSI. The AES management experience and value proposition are similar to traditional hardware or software-defined shared SAN storage combined with Azure cloud-based management capabilities.

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 1 General Concept and Use of Azure Elastic SAN (AES)

While Microsoft Azure describes AES as a cloud-native storage solution, that does not mean that AES is only for containers and other cloud-native apps or DevOPS. Rather, AES has been built for and is native to the cloud (e.g., software-defined) that can be accessed by various compute and other resources (e.g., VMs, Containers, AKS, etc) using iSCSI.

How Azure Elastic SAN differs from other Azure Storage

AES differs from traditional Azure block storage (e.g., Azure Disks) in that the storage is independent of the host compute server (e.g., BM, PM, VM, containers). With AES, similar to a conventional software-defined or hardware-based shared SAN solution, storage is disaggregated from host servers for sharing and management using iSCSI for connectivity. By comparison, AES differs from traditional Azure VM-based storage typically associated with a given virtual machine in a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) type configuration. Likewise, similar to conventional on-prem environments, there is a mix of DAS and SAN, including some host servers that leverage both.

AES supports Azure VM, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), cloud-native, edge, and on-prem computing (BM, VM, etc.) via iSCSI. Support for Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is in preview; check the Microsoft Azure website for updates and new feature functionality enhancements.

Does this mean everything is moving to AES? Similar to traditional SANs, there are roles and needs for various storage options, including DAS, shared block, file, and object, among storage offerings. Likewise, Microsoft and Azure have expanded their storage offerings to include AES, DAS (azure disks, including Ultra, premium, and standard, among other options), append, block, and page blobs (objects), and files, including Azure file sync, tables, and Data Box, among other storage services.

Azure Elastic Storage Feature Highlights

AES feature highlights include, among others:

    • Management via Azure Portal and associated tools
    • Azure cloud-based shared scalable bock storage
    • Scalable capacity, low latency, and high performance (IOPs and throughput)
    • Space capacity-optimized without the need for data reduction
    • Accessible from within Azure cloud and from on-prem using iSCSI
    • Supports Azure compute  (VMs, Containers/AKS, Azure VMware Solution)
    • On-prem access via iSCSI from PM/BM, VM, and containers
    • Variable number of volumes and volume size per volume group
    • Flexible easy to use Azure cloud-based management
    • Encryption and network private endpoint security
    • Local (LRS) and Zone (ZRS) with replication resiliency
    • Volume snapshots and cluster support

Who is Azure Elastic SAN for

AES is for those who need cost-effective, shared, resilient, high capacity, high performance (IOPS, Bandwidth), and low latency block storage within Azure and from on-prem access. Others who can benefit from AES include those who need shared block storage for clustering app workloads, server and storage consolidation, and hybrid and migration. Another consideration is for those familiar with traditional hardware and software-defined SANs to facilitate hybrid and migration strategies.

How Azure Elastic SAN works

Azure Elastic SAN is a software-defined (cloud native if you prefer) block storage offering that presents a virtual SAN accessible within Azure Cloud and to on-prem core and edge locations currently via iSCSI. Using iSCSI, Azure VMs, Clusters, Containers, Azure VMware Solution among other compute and services, and on-prem BM/PM, VM, and containers, among others, can access AES storage volumes.

From the Azure Portal or associated tools (Azure CLI or PowerShell), create an AES SAN, giving it a 3 to 24-character name and specify storage capacity (base units with performance and any additional space capacity). Next, create a Volume Group, assigning it to a specific subscription and resource group (new or existing), then specify which Azure Region to use, type of redundancy (LRS or GRS), and Zone to use. LRS provides local redundancy, while ZRS provides enhanced zone resiliency, with highspeed synchronous resiliency without setting up multiple SAN systems and their associated replication configurations along with networking considerations (e.g., Azure takes care of that for you within their service).

The next step is to create volumes by specifying the volume name, volume group to use, volume size in GB, maximum IOPs, and bandwidth. Once you have made your AES volume group and volumes, you can create private endpoints, change security and access controls, and access the volumes from Azure or on-prem resources using iSCSI. Note that AES currently needs to be LRS (not ZRS) for clustered shared storage and that Key management includes using your keys with Azure key vault.

Using Azure Elastic SAN

Using AES is straightforward, and there are good easy to follow guides from Microsoft Azure, including the following:

The following images show what AES looks like from the Azure Portal, as well as from an Azure Windows Server VM and an onprem physical machine (e.g., Windows 10 laptop).

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 2 AES Azure Portal Big Picture

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 3 AES Volume Groups Portal View

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 4  AES Volumes Portal View

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 5 AES Volume Snapshot Views

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 6 AES Connected Volume Portal View

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 7 AES Volume iSCSI view from on-prem Windows Laptop

Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN from cloud to on-prem server storageioblog
Figure 8 AES iSCSI Volume attached to Azure VM

Azure Elastic SAN Cost Pricing

The cost of AES is elastic, depending on whether you scale capacity with performance (e.g., base unit) or add more space capacity. If you need more performance, add base unit capacity, increasing IOPS, bandwidth, and space. In other words, base capacity includes storage space and performance, which you can grow in various increments. Remember that AES storage resources get shared across volumes within a volume group.

Azure Elastic SAN is billed hourly based on a monthly per-capacity base unit rate, with a minimum of 1TB  provisioned capacity with minimum performance (e.g., 5,000 IOPs, 200MBps bandwidth). The base unit rate varies by region and type of redundancy, aka resiliency. For example, at the time of this writing, looking at US East, the Local Redundant Storage (LRS) base unit rate is 1TB with 5,000 IOPs and 200MBps bandwidth, costing $81.92 per unit per month.

The above example breaks down to a rate of $0.08 per GB per month, or $0.000110 per GB per hour (assumes 730 hours per month). An example of simply adding storage capacity without increasing base unit (e.g., performance) for US East is $61.44 per month. That works out to $0.06 per GB per month (no additional provisioned IOPs or Bandwidth) or $0.000083 per GB per hour.

Note that there are extra fees for Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS). Learn more about Azure Elastic SAN pricing here, as well as via a cost calculator here.

Azure Elastic SAN Performance

Performance for Azure Elastic SAN includes IOPs, Bandwidth, and Latency. AES IOPs get increased in increments of 5,000 per base TB. Thus, an AES with a base of 10TB would have 50,000 IOPs distributed (shared) across all of its volumes (e.g., volumes are not restricted). For example, if the base TB is increased from 10TB to 20TB, then the IOPs would increase from 50,000 to 100,000 IOPs.

On the other hand, if the base capacity (10TB) is not increased, only the storage capacity would increase from 10TB to 20TB, and the AES would have more capacity but still only have the 50,000 IOPs. AES bandwidth throughput increased by 200MBps per TB. For example, a 5TB AES would have 5 x 200MBps (1,000 MBps) throughput bandwidth shared across the volume groups volumes.

Note that while the performance gets shared across volumes, individual volume performance is determined by its capacity with a maximum of 80,000 IOPs and up to 1,024 MBps. Thus, to reach 80,000 IOPS and 1,024 MBps, an AES volume would have to be at least 107GB in space capacity. Also, note that the aggregate performance of all volumes cannot exceed the total of the AES. If you need more performance, then create another AES.

Will all VMs or compute resources see performance improvements with AES? Traditional Azure Disks associated with VMs have per-disk performance resource limits, including IOPs and Bandwidth. Likewise, VMs have storage limits based on their instance type and size, including the number of disks (HDD or SSD), performance (IOPS and bandwidth), and the number of CPUs and memory.

What this means is that an AES volume could have more performance than what a given VM is limited to. Refer to your VM instance sizing and configuration to determine its IOP and bandwidth limits; if needed, explore changing the size of your VM instance to leverage the performance of Azure Elastic SAN storage.

Additional Resources Where to learn more

The following links are additional resources to learn about Microsoft Azure Elastic SAN and related data infrastructures and tradecraft topics.

Azure AKS Storage Concepts 
Azure Elastic SAN (AES) Documentation and Deployment Guides
Azure Elastic SAN Microsoft Blog
Azure Elastic SAN Overview
Azure Elastic SAN Performance topics
Azure Elastic SAN Pricing calculator
Azure Products by Region (see where AES is currently available)
Azure Storage Offerings 
Azure Virtual Machine (VM) sizes
Azure Virtual Machine (VM) types
Azure Elastic SAN General Pricing
Azure Storage redundancy 
Azure Service Level Agreements (SLA) 
StorageIOBlog.com Data Box Family 
StorageIOBlog.com Data Box Review
StorageIOBlog.com Data Box Test Drive 
StorageIOblog.com Microsoft Hyper-V Alive Enhanced with Win Server 2025
StorageIOblog.com If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?
StorageIOblog.com NVMe Primer (or refresh)
RTO Context Matters (Blog Post)

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), are found in my Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press) by Greg Schulz

What this all means

Azure Elastic SAN (AES) is a new and now generally available shared block storage offering that is accessible using iSCSI from within Azure Cloud and on-prem environments. Even with iSCSI, AES is relatively easy to set up and use for shared storage, mainly if you are used to or currently working with hardware or software-defined SAN storage solutions.

With NVMe over TCP fabrics gaining industry and customer traction, I’m hoping for Microsoft to adding that in the future. Currently, AES supports LRS and ZRS for redundancy, and an excellent future enhancement would be to add Geo Redundant Storage (GRS) capabilities for those who need it.

I like the option of elastic shared storage regarding performance, availability, capacity, and economic costs (PACE). Suppose you understand the value proposition of evolving from dedicated DAS to shared SAN (independent of the underlying fabric network); or are currently using some form of on-prem shared block storage. In that case, you will find AES familiar and easy to use. Granted, AES is not a solution for everything as there are roles for other block storage, including DAS such as Azure disks and VMs within Azure, along with on-prem DAS, as well as file, object, and blobs, tables, among others.

Wrap up

The notion that all cloud storage must be objects or blobs is tied those who only need, provide, or prefer those solutions. The reality is that everything is not the same. Thus, there is a need for various storage mediums, devices, tiers, access, and types of services. Microsoft and Azure have done an excellent job of providing. I like what Microsoft Azure is doing with Azure Elastic SAN.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some related content

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

Reminder to Protect your data and apps and settings

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

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

What About Recovery

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

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

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

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

What About Recovery Day?

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

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

Why do I mentation apps, data, and settings?

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

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

Who does this apply to?

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

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

What to do?

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

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

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

Trust yet verify, test your backups and recovery

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

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

What do I do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What should you do next?

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

Where to learn more

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

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

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

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

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, ten-time VMware vExpert. Author of Data Infrastructure Insights (CRC Press), Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC). Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier). Visit twitter @storageio as well as www.picturesoverstillwater.com to view various UAS/UAV e.g. drone based aerial content created by Greg Schulz. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com. Any reproduction without attribution or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. Visit our companion site https://picturesoverstillwater.com to view drone based aerial photography and video related topics. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC.

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Data Infrastructure Industry Trends WekaIO Matrix Software Defined Storage SDS

WekaIO Matrix Scale Out Software Defined Storage SDS

server storage I/O trends

Updated 2/11/2018

WekaIO Matrix is a scale out software defined solution (SDS).

WekaIO Matrix software defined scale out storage SDS

This Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective report looks at common issues, trends, and how to address different application server storage I/O challenges. In this report, we look at WekaIO Matrix, an elastic, flexible, highly scalable easy to use (and manage) software defined (e.g. software based) storage solution. WekaIO Matrix enables flexible elastic scaling with stability and without compromise.

Matrix is a new scale out software defined storage solution that:

  • Installs on bare metal, virtual or cloud servers
  • Has POSIX, NFS, SMB, and HDFS storage access
  • Adaptable performance for little and big data
  • Tiering of flash SSD and cloud object storage
  • Distributed resilience without compromise
  • Removes complexity of traditional storage
  • Deploys on bare metal, virtual and cloud environments

Where To Learn More

View additional SDS 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

Read more about WekaIO Matrix in this (free, no registration required) Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective (ITP) Report compliments of WekaIO.

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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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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AWS S3 Storage Gateway Revisited (Part I)

server storage I/O trends

AWS S3 Storage Gateway Revisited (Part I)

This Amazon Web Service (AWS) Storage Gateway Revisited posts is a follow-up to the AWS Storage Gateway test drive and review I did a few years ago (thus why it’s called revisited). As part of a two-part series, the first post looks at what AWS Storage Gateway is, how it has improved since my last review of AWS Storage Gateway along with deployment options. The second post in the series looks at a sample test drive deployment and use.

If you need an AWS primer and overview of various services such as Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Elastic File Service (EFS), Simple Storage Service (S3), Availability Zones (AZ), Regions and other items check this multi-part series (Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview (Part I) ).

AWS

As a quick refresher, S3 is the AWS bulk, high-capacity unstructured and object storage service along with its companion deep cold (e.g. inactive) Glacier. There are various S3 storage service classes including standard, reduced redundancy storage (RRS) along with infrequent access (IA) that have different availability durability, performance, service level and cost attributes.

Note that S3 IA is not Glacier as your data always remains on-line accessible while Glacier data can be off-line. AWS S3 can be accessed via its API, as well as via HTTP rest calls, AWS tools along with those from third-party’s. Third party tools include NAS file access such as S3FS for Linux that I use for my Ubuntu systems to mount S3 buckets and use similar to other mount points. Other tools include Cloudberry, S3 Motion, S3 Browser as well as plug-ins available in most data protection (backup, snapshot, archive) software tools and storage systems today.

AWS S3 Storage Gateway and What’s New

The Storage Gateway is the AWS tool that you can use for accessing S3 buckets and objects via your block volume, NAS file or tape based applications. The Storage Gateway is intended to give S3 bucket and object access to on-premises applications and data infrastructures functions including data protection (backup/restore, business continuance (BC), business resiliency (BR), disaster recovery (DR) and archiving), along with storage tiering to cloud.

Some of the things that have evolved with the S3 Storage Gateway include:

  • Easier, streamlined download, installation, deployment
  • Enhanced Virtual Tape Library (VTL) and Virtual Tape support
  • File serving and sharing (not to be confused with Elastic File Services (EFS))
  • Ability to define your own bucket and associated parameters
  • Bucket options including Infrequent Access (IA) or standard
  • Options for AWS EC2 hosted, or on-premises VMware as well as Hyper-V gateways (file only supports VMware and EC2)

AWS Storage Gateway Three Functions

AWS Storage Gateway can be deployed for three basic functions:

    AWS Storage Gateway File Architecture via AWS.com

  • File Gateway (NFS NAS) – Files, folders, objects and other items are stored in AWS S3 with a local cache for low latency access to most recently used data. With this option, you can create folders and subdirectory similar to a regular file system or NAS device as well as configure various security, permissions, access control policies. Data is stored in S3 buckets that you specify policies such as standard or Infrequent Access (IA) among other options. AWS hosted via EC2 as well as VMware Virtual Machine (VM) for on-premises file gateway.

    Also, note that AWS cautions on multiple concurrent writers to S3 buckets with Storage Gateway so check the AWS FAQs which may have changed by the time you read this. Current file share limits (subject to change) include 1 file gateway share per S3 bucket (e.g. a one to one mapping between file share and a bucket). There can be 10 file shares per gateway (e.g. multiple shares each with its own bucket per gateway) and a maximum file size of 5TB (same as maximum S3 object size). Note that you might hear about object storage systems supporting unlimited size objects which some may do, however generally there are some constraints either on their API front-end, or what is currently tested. View current AWS Storage Gateway resource and specification limits here.

    • AWS Storage Gateway Non-Cached Volume Architecture via AWS.com

    AWS Storage Gateway Cached Volume Architecture via AWS.com

  • Volume Gateway (Block iSCSI) – Leverages S3 with a point in time backup as an AWS EBS snapshot. Two options exist including Cached volumes with low-latency access to most recently used data (e.g. data is stored in AWS, with a local cache copy on disk or SSD). The other option is Stored Volumes (e.g. non-cached) where primary copy is local and periodic snapshot backups are sent to AWS. AWS provides EC2 hosted, as well as VMs for VMware and various Hyper-V Windows Server based VMs.

    Current Storage Gateway volume limits (subject to change) include maximum size of a cached volume 32TB, maximum size of a stored volume 16TB. Note that snapshots of cached volumes larger than 16TB can only be restored to a storage gateway volume, they can not be restored as an EBS volume (via EC2). There are a maximum of 32 volumes for a gateway with total size of all volumes for a gateway (cached) of 1,024TB (e.g. 1PB). The total size of all volumes for a gateway (stored volume) is 512TB. View current AWS Storage Gateway resource and specification limits here.

    • AWS Storage Gateway VTL Architecture via AWS.com

  • Virtual Tape Library Gateway (VTL) – Supports saving your data for backup/BC/DR/archiving into S3 and Glacier storage tiers. Being a Virtual Tape Library (e.g. VTL) you can specify emulation of tapes for compatibility with your existing backup, archiving and data protection software, management tools and processes.

    Storage Gateway limits for tape include minimum size of a virtual tape 100GB, maximum size of a virtual tape 2.5TB, maximum number of virtual tapes for a VTL is 1,500 and total size of all tapes in a VTL is 1PB. Note that the maximum number of virtual tapes in an archive is unlimited and total size of all tapes in an archive is also unlimited. View current AWS Storage Gateway resource and specification limits here.

    AWS

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

As to which gateway function and mode (cached or non-cached for Volumes) depends on what it is that you are trying to do. Likewise choosing between EC2 (cloud hosted) or on-premises Hyper-V and VMware VMs depends on what your data infrastructure support requirements are. Overall I like the progress that AWS has put into evolving the Storage Gateway, granted it might not be applicable for all usage cases. Continue reading more and view images from the AWS Storage Gateway Revisited test drive in part two located here.

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio.

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

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

server storage I/O trends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the most common cloud conversations topics involve context :

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

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

Where To Learn More

Additional related content can be found at:

What This All Means

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

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

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author of Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), as well as Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio.

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

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Cloud Constellation SpaceBelt – Out Of This World Cloud Data Centers?

Cloud Constellation SpaceBelt – Out Of This World Cloud Data Centers?

server storage I/O trends

A new startup called Cloud Constellation (aka SpaceBelt) has announced and proposes converge space terrestrial satellite technology with IT information and cloud related data infrastructure technologies including NVM (e.g. SSD) and storage class memory (SCM). While announcing their Series A funding and proposed value proposition (below), Cloud Constellation did not say how much funding, who the investors are, or management team leading to some, well, rather cloud information.

Cloud Constellation’s SpaceBelt transforms cybersecurity for enterprise and government operations moving high-value data around the world by:

  • insulating it completely from the Internet and terrestrial leased lines
  • liberating it from cyberattacks and surreptitious activities
  • protecting it from natural disasters and force majeure events
  • addressing all jurisdictional complexities and constraints
  • avoiding risks of violating privacy regulations

Truly secure data transfer: Enterprises and governments will finally be enabled to bypass use of leaky networks and compromised servers interconnecting their sites around the world.

New option for cloud service providers: The service will be a key market differentiator for cloud service providers to offer a transformative, ultra-high degree of network security to clients reliant on moving sensitive, mission-critical data around the world each day.

What is SpaceBelt Cloud Constellation?

From their website www.cloudconstellation.com you will see following.

Cloud Constellation Space Belt
www.cloudconstellation.com

Keeping in mind that today is April 1st which means April Fools day 2016, my motto for the day is trust yet verify. So just for fun, check out this new company that I had a briefing with earlier this week that also announced their Series A funding earlier in March 2016.

The question you have to ask yourself today is if this is an out of this world April Fools prank, an out of this world idea that will eclipse current cloud services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, IBM Softlayer, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace among others?

Or, will SpaceBelt go the way of earlier cloud high flyers HP Cloud, Nirvanix among others.

Btw, keep in mind that only you can prevent cloud data loss, however cloud and virtual data availability is also a shared responsibility.

Some Questions and Things To Ponder

  • Is this an April Fools Joke?
  • How much Non Volatile Memory (NVM) such as NAND, 3D Nand, 3D XPoint or other Storage Class Memory (SCM) can be physically placed on each bird (e.g. Satellite)
  • What will the solar panels look like to power the birds, plus battery’s for heating and cooling the NVM (contrary to popular myth, NVMs do get warm if not hot)
  • What is the availability, accessibility and durability model, how will data be replicated, mirrored or an out of this world LRC/Erasure Code Advanced Parity model be used?
  • How will the storage be accessed, what will the end-points look like, iSCSI, NDB, FUSE, NFS, CIFS, HDFS, Torrent, JSON, ODBC, REST/HTTP, FTP or something else?
  • Security will be a concern as well as geo placement, after all, its one thing to move data across some borders, how about if the data is hundreds of miles above those borders?
  • Cost will be an interesting model to follow, as well as competitors from SpaceX, Amazon, Boeing, GE, NSA, Google, Facebook or others emerge?
  • What will the uplink and download speeds be, not to mention latency of moving and accessing data from the satellites. For those who have DirectTV or other terrestrial service you know the pros and cons associated with that. Speaking of which, perhaps you have experienced a thunder-storm with DirecTV or Dish, or perhaps a cloud storm due to a cloud provider service or site failure, think about what happens to your cloud data if the satellite dish is disrupted during an upload or download.
  • I also wonder how the various industry trade groups will wrap their head around this one, what kind of new standards, initiatives and out of this world marketing promotions will we see or hear about? You know that some creative marketer will declare surface clouds as dead, just saying.

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

The folks over at cloud constellation say their space belt made up of a constellation (e.g. in orbit cluster) of satellites will be circling the globe around 2019. I wonder if they will be ready to do a proof of concept (poc) technology demonstrator of their IP using TCP based networking, server, storage I/O protocols leveraging a hot air balloon or weather balloon near term, if not, would be a great marketing ploy.

If nothing else, putting their data infrastructure technology on a hot air balloon could be a fun marketing ploy to say their cloud rises above the hot air of other cloud marketing. Or if they do a POC using a weather balloon, they could show and say their cloud rises above traditional cloud storms, oh the fun…

Check out Cloud Constellation and their Spacebelt, see for yourself and then you decide what is going on!

Remember, its April Fools day today, trust, yet verify.

What say you, is this an April Fools Joke or the next big thing?

Ok, nuff said (for now), time to listen to Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon ;)

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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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Big Files Lots of Little File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench

Big Files Lots of Little File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench


server storage data infrastructure i/o File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench

Updated 2/10/2018

Need to test a server, storage I/O networking, hardware, software, services, cloud, virtual, physical or other environment that is either doing some form of file processing, or, that you simply want to have some extra workload running in the background for what ever reason? An option is File Processing Benchmarking with Vdbench.

I/O performance

Getting Started


Here’s a quick and relatively easy way to do it with Vdbench (Free from Oracle). Granted there are other tools, both for free and for fee that can similar things, however we will leave those for another day and post. Here’s the con to this approach, there is no Uui Gui like what you have available with some other tools Here’s the pro to this approach, its free, flexible and limited by your creative, amount of storage space, server memory and I/O capacity.

If you need a background on Vdbench and benchmarking, check out the series of related posts here (e.g. www.storageio.com/performance).

Get and Install the Vdbench Bits and Bytes


If you do not already have Vdbench installed, get a copy from the Oracle or Source Forge site (now points to Oracle here).

Vdbench is free, you simply sign-up and accept the free license, select the version down load (it is a single, common distribution for all OS) the bits as well as documentation.

Installation particular on Windows is really easy, basically follow the instructions in the documentation by copying the contents of the download folder to a specified directory, set up any environment variables, and make sure that you have Java installed.

Here is a hint and tip for Windows Servers, if you get an error message about counters, open a command prompt with Administrator rights, and type the command:

$ lodctr /r


The above command will reset your I/O counters. Note however that command will also overwrite counters if enabled so only use it if you have to.

Likewise *nix install is also easy, copy the files, make sure to copy the applicable *nix shell script (they are in the download folder), and verify Java is installed and working.

You can do a vdbench -t (windows) or ./vdbench -t (*nix) to verify that it is working.

Vdbench File Processing

There are many options with Vdbench as it has a very robust command and scripting language including ability to set up for loops among other things. We are only going to touch the surface here using its file processing capabilities. Likewise, Vdbench can run from a single server accessing multiple storage systems or file systems, as well as running from multiple servers to a single file system. For simplicity, we will stick with the basics in the following examples to exercise a local file system. The limits on the number of files and file size are limited by server memory and storage space.

You can specify number and depth of directories to put files into for processing. One of the parameters is the anchor point for the file processing, in the following examples =S:\SIOTEMP\FS1 is used as the anchor point. Other parameters include the I/O size, percent reads, number of threads, run time and sample interval as well as output folder name for the result files. Note that unlike some tools, Vdbench does not create a single file of results, rather a folder with several files including summary, totals, parameters, histograms, CSV among others.


Simple Vdbench File Processing Commands

For flexibility and ease of use I put the following three Vdbench commands into a simple text file that is then called with parameters on the command line.
fsd=fsd1,anchor=!fanchor,depth=!dirdep,width=!dirwid,files=!numfiles,size=!filesize

fwd=fwd1,fsd=fsd1,rdpct=!filrdpct,xfersize=!fxfersize,fileselect=random,fileio=random,threads=!thrds

rd=rd1,fwd=fwd1,fwdrate=max,format=yes,elapsed=!etime,interval=!itime

Simple Vdbench script

# SIO_vdbench_filesystest.txt

#

# Example Vdbench script for file processing

#

# fanchor = file system place  where directories and files will be created

# dirwid = how wide should the directories be (e.g. how many directories wide)

# numfiles = how many files per directory

# filesize = size in in k, m, g e.g. 16k = 16KBytes

# fxfersize = file I/O transfer size in kbytes

# thrds = how many threads or workers

# etime = how long to run in minutes (m) or hours (h)

# itime = interval sample time e.g. 30 seconds

# dirdep = how deep the directory tree

# filrdpct = percent of reads e.g. 90 = 90 percent reads

# -p processnumber = optional specify a process number, only needed if running multiple vdbenchs at same time, number should be unique

# -o output file that describes what being done and some config info

#

# Sample command line shown for Windows, for *nix add ./

#

# The real Vdbench script with command line parameters indicated by !=

#


fsd=fsd1,anchor=!fanchor,depth=!dirdep,width=!dirwid,files=!numfiles,size=!filesize


fwd=fwd1,fsd=fsd1,rdpct=!filrdpct,xfersize=!fxfersize,fileselect=random,fileio=random,threads=!thrds


rd=rd1,fwd=fwd1,fwdrate=max,format=yes,elapsed=!etime,interval=!itime

Big Files Processing Script


With the above script file defined, for Big Files I specify a command line such as the following.
$ vdbench -f SIO_vdbench_filesystest.txt fanchor=S:\SIOTemp\FS1 dirwid=1 numfiles=60 filesize=5G fxfersize=128k thrds=64 etime=10h itime=30 numdir=1 dirdep=1 filrdpct=90 -p 5576 -o SIOWS2012R220_NOFUZE_5Gx60_BigFiles_64TH_STX1200_020116

Big Files Processing Example Results


The following is one of the result files from the folder of results created via the above command for Big File processing showing totals.



Run totals


21:09:36.001 Starting RD=format_for_rd1


Feb 01, 2016 .Interval. .ReqstdOps.. ...cpu%...  read ....read.... ...write.... ..mb/sec... mb/sec .xfer.. ...mkdir... ...rmdir... ..create... ...open.... ...close... ..delete...

                          rate  resp total  sys   pct   rate  resp   rate  resp  read write  total    size  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp

21:23:34.101   avg_2-28 2848.2  2.70   8.8 8.32   0.0    0.0  0.00 2848.2  2.70  0.00 356.0 356.02  131071   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.1 109176   0.1  0.55   0.1  2006   0.0  0.00


21:23:35.009 Starting RD=rd1; elapsed=36000; fwdrate=max. For loops: None


07:23:35.000 avg_2-1200 4939.5  1.62  18.5 17.3  90.0 4445.8  1.79  493.7  0.07 555.7 61.72 617.44  131071   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.1  0.03   0.1  2.95   0.0  0.00

Lots of Little Files Processing Script


For lots of little files, the following is used.



$ vdbench -f SIO_vdbench_filesystest.txt fanchor=S:\SIOTEMP\FS1 dirwid=64 numfiles=25600 filesize=16k fxfersize=1k thrds=64 etime=10h itime=30 dirdep=1 filrdpct=90 -p 5576 -o SIOWS2012R220_NOFUZE_SmallFiles_64TH_STX1200_020116

Lots of Little Files Processing Example Results


The following is one of the result files from the folder of results created via the above command for Big File processing showing totals.
Run totals


09:17:38.001 Starting RD=format_for_rd1


Feb 02, 2016 .Interval. .ReqstdOps.. ...cpu%...  read ....read.... ...write.... ..mb/sec... mb/sec .xfer.. ...mkdir... ...rmdir... ..create... ...open.... ...close... ..delete...

                          rate  resp total  sys   pct   rate  resp   rate  resp  read write  total    size  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp  rate  resp

09:19:48.016    avg_2-5  10138  0.14  75.7 64.6   0.0    0.0  0.00  10138  0.14  0.00 158.4 158.42   16384   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00 10138  0.65 10138  0.43 10138  0.05   0.0  0.00


09:19:49.000 Starting RD=rd1; elapsed=36000; fwdrate=max. For loops: None


19:19:49.001 avg_2-1200 113049  0.41  67.0 55.0  90.0 101747  0.19  11302  2.42 99.36 11.04 110.40    1023   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00   0.0  0.00  7065  0.85  7065  1.60   0.0  0.00

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

The above examples can easily be modified to do different things particular if you read the Vdbench documentation on how to setup multi-host, multi-storage system, multiple job streams to do different types of processing. This means you can benchmark a storage systems, server or converged and hyper-converged platform, or simply put a workload on it as part of other testing. There are even options for handling data footprint reduction such as compression and dedupe.

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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Server Storage I/O Benchmark Performance Resource Tools

Server Storage I/O Benchmarking Performance Resource Tools

server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/23/2018

Server storage I/O benchmark performance resource tools, various articles and tips. These include tools for legacy, virtual, cloud and software defined environments.

benchmark performance resource tools server storage I/O performance

The best server and storage I/O (input/output operation) is the one that you do not have to do, the second best is the one with the least impact.

server storage I/O locality of reference

This is where the idea of locality of reference (e.g. how close is the data to where your application is running) comes into play which is implemented via tiered memory, storage and caching shown in the figure above.

Cloud virtual software defined storage I/O

Server storage I/O performance applies to cloud, virtual, software defined and legacy environments

What this has to do with server storage I/O (and networking) performance benchmarking is keeping the idea of locality of reference, context and the application workload in perspective regardless of if cloud, virtual, software defined or legacy physical environments.

StorageIOblog: I/O, I/O how well do you know about good or bad server and storage I/Os?
StorageIOblog: Server and Storage I/O benchmarking 101 for smarties
StorageIOblog: Which Enterprise HDDs to use for a Content Server Platform (7 part series with using benchmark tools)
StorageIO.com: Enmotus FuzeDrive MicroTiering lab test using various tools
StorageIOblog: Some server storage I/O benchmark tools, workload scripts and examples (Part I) and (Part II)
StorageIOblog: Get in the NVMe SSD game (if you are not already)
Doridmen.com: Transcend SSD360S Review with tips on using ATTO and Crystal benchmark tools
ComputerWeekly: Storage performance metrics: How suppliers spin performance specifications

Via StorageIO Podcast: Kevin Closson discusses SLOB Server CPU I/O Database Performance benchmarks
Via @KevinClosson: SLOB Use Cases By Industry Vendors. Learn SLOB, Speak The Experts’ Language
Via BeyondTheBlocks (Reduxio): 8 Useful Tools for Storage I/O Benchmarking
Via CCSIObench: Cold-cache Sequential I/O Benchmark
Doridmen.com: Transcend SSD360S Review with tips on using ATTO and Crystal benchmark tools
CISJournal: Benchmarking the Performance of Microsoft Hyper-V server, VMware ESXi and Xen Hypervisors (PDF)
Microsoft TechNet:Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V large-scale VM performance for in-memory transaction processing
InfoStor: What’s The Best Storage Benchmark?
StorageIOblog: How to test your HDD, SSD or all flash array (AFA) storage fundamentals
Via ATTO: Atto V3.05 free storage test tool available
Via StorageIOblog: Big Files and Lots of Little File Processing and Benchmarking with Vdbench

Via StorageIO.com: Which Enterprise Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) to use with a Content Server Platform (White Paper)
Via VMware Blogs: A Free Storage Performance Testing Tool For Hyperconverged
Microsoft Technet: Test Storage Spaces Performance Using Synthetic Workloads in Windows Server
Microsoft Technet: Microsoft Windows Server Storage Spaces – Designing for Performance
BizTech: 4 Ways to Performance-Test Your New HDD or SSD
EnterpriseStorageForum: Data Storage Benchmarking Guide
StorageSearch.com: How fast can your SSD run backwards?
OpenStack: How to calculate IOPS for Cinder Storage ?
StorageAcceleration: Tips for Measuring Your Storage Acceleration

server storage I/O STI and SUT

Spiceworks: Determining HDD SSD SSHD IOP Performance
Spiceworks: Calculating IOPS from Perfmon data
Spiceworks: profiling IOPs

vdbench server storage I/O benchmark
Vdbench example via StorageIOblog.com

StorageIOblog: What does server storage I/O scaling mean to you?
StorageIOblog: What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Testmyworkload.com: Collect and report various OS workloads
Whoishostingthis: Various SQL resources
StorageAcceleration: What, When, Why & How to Accelerate Storage
Filesystems.org: Various tools and links
StorageIOblog: Can we get a side of context with them IOPS and other storage metrics?

flash ssd and hdd

BrightTalk Webinar: Data Center Monitoring – Metrics that Matter for Effective Management
StorageIOblog: Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy
StorageIOblog: Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?

server storage I/O bottlenecks and I/O blender

Microsoft TechNet: Measuring Disk Latency with Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon)
Via Scalegrid.io: How to benchmark MongoDB with YCSB? (Perfmon)
Microsoft MSDN: List of Perfmon counters for sql server
Microsoft TechNet: Taking Your Server’s Pulse
StorageIOblog: Part II: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do with VMware?
CMG: I/O Performance Issues and Impacts on Time-Sensitive Applications

flash ssd and hdd

Virtualization Practice: IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
InfoStor: Is HP Short Stroking for Performance and Capacity Gains?
StorageIOblog: Is Computer Data Storage Complex? It Depends
StorageIOblog: More storage and IO metrics that matter
StorageIOblog: Moving Beyond the Benchmark Brouhaha
Yellow-Bricks: VSAN VDI Benchmarking and Beta refresh!

server storage I/O benchmark example

YellowBricks: VSAN performance: many SAS low capacity VS some SATA high capacity?
YellowBricsk: VSAN VDI Benchmarking and Beta refresh!
StorageIOblog: Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD StorgeIO lab review
StorageIOblog: Part II: Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD StorgeIO lab review
StorageIOblog: Server Storage I/O Network Benchmark Winter Olympic Games

flash ssd and hdd

VMware VDImark aka View Planner (also here, here and here) as well as VMmark here
StorageIOblog: SPC and Storage Benchmarking Games
StorageIOblog: Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
StorageIOblog: SSD and Storage System Performance

Hadoop server storage I/O performance
Various Server Storage I/O tools in a hadoop environment

Michael-noll.com: Benchmarking and Stress Testing an Hadoop Cluster With TeraSort, TestDFSIO
Virtualization Practice: SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
StorageIOblog: Storage and IO metrics that matter
InfoStor: Storage Metrics and Measurements That Matter: Getting Started
SilvertonConsulting: Storage throughput vs. IO response time and why it matters
Splunk: The percentage of Read / Write utilization to get to 800 IOPS?

flash ssd and hdd
Various server storage I/O benchmarking tools

Spiceworks: What is the best IO IOPs testing tool out there
StorageIOblog: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do?
StorageIOblog: Some Windows Server Storage I/O related commands
Openmaniak: Iperf overview and Iperf.fr: Iperf overview
StorageIOblog: Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I and Part II)
Quest: SQL Server Perfmon Poster (PDF)
Server and Storage I/O Networking Performance Management (webinar)
Data Center Monitoring – Metrics that Matter for Effective Management (webinar)
Flash back to reality – Flash SSD Myths and Realities (Industry trends & benchmarking tips), (MSP CMG presentation)
DBAstackexchange: How can I determine how many IOPs I need for my AWS RDS database?
ITToolbox: Benchmarking the Performance of SANs

server storage IO labs

StorageIOblog: Dell Inspiron 660 i660, Virtual Server Diamond in the rough (Server review)
StorageIOblog: Part II: Lenovo TS140 Server and Storage I/O Review (Server review)
StorageIOblog: DIY converged server software defined storage on a budget using Lenovo TS140
StorageIOblog: Server storage I/O Intel NUC nick knack notes First impressions (Server review)
StorageIOblog & ITKE: Storage performance needs availability, availability needs performance
StorageIOblog: Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
StorageIOblog: Revisiting RAID storage remains relevant and resources

Interested in cloud and object storage visit our objectstoragecenter.com page, for flash SSD checkout storageio.com/ssd page, along with data protection, RAID, various industry links and more here.

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

Watch for additional links to be added above in addition to those that appear via comments.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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VMware VVOLs storage I/O fundementals (Part 1)

VMware VVOL’s storage I/O fundamentals (Part I)

Note that this is a three part series with the first piece here (e.g. Are VMware VVOL’s in your virtual server and storage I/O future?), the second piece here (e.g.VMware VVOL’s and storage I/O fundamentals Part 1) and the third piece here (e.g. VMware VVOL’s and storage I/O fundamentals Part 2).

Some of you may already be participating in the VMware beta of VVOL involving one of the initial storage vendors also in the beta program.

Ok, now let’s go a bit deeper, however if you want some good music to listen to while reading this, check out @BruceRave GoDeepMusic.Net and shows here.

Taking a step back, digging deeper into Storage I/O and VVOL’s fundamentals

Instead of a VM host accessing its virtual disk (aka VMDK) which is stored in a VMFS formatted data store (part of ESXi hypervisor) built on top of a SCSI LUN (e.g. SAS, SATA, iSCSI, Fibre Channel aka FC, FCoE aka FC over Ethernet, IBA/SRP, etc) or an NFS file system presented by a storage system (or appliance), VVOL’s push more functionality and visibility down into the storage system. VVOL’s shift more intelligence and work from the hypervisor down into the storage system. Instead of a storage system simply presenting a SCSI LUN or NFS mount point and having limited (coarse) to no visibility into how the underlying storage bits, bytes as well as blocks are being used, storage systems gain more awareness.

Keep in mind that even files and objects still get ultimately mapped to pages and blocks aka sectors even on nand flash-based SSD’s. However also keep an eye on some new technology such as the Seagate Kinetic drive that instead of responding to SCSI block based commands, leverage object API’s and associated software on servers. Read more about these emerging trends here and here at objectstoragecenter.com.

With a normal SCSI LUN the underlying storage system has no knowledge of how the upper level operating system, hypervisor, file system or application such as a database (doing raw IO) is allocating the pages or blocks of memory aka storage. It is up to the upper level storage and data management tools to map from objects and files to the corresponding extents, pages and logical block address (LBA) understood by the storage system. In the case of a NAS solution, there is a layer of abstractions placed over the underlying block storage handling file management and the associated file to LBA mapping activity.

Storage I/O basics
Storage I/O and IOP basics and addressing: LBA’s and LBN’s

Getting back to VVOL, instead of simply presenting a LUN which is essentially a linear range of LBA’s (think of a big table or array) that the hypervisor then manages data placement and access, the storage system now gains insight into what LBA’s correspond to various entities such as a VMDK or VMX, log, clone, swap or other VMware objects. With this more insight, storage systems can now do native and more granular functions such as clone, replication, snapshot among others as opposed to simply working on a coarse LUN basis. The similar concepts extend over to NAS NFS based access. Granted, there are more to VVOL’s including ability to get the underlying storage system more closely integrated with the virtual machine, hypervisor and associated management including supported service manage and classes or categories of service across performance, availability, capacity, economics.

What about VVOL, VAAI and VASA?

VVOL’s are building from earlier VMware initiatives including VAAI and VASA. With VAAI, VMware hypervisor’s can off-load common functions to storage systems that support features such as copy, clone, zero copy among others like how a computer can off-load graphics processing to a graphics card if present.

VASA however provides a means for visibility, insight and awareness between the hypervisor and its associated management (e.g. vCenter etc) as well as the storage system. This includes storage systems being able to communicate and publish to VMware its capabilities for storage space capacity, availability, performance and configuration among other things.

With VVOL’s VASA gets leveraged for unidirectional (e.g. two-way) communication where VMware hypervisor and management tools can tell the storage system of things, configuration, activities to do among others. Hence why VASA is important to have in your VMware CASA.

What’s this object storage stuff?

VVOL’s are a form of object storage access in that they differ from traditional block (LUN’s) and files (NAS volumes/mount points). However, keep in mind that not all object storage are the same as there are object storage access and architectures.

object storage
Object Storage basics, generalities and block file relationships

Avoid making the mistake of when you hear object storage that means ANSI T10 (the folks that manage the SCSI command specifications) Object Storage Device (OSD) or something else. There are many different types of underlying object storage architectures some with block and file as well as object access front ends. Likewise there are many different types of object access that sit on top of object architectures as well as traditional storage system.

Object storage I/O
An example of how some object storage gets accessed (not VMware specific)

Also keep in mind that there are many different types of object access mechanism including HTTP Rest based, S3 (e.g. a common industry defacto standard based on Amazon Simple Storage Service), SNIA CDMI, SOAP, Torrent, XAM, JSON, XML, DICOM, IL7 just to name a few, not to mention various programmatic bindings or application specific implementations and API’s. Read more about object storage architectures, access and related topics, themes and trends at www.objecstoragecenter.com

Lets take a break here and when you are ready, click here to read the third piece in this series VMware VVOL’s and storage I/O fundamentals Part 2.

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

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DataDynamics StorageX 7.0 file and data management migration software

Storage I/O trends

DataDynamics StorageX 7.0 file and data management migration software

Some of you may recall back in 2006 (here and here) when Brocade bought a file management storage startup called NuView whose product was StorageX, and then in 2009 issued end of life (EOL) notice letters that the solution was being discontinued.

Fast forward to 2013 and there is a new storage startup (DatraDynamics) with an existing product that was just updated and re-released called StorageX 7.0.

Software Defined File Management – SDFM?

Granted from an industry buzz focused adoption perspective you may not have heard of DataDynamics or perhaps even StorageX. However many other customers around the world from different industry sectors have as well as are using the solution.

The current industry buzz is around software defined data centers (SDDC) which has lead to software defined networking (SDN), software defined storage (SDS), and other software defined marketing (SDM) terms, not to mention Valueware. So for those who like software defined marketing or software defined buzzwords, you can think of StorageX as software defined file management (SDFM), however don’t ask or blame them about using it as I just thought of it for them ;).

This is an example of industry adoption traction (what is being talked about) vs. industry deployment and customer adoption (what is actually in use on a revenue basis) in that DataDynamics is not a well-known company yet, however they have what many of the high-flying startups with industry adoption don’t have which is an installed base with revenue customers that also now have a new version 7.0 product to deploy.

StorageX 7.0 enabling intelligent file and data migration management

Thus, a common theme is adding management including automated data movement and migration to carry out structure around unstructured NAS file data. More than a data mover or storage migration tool, Data Dynamics StorageX is a software platform for adding storage management structure around unstructured local and distributed NAS file data. This includes heterogeneous vendor support across different storage system, protocols and tools including Windows CIFS and Unix/Linux NFS.

Storage I/O image

A few months back prior to its release, I had an opportunity to test drive StorageX 7.0 and have included some of my comments in this industry trends perspective technology solution brief (PDF). This solution brief titled Data Dynamics StorageX 7.0 Intelligent Policy Based File Data Migration is a free download with no registration required (as are others found here), however per our disclosure policy to give transparency, DataDynamics has been a StorageIO client.

If you have a new for gaining insight and management control around your file unstructured data to support migrations for upgrades, technology refresh, archiving or tiering across different vendors including EMC and NetApp, check out DataDynamics StorageX 7.0, take it for a test drive like I did and tell them StorageIO sent you.

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)

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

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Welcome to the Cloud Bulk Object Storage Resources Center

Updated 8/31/19

Cloud Bulk Big Data Software Defined Object Storage Resources

server storage I/O trends Object Storage resources

Welcome to the Cloud, Big Data, Software Defined, Bulk and Object Storage Resources Center Page objectstoragecenter.com.

This object storage resources, along with software defined, cloud, bulk, and scale-out storage page is part of the server StorageIOblog microsite collection of resources. Software-defined, Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage exist to support expanding and diverse application data demands.

Other related resources include:

  • Software Defined, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage Fundamentals
  • Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book (CRC Press)
  • Cloud, Software Defined, Scale-Out, Object Storage News Trends

    • Object storage SDDC SDDI
    Via Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017)

    Bulk, Cloud, Object Storage Solutions and Services

    There are various types of cloud, bulk, and object storage including public services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), Backblaze, Google, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, Rackspace among many others. There are also solutions for hybrid and private deployment from Cisco, Cloudian, CTERA, Cray, DDN, Dell EMC, Elastifile, Fujitsu, Vantera/HDS, HPE, Hedvig, Huawei, IBM, NetApp, Noobaa, OpenIO, OpenStack, Quantum, Rackspace, Rozo, Scality, Spectra, Storpool, StorageCraft, Suse, Swift, Virtuozzo, WekaIO, WD, among many others.

    Bulk Cloud Object storage SDDC SDDI
    Via Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017)

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

    Object Context Matters

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

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

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

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

    The Need For Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage

    There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, moved, processed, stored, preserved and served, granted there are economic realities. Likewise as a society our dependence on information being available for work or entertainment, from medical healthcare to social media and all points in between continues to increase (check out the Human Face of Big Data).

    In addition, people and data are living longer, as well as getting larger (hence little data, big data and very big data). Cloud products and services along with associated object storage, file systems, repositories and access methods are at the center of big data, big bandwidth and little data initiatives on a public, private, hybrid and community basis. After all, not everything is the same in cloud, virtual and traditional data centers or information factories from active data to in-active deep digital archiving.

    Click here to view (and hear) more content including cloud and object storage fundamentals

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

    cloud object storage

    Where to learn more

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



    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via FujiFilm IT Summit: Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Hybrid Clouds
    Via MultiChannel: After ditching cloud business, Verizon inks Virtual Network Services deal with Amazon
    Via MultiChannel: Verizon Digital Media Services now offers integrated Microsoft Azure Storage
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS EFS Elastic File System (Cloud NAS) First Preview Look
    Via InfoStor: Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
    Via InfoStor: Object Storage Is In Your Future
    Via Server StorageIO: April 2015 Newsletter Focus on Cloud and Object storage
    Via StorageIOblog: AWS S3 Cross Region Replication storage enhancements
    Cloud conversations: AWS EBS, Glacier and S3 overview
    AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions
    Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Book)

    View more news, trends and related cloud object storage activity here.

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

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

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

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

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

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    Many faces of storage hypervisor, virtual storage or storage virtualization

    StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

    Storage hypervisors were a 2012 popular buzzword bingo topic with plenty of industry adoption and some customer deployment. Separating the hype around storage hypervisors reveals conversations around backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving.

    backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving
    Cloud and virtualization components

    Storage virtualization along with virtual storage and storage hypervisors have a theme of abstracting underlying physical hardware resources like server virtualization. The abstraction can be for consolidation and aggregation, or for enabling agility, flexibility, emulation and other functionality.

    backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

    Storage virtualization can be implemented in different locations, in many ways with various functionality and focus. For example the abstraction can occur on a server, in an virtual or physical appliance (e.g. tin wrapped software), in a network switch or router, as well as in a storage system. The focus can be for aggregation, or data protection (HA, BC, DR, backup, replication, snapshot) on a homogeneous (all one vendor) or mixed vendor basis (heterogeneous).

    backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

    Here is a link to a guest post that I recently did over at The Virtualization Practice looking at storage hypervisors, virtual storage and storage virtualization. As is the case with virtual storage, storage virtualization, storage for virtual environments, depending on your views, spheres of influence, preferences among other factors what you call a storage hypervisor will probably vary.

    Additional related material:

  • Are you using or considering implementation of a storage hypervisor?
  • Cloud, virtualization, storage and networking in an election year
  • EMC VPLEX: Virtual Storage Redefined or Respun?
  • Server and Storage Virtualization – Life beyond Consolidation
  • Should Everything Be Virtualized?
  • How many degrees separate you and your information?
  • Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
  • The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
  • Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
  • backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving

    • Btw, as a special offer for viewers, I have some copies of Resilient Storage Networking: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier) available for $19.95, shipping and handling included. Send me an email or tweet (@storageio) to learn more and get your copy (Major credit cards and Pay pal accepted).

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

    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

    SMB, SOHO and low end NAS gaining enterprise features

    Here is a link to an interview that I did providing industry trends, perspectives and commentary on how Network Attached Storage (NAS) aka file and data sharing for the Small Medium Business (SMB), Small Office Home Office (SOHO) and consumer or low end offerings are gaining features and functionality traditionally associated with larger enterprise, however without the large price. In addition, here is a link to some tips for small business NAS storage and to another perspective on how choosing an SMB NAS is getting easier (and here for comments on unified storage).

    Click on the image below to listen to a pod cast that I did with comments and perspectives involving SMB, SOHO, ROBO and low end NAS.

    Listen to comments by Greg Schulz of StorageIO on SMB, SOHO, ROBO and lowend NAS

    If your favorite or preferred product or vendor was not mentioned in the above links, dont worry, as with many media interviews there is a limited amount of time or narrow scope so those mentioned were among others in the space.

    Speaking of others, there are many others in the broad and diverse SMB, SOHO, ROBO and consumer NAS and unified storage space. For example there are QNAP, SMC, Huawei, Buffalo, Synology and Starwind among many others. There is a lot of diversity in this NAS space. You’ve got Buffalo Technology, Cisco, Dlink, Dell, Data Robotic Drobo, EMC Iomega, Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co. via Microsoft, Intel, Overland Storage Snap Server, Seagate Black Armour, Western Digital Corp., and many others. Some of these vendors are household names that you would expect to see in the upper SMB, mid sized environments, and even into the enterprise.

    For those who have other favorites or want to add another vendor to those already mentioned above, feel free to respond with a polite comment below. Oh and for disclosure, I bought my SMB or low end NAS from Amazon.com and it is an Iomega IX4.

    Ok, nuff said for now.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

    twitter @storageio

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