Tag: Gen-Z

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Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash.

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash
Image via Dell Technologies

Summary of Dell transaction announcement includes:

  • VMware declares an $11 Billion USD cash dividend pro rata to all VMware stock holders.
  • Given ownership percentage of VMware, Dell Technologies will receive approximately $9 Billion USD cash dividend.
  • Dell plans to list its Class C common stock shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
  • Dell plans to use the VMware dividend proceeds to fund cash consideration to be paid to Class V (tracking stock) shareholders.
  • For each Class V share (e.g. VMware tracking stock) shareholders can choose to receive:

    1.3665 shares of Dell Technologies Class C common stock, or
    $109 in cash per DVMT (Class V share) a 29% premium per share

Dell Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash
Image via Dell Technologies

Additional interest points of this transaction include:

  • Transaction expected to close Q4 CY2018, subject to Class V shareholder approval.
  • VMware maintains its independence as a separate publicly traded company.
  • Dell Technologies maintains its 81% ownership of VMware common stock
    Dell Technologies Class V (DVMT) shareholders will own 20.8% to 31.0% of Dell Class C (depending on cash election amounts).
  • Streamline Dell capital and ownership structure.
  • Establishes a public security (stock) in global end to end data infrastructure provider (e.g. Dell Technologies Stock on NYSE).
  • Enables financial flexibility for future strategic initiatives

Dell Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash
Image via Dell Technologies

Michael Dell and Silver Lake Continued Ownership

As part of this transaction, both Michael Dell and Silver Lake partners announce commitment to Dell Technologies. Michael Dell will continue to serve as Chairman and CEO, along with a committed stockholder beneficially owning between about 47% to 54% of Dell Technologies on a fully diluted basis. Silver Lake equity partners, an investor in Dell will continue its long-term partnership with Michael Dell beneficially owning between about 16%-18% of Dell Technologies on a fully diluted basis.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technologies, VMware, Data Infrastructures 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

This announcement enables Dell to streamline its financial structure, while providing VMware shareholder with a dividend value. In addition, this Dell Technologies announcement puts to rest industry discussions of what will Michael Dell along with Dell Technologies and VMware do in the future. Speaking of the future, this transaction could also page the wave for future investment or acquisitions by Dell and/or VMware. Now the question is if you are a DVMT tracking stock shareholder, do you take the $109 USD cash, or, new Class C Dell Technologies stock? Now lets see how Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash plays out during the rest of summer and into the fall.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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June 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

June 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

June 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 18, Issue 6 (June 2018)

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

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

In this issue buzzwords topics include AI, All Flash, HPC, Lustre, Multi Cloud, NVMe, NVMeoF, SAS, and SSD among others:

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

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

June data infrastructure, server, storage, I/O network, hardware, software, cloud, converged, and container as well as data protection industry activity includes among others:

Check out what’s new at Amazon Web Services (AWS) here, as well as Microsoft Azure here, Google Cloud Compute here, IBM Softlayer here, and OVH here. CTERA announced new cloud storage gateways (HC Series) for enterprise environments that include all flash SSD options, capacity up to 96TB (raw), Petabyte scale tiering to public and private cloud, 10 Gbe Ethernet connectivity, virtual machine deployment, along with high availability configuration.

Cray announced enhancements to its Lustre (parallel file system) based ClusterStor storage system for high performance compute (HPC) along with it previously acquired from Seagate (Who had acquired it as part of the Xyratex acquisition). New enhancements for ClusterStor include all flash SSD solution that will integrate and work with our existing hard disk drive (HDD) based systems.

In related Lustre based activity, DataDirect Network (DDN) has acquired from Intel, their Lustre File system capability. Intel acquired its Lustre capabilities via its purchase of Whamcloud back in 2012, and in 2017 announced that it was getting out of the Lustre business (here and here). DDN also announced new storage solutions for enabling HPC environment workloads along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) centric applications.

HPE which held its Discover event announced a $4 Billion USD investment over four years pertaining to development of edge technologies and services including software defined WAN (SD-WAN) and security among others.

Microsoft held its first virtual Windows Server Summit in June that outlined current and future plans for the operating system along with its hybrid cloud future.

Penguin computing has announced the Accelion solution for accessing geographically dispersed data enabling faster file transfer or other data movement functions.

SwiftStack has added multi cloud features (enhanced search, universal access, policy management, automation, data migration) and making them available via 1space open source project. 1space enables a single object namespace across different object storage locations including integration with OpenStack Swift.

Vexata announced a new version of its Vexata operating system (VX-OS) for its storage solution including NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) support.

Speaking of NVMe and fabrics, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) announced that the International Committee on Information Technology Standards (INCITS) has published T11 technical committee developed  Fibre Channel over NVMe (FC-NVMe) standard.

NVMe frontend NVMeoF
Various NVMe front-end including NVMeoF along with NVMe back-end devices (U.2, M.2, AiC)

Keep in mind that there are many different facets to NVMe including direct attached (M.2, U.2/8639, PCIe AiC) along with fabrics. Likewise, there are various fabric options for the NVMe protocol including over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe), along with other NVMe over Fabrics including RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) as well as IP based among others. NVMe can be used as a front-end on storage systems supporting server attachment (e.g. competes with Fibre Channel, iSCSI, SAS among others).

Another variation of NVMe is as a back-end for attachment of drives or other NVMe based devices in storage systems, as well as servers. There is also end to end NVMe (e.g. both front-end and back-end) options. Keep context in mind when you hear or talk about NVMe and in particular, NVMe over fabrics, learn more about NVMe at https://storageioblog.com/nvme-place-volatile-memory-express/.

Toshiba announced new RM5 series of high capacity SAS SSDs for replacement of SATA devices in servers. The RM5 series being added to the Toshiba portfolio combine capacity and economics traditional associated with SATA SSDs along with performance as well as connectivity of SAS.

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Comments Content

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news, tips and articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via SearchStorage: Comments The storage administrator skills you need to keep up today
Via SearchStorage: Comments Managing storage for IoT data at the enterprise edge
Via SearchCloudComputing: Comments Hybrid cloud deployment demands a change in security mindset

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIOblog posts

Server StorageIOblog Data Infrastructure Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event
May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter
Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar
Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?
Data Protection Recovery Life Post World Backup Day Pre GDPR
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview
Which Enterprise HDD for Content Server Platform
Server Storage I/O Benchmark Performance Resource Tools
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview
Data Infrastructure Primer Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

In addition to my own books including Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) available at Amazon.com (check out special sale price), the following are Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading, watching and listening list items. The Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading list includes various IT, Data Infrastructure and related topics including Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out. Speaking of my books, Didier Van Hoye (@WorkingHardInIt) has a good review over on his site you can view here, also check out the rest of his great content while there.

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO event activities

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

July 25, 2018 – Webinar – Data Protect & Storage

June 27, 2018 – Webinar – App Server Performance

June 26, 2018 – Webinar – Cloud App Optimize

May 29, 2018 – Webinar – Microsoft Windows as a Service

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

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Various useful links and resources:

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

What this all means and wrap-up

Data Infrastructures are what exists inside physical data centers as well as spanning cloud, converged, hyper-converged, virtual, serverless and other software defined as well as legacy environments. NVMe continues to gain in industry adoption as well as customer deployment. Cloud adoption also continues along with multi-cloud deployments. Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter and watch for more NVMe,cloud, data protection among other topics in future posts, articles, events, and newsletters.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

The best I/O is the one you do not have to do, the second best is the one with least server I/O and storage overhead along with application performance bottleneck impact.

Fast applications need fast servers, storage, I/O networking hardware, and software. Merely throwing more hardware as a cache at application performance bottlenecks can help. However, throwing more hardware at performance problems can also cost much cash. On the other hand, a little fast memory and storage in the right place, with robust software performance acceleration can have significant application productivity benefits. Fast hardware also needs fast software to help boost application and user productivity.

As application workloads activity increases, by implementing server software, performance acceleration along with additional fast memory and storage including flash, Storage Class Memories (SCM) among other SSD along with NVMe accessed devices, even more, work can be done boosting productivity while reducing cost.

Join me on June 27 at 1 PM Pacific Time (PT) when I host a free webinar (registration required) sponsored by DataCore and produced by Redmond Magazine/1105 Media as we discuss Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks including what you can do today.

I will be joined by guest presenters Augie Gonzalez, Director Technical Product Marketing and Tim Warden, Director Engineering Product Management both from DataCore. During the interactive webinar discussions, we invite you to participate with your questions, as we look at issues, challenges, various approaches, and what you can do today to boost different application performance and productivity.

This webinar is for those whose applications have the need for speed including database, VDI, SharePoint, Exchange, AI, ML and other I/O intensive workloads. Topics that we will be discussing in addition to your questions include:

  • Boosting application performance without breaking the bank
  • Improving application productivity and reducing user wait time
  • Gaining insight and awareness into bottlenecks and what to do
  • Unlocking value in your existing hardware and software licenses
  • What you can do today, literally right after or even during this webinar

Where to learn more

Learn more about Windows Server Summit and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

The best I/O is the one you do not have to do, the second best is the one that has the least impact on your applications, while boosting user productivity. There are many differ net approaches to addressing various server storage I/O performance bottlenecks across applications. Join me on June 27, 2018 at 1 PM PT for the free webinar Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar and learn what you can do today to boost your uses productivity.

 

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event

Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event

Microsoft will be hosting a free (no registration required) half day virtual (e.g. online) Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event June 26, 2018 starting at 9AM PT. As part of its continued focus on supporting hybrid strategy spanning on-premises Windows Server to Azure (among others including AWS) cloud based, Microsoft is preparing for the launch later this year of Windows Server 2019.

There is no registration required, you can just show up without concern of getting email or other spam, however you can also click here to save the date, as well as here to get updates on the event.

Microsoft Windows Server LTSC and SAC release

Windows Server 2019 is now in insider preview (get it here) and is the next Long Term Service Channel (LTSC) release following Windows Server 2016. In the past, Microsoft would have called Windows Server 2019 something such as Windows Server 2016 R2, however that has changed with the new Semiannual Channel (SAC) and LTSC release cycles.

Keynote kick off presentations will be from Erin Chapple, Director of Program Management, Cloud + AI (which includes Windows Kernel, Hypervisors, Containers and Storage), Arpan Shah, General Manager of Azure Infrastructure marketing (Windows Server, Azure IaaS, Azure Stack, Azure Management and Security), and, Jeff Woosley Principal PM, Windows Server. In addition to the kick off presentations with current state and status of Windows Servers available for on-premises bare metal, virtual, container as well as cloud, there will be demos, Q&A, roadmap’s and much more. Topics will include new and recent functionalities such as Windows Server 2019, Windows Admin Center (formerly known as Honolulu), IoT, roadmap’s and much more.

Windows Server Summit HybridWindows Server Summit SecurityWindows Server Summit HCIWindows Server Summit Application Development
Images Via Microsoft Windows Server Summit Page

Windows Server Summit Break Out Tracks

During the Windows Server Summit, there will be four technology focused tracks including:

  • Hybrid – From on-premisess to Azure, how Windows Server supports different workloads in various configurations, along with associated management tools (including Windows Admin Center aka Honolulu)
  • Security – New and recent security enhancements for Windows Server along with Hyper-V and other related topics.
  • Application Platform – Containers and Linux support along with associated management tools for on-premisess and Azure.
  • Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) – Leveraging software defined storage (SDS) with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) in Windows Server 2016, along with Hyper-V and other technologies, learn how Microsoft supports HCI and beyond.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Windows Server Summit 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

Windows Server remains relevant today for traditional, on site, on-premises, as well as on-premisess along with cloud, container among other deployments. Remember to click here to save the date, click here to sign up for Windows Server Summit updates and learn more about the Windows Server Summit Virtual Online event here, see there, or at least virtually.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 18, Issue 5 (May 2018)

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

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

May has been a busy month with a lot of data infrastructure related activity from software-defined virtual, cloud, container, converged, serverless to legacy, hardware, software, services, server, storage, I/O and networking along with data protection topics among others.

In this issue buzzwords topics include GDPR, NVMe, NVMeoF, Composable, Serverless, Data Protection, SCM, Gen-Z, MaaS:

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

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

May has been a busy month, some data infrastructure, server, storage, I/O network, hardware, software, cloud, converged, and container as well as data protection activity includes among others:

Depending on when you read this, the new global data protection regulations (GDPR) are either days away, or already in effect. For those who are not aware of GDPR other than seeing many inbox items in your email pertaining to it, here are some resources as a refresher or primer:

May Buzzword, Buzz Topic and Trends

Besides data protection and GDPR, other recent data infrastructure related news, trends, technologies and topics to keep an eye on (besides AI, ML, DL, AR/VR, IoT, Blockchain, Serverless) include Metal as a Service (MaaS) that might be familiar to some, for others, something new. Canonical has been busy for sometime now with MaaS including in Ubuntu and they are not alone with variations appearing with various managed service providers, hosting and cloud providers as well. NVMe has become a more common topic, technology, trend including for use in servers as well as over fabrics (e.g. NVMe over Fabrics) as a language for server, storage, I/O communication.

A new emerging companion to NVMe is Gen-Z which initially is a companion to PCIe. Longer term, Gen-Z could maybe possibly be a replacement, as well as for use accessing direct random access memory (DRAM) among other uses. Storage Class Memory (SCM) has been an industry conversation topic for several years now with new persistent memories (PMEM) that combine the best of traditional DRAM (Speed and write endurance) as well as persistent, higher capacity, lower cost of traditional NAND flash SSDs.

Another trend topic is that for some, ASIC, FPGA and GPU are new companions to standard commodity compute processors along with servers, yet for others it may be Dejavu as they have been being used for years (ok, decades) in some solutions. For now, two other buzzwords, buzz terms to add or refresh your data infrastructure vocabulary include distributed ledgers (aka blockchains), composable resources and ephemeral instance storage (storage on a cloud instance).

May NVMe Momentum Movement Activity

May saw a lot of NVMe related activity, from chips and components (adapters, devices) to systems spanning direct attached to NVMe over Fabric (NVMeoF). Here is a primer (or refresh) for NVMe along with various deployment options. NVMeoF includes RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) based, along with NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe), as well as emerging NVMe over IP.

NVMe options
NVMe being used for front-end accessed via shared PCIe along with back-end devices

There are many different facets of NVMe including for use as a front-end on storage systems supporting server attachment (e.g. competes with Fibre Channel, iSCSI, SAS among others). Another variation of NVMe is as a back-end for attachment of drives or other NVMe based devices in storage systems, as well as servers.

NVMe backend
Front-end using traditional block SAN access with back-end NVMe, SAS and SATA devices

Read more about the many different options and variations of NVMe including key questions to ask or understand, deployment topology along with other related topics at thenvmeplace.com.

NVMe frontend NVMeoF
Various NVMe front-end including NVMeoF along with NVMe back-end devices (U.2, M.2, AiC)

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Activity

Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to add new features, functionality as well as extending those as along with existing capabilities into various regions. Some recent updates include new Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) Microsoft Windows Servers versions 1709 and 1803 Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). Other AWS updates include spot instances support for Red Hat BYOL (Bring Your Own License), VPN enhancements, X1e instances available in Frankfurt, H1 instance price reduction, as well as LightSail now in Canada, Paris, and Seoul regions.

For those who are not familiar with LightSail, they are virtual private servers (VPS) which are different from traditional EC2 instances. LightSail can be a cost-effective way for those who need to move out of general population shared hosting, yet cannot justify a full EC2 instance while requiring more than a container.

The LightSail instance also is available with various software pre-installed such as for WordPress websites among others. For example, I have used LightSail as a backup and standby WordPress site for StorageIOblog using Updraft Plus  Pro for data protection.

In other news, AWS C5d EC2 instances are available in various regions. C5d instances are available with 2, 4, 8, 16, 36 and 72 vCPUs along with up to 1800GB of NVMe based ephemeral storage for on-demand reserved or spot instances.

Note that instance-based storage is temporary meaning that it persists for the life of the instance. What this means is that if you stop and restart the instance, the data is not persistence. Instance-based storage is useful for data that can be protected or persisted to other storage including EBS (Elastic Block Storage). Usage includes batch, log and analytics processing, burst buffers, cache or workspace.

AWS also announced a new Simple Storage Service (S3) storage class a month or so ago called One Zone Availability Infrequent Access. This new storage class primarily provides a lower cost of storage with lower durability (e.g., data spread across one zone vs. multiple). Over the past couple of months, I have been migrating from S3 Infrequent Access (IA) as well as standard into One Zone Availability. Some of my active data remains in S3 Standard storage class, while cold archives are in Glacier.

A tip about migrating to One Zone Availability, as well as between other S3 storage classes is paid attention to your API calls and monthly budget. You might see an increase in S3 costs during the migration time, that then settles into the lower prices once data has been moved due to API calls (gets, puts, lists, dir). In other words, pay attention to how many API calls you are allowed per storage class per month, along with other fees beyond focusing only on cost per TByte. Read about other recent AWS news updates here.

Software-defined storage startup Cloudian announced their technology available for test drive on Google Cloud Platform as part of a continued industry trend. That trend is for storage vendors to make their storage software technology available on different cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, Google, Softlayer among others.

Dell Technology World 2018

Dell Technologies made several announcements as part of Dell Technologies World that are covered in a series of posts here. Announcements included PowerMax the successor to VMAX, XtremIO X2 updates, new servers, workstations among many other items, read more here.

Besides the data infrastructure, cloud service providers and systems vendors, component suppliers including Cavium announced NVMe over Fibre Channel updates (here and here), along with Marvel NVMe updates here. HPE announced new thin clients and software (t430 Thin Client, HP mt44 Mobile Thin Client, HP ThinPro software), as well as updates to 3PAR and other storage solutions.

IBM announced various storage enhancements (and here) as well as a Happy 30th anniversary to the IBM Power9 based i systems. In other news, Kaseya bought backup data protection vendor Unitrends.

NVMe NAND flash Intel Optane

Micron announced the first quad layer cell (QLC) nand flash solid state device (SSD) named 52100 has begun shipping to select customers (and vendors). QLC packs or stacks 4 bits per cell. The 5200 is optimized for read-intensive workloads with up to 33% higher densities compared to previous generation TLC (triple layer cell) NAND flash. Broader market availability is expected to occur later fall 2018, 5210 form factor is 2.5” as a standard SSD or HDD, with capacities from 1.92TB to 7.68TB.

In other news, Micron also announced a $10 Billion (USD) stock repurchase plan, along with an extension of Intel 3D NAND flash memory partnership involving 3D NAND flash, as well as 96 layer 3D NAND. Meanwhile, various vendors are increasingly talking about how their systems are or will be storage class memory (SCM) ready including for use such as Micron 3D XPoint also known as Intel Optane among others.

Microsoft has placed into public preview Azure Active Directory (AAD) Storage authentication for Azure Blobs and Queues. Azure Storage Explorer is now released as version 1.0. AAD storage authentication enables organizations to implement role-based access control of Azure storage resources. Speaking of Azure, Microsoft has published several architectures, reference and other content at the Azure Virtual Datacenter portal here.

If you have not done so, check out Azure File Sync which is currently in public preview. Having been involved and using it for over a year including during private preview, Azure File Sync is an exciting, useful technology for creating a hybrid distributed file sharing with cloud tiering solutions. Learn more Azure File Sync here and here. In other news, Microsoft has announced a preview as part of the April 2018 Windows 10 build for a Hyper-V Google Android emulator support.

NetApp has had Azure based NAS storage in preview for a while now, and also announced Cloud Volumes on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In addition to Cloud Volumes on AWS, Azure, and GCP, NetApp also announced enhanced NVMe based storage systems among other updates.

Two companies that have similar names are Opendrives (video workflow acceleration) and Opendrive (cloud storage, backup, and data protection). Meanwhile, data infrastructure startup Pavilion has received new funding as well as begun talking about their NVMe including NVMe over Fabric (NVMeOF) hardware storage system. Long-time data infrastructure converged server storage startup Pivot3 announced additional cloud workload mobility.

Pure storage made a couple of announcements including  FlashArray//X NVMe based shared accelerated storage system as well as NVIDIA (GPU powered) based AIRI Mini for AI/DL/ML.

Have you heard about Snowflake computing, aka, the cloud data warehouse solution? If not, check them out here. Another cloud-related data infrastructure vendor to look into is Upbound.io who have received additional funding for their multi-cloud management solutions.

Building off of recent VMware vSphere updates (here), and Dell Technology World here, the following is an excellent post about Instant Clone in vSphere 6.7, and VMware vSAN HCI assessment tool here.

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Comments Content

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news, tips and articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via SearchStorage: Comments Managing storage for IoT data at the enterprise edge
Via SearchCloudComputing: Comments Hybrid cloud deployment demands a change in security mindset
Via SearchStorage: Comments Dell EMC storage IPO, VMware merger plans still unclear
Via SearchStorage: Comments Dell EMC midrange storage keeps its overlapping arrays
Via SearchStorage: Comments Dell EMC all-flash PowerMax replaces VMAX, injects NVMe
Via IronMountain InfoGoto:  The growing Trend of Secondary Data Storage

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIOblog posts

Server StorageIOblog Data Infrastructure Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary
Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details
Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details
Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure
Part V Dell Technology World 2018 Server Converged Announcement Details
April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter
VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary
PCIe Fundamentals Server Storage I/O Network Essentials
Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?
Data Protection Recovery Life Post World Backup Day Pre GDPR
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Infrastructure Resource Links cloud data protection tradecraft trends
IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps Podcast
Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview
Data Infrastructure Primer Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

In addition to my own books including Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) available at Amazon.com (check out special sale price), the following are Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading, watching and listening list items. The Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading list includes various IT, Data Infrastructure and related topics including Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out. Speaking of my books, Didier Van Hoye (@WorkingHardInIt) has a good review over on his site you can view here, also check out the rest of his great content while there.

Containers, serverless, kubernetes continue to gain in industry adoption, as well as customer deployments. Here is some information about Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Note that AWS has Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Google, VMware and Pivotal with Pivotal Kubernetes Service (PKS) among others.

Here is an interesting perspective by Ben Kepps about Serverless (e.g. life beyond Kubernetes and containers (e.g. life beyond virtualization which to some is or was life (e.g. life beyond bare metal))) as well as the all to often punditry, evangelism of something new causing something else to be dead.

SNIA has updated their Emerald aka Green energy effectiveness (focus on productivity) measurement specification (V3.01) including NAS NFS file activity (besides block). Learn more at snia.org/forums/green.

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO event activities

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

June 27, 2018 – Webinar – TBA

May 29, 2018 – Webinar – Microsoft Windows as a Service

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

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Various useful links and resources:

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

Connect and Converse With Us

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

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

What this all means and wrap-up

Data Infrastructures are what exists inside physical data centers spanning cloud, converged, hyper-converged, virtual, serverless and other software defined as well as legacy environments. So far this spring there has been a lot of data infrastructure related activity, from new technology announcements, to events, trends among others. Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter and watch for more NVMe, Gen-Z, cloud, data protection among other topics in future posts, articles, events, and newsletters.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

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

Major data infrastructure technology announcements include:

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

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

Dell Technology World Buzzword Bingo Lineup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

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

Where to learn more

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

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

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

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

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

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

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

Powering up the Modern Data Center and Future of Work

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

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

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

Where to learn more

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

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

Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcements Include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Dell PowerMax Visual Studio (Image via Dell.com)

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

Dell Technology World 2018 XtremIO X2

XtremIO X2

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

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

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

What about Dell Midrange Storage Unity and SC?

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

Dell Bulk and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)

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

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

Dell Data Protection

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

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

Where to learn more

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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

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

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

Introducing PowerEdge MX Composable Infrastructure (the other CI)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to learn more

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links P to T

Data Infrastructure IT Industry Related Resource Links P to T

IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Industry Resources

Updated 6/13/2018

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

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

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

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

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

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

  • topgun-tech.com    Data Infrastructure Resource (Server, Storage, SANs)

  • top500.org    Top 500 super compute sites
  • topio.com    Data protection software (Bought by NetApp)
  • topspin.com    InfiniBand Technology (Bought by Cisco)(
  • Toshiba.com    Server and storage solutions
  • tpc.org    Transaction processing performance council
  • translattice.com    Distributed and elastic database and automation tools
  • Tredent.com    WAN optimization solutions
  • TrendMicro.com    Security and anti virus tools
  • trianz.com    VAR
  • tributary.com   Datra protection soultion tools including virtual, disk and tape-
  • trilogytechnologies.ie    Managed services provider
  • tritondata.com    IT services and VAR
  • trunkbow.com    Cloud, mobile and networking services
  • trustedcomputinggroup.org    Trusted computing industry trade group
  • trusteddatasolutions.com    VAR
  • trustedid.com    ID theft protection
  • trustware.com    Internet and data protection security tools
  • turnkeylinux.org   Turnkey Linux appliance –
  • tusc.com    VAR
  • twinstrata.com    BC/DR analysis and cloud access software
  • tw telecom   tw telecom    AWS connect parter, Hosting/cloud/access services
  • TSO logic    DCIM and data center power energy management tools
  • tzolkin.com    DNS and High Availability solutions

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

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

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

Posted on

Trick or treat and vendor fun games

In the spirit of Halloween and zombies season, a couple of thoughts come to mind about vendor tricks and treats. This is an industry trends and perspectives post, part of an ongoing series looking at various technology and fun topics.

The first trick or treat game pertains to the blame game; you know either when something breaks, or at the other extreme, before you have even made a decision to buy something. The trick or treat game for decision-making goes something like this.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Vendor “A” says products succeed with their solution while failure results with a solution from “B” when doing “X”. Otoh, vendor “B” claims that “X” will fail when using a solution from vendor “A”. In fact, you can pick what you want to substitute for “X”, perhaps VDI, PCIe, Big Data, Little Data, Backup, Archive, Analytics, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, eDiscovery you name it.

This is not complicated math or big data problem requiring a high-performance computing (HPC) platform. A HPC Zetta-Flop processing ability using 512 bit addressing of 9.9 (e.g. 1 nine) PettaBytes of battery-backed DRAM and an IO capability of 9.99999 (e.g. 5 9’s) trillion 8 bit IOPS to do table pivots or runge kutta numerical analysis, map reduce, SAS or another modeling with optional iProduct or Android interface are not needed.

image of StorageIO big data HPC cloud storageimage of StorageIO big data HPC cloud storage
StorageIO images of touring Texas Advanced Computing (e.g. HPC) Center

Can you solve this equation? Hint it does not need a PhD or any other advanced degree. Another hint, if you have ever been at any side of the technology product and services decision-making table, regardless of the costume you wore, you should know the answer.

Of course the question of would “X” fail regardless of who or what “A” or “B” let alone a “C”, “D” or “F”? In other words, it is not the solution, technology, vendor or provider, rather the problem or perhaps even lack thereof that is the issue. Or is it a case where there is a solution from “A”, “B” or any others that is looking for a problem, and if it is the wrong problem, there can be a wrong solution thus failure?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Another trick or treat game is vendors public relations (PR) or analyst relations (AR) people to ask for one thing and delivery or ask another. For example, some vendor, service provider, their marketing AR and PR people or surrogates make contact wanting to tell of various success and failure story. Of course, this is usually their success and somebody else’s failure, or their victory over something or someone who sometimes can be interesting. Of course, there are also the treats to get you to listen to the above, such as tempt you with a project if you meet with their subject, which may be a trick of a disappearing treat (e.g. magic, poof it is gone after the discussion).

There are another AR and PR trick and treat where they offer on behalf of their representative organization or client to a perspective or exclusive insight on their competitor. Of course, the treat from their perspective is that they will generously expose all that is wrong with what a competitor is saying about their own (e.g. the competitors) product.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Let me get this straight, I am not supposed to believe what somebody says about his or her own product, however, supposed to believe what a competitor says is wrong with the competition’s product, and what is right with his or her own product.

Hmm, ok, so let me get this straight, a competitor say “A” wants to tell me what somebody say from “B” has told me is wrong and I should schedule a visit with a truth squad member from “A” to get the record set straight about “B”?

Does that mean then that I go to “B” for a rebuttal, as well as an update about “A” from “B”, assuming that what “A” has told me is also false about themselves, and perhaps about “B” or any other?

Too be fair, depending on your level of trust and confidence in either a vendor, their personal or surrogates, you might tend to believe more from them vs. others, or at least until you been tricked after given treats. There may be some that have been tricked, or they tried applying to many treats to present a story that behind the costume might be a bit scary.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Having been through enough of these, and I candidly believe that sometimes “A” or “B” or any other party actually do believe that they have more or better info about their competitor and that they can convince somebody about what their competitor is doing better than the competitor can. I also believe that there are people out there who will go to “A” or “B” and believe what they are told by based on their preference, bias or interests.

When I hear from vendors, VARs, solution or service providers and others, it’s interesting hearing point, counterpoint and so forth, however if time is limited, I’am more interested in hearing from such as “A” about them, what they are doing, where success, where challenges, where going and if applicable, under NDA go into more detail.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Customer success stories are good, however again, if interested in what works, what kind of works, or what does not work, chances are when looking for G2 vs. GQ, a non-scripted customer conversation or perspective of the good, the bad and the ugly is preferred, even if under NDA. Again, if time is limited which it usually is, focus on what is being done with your solution, where it is going and if compelled send follow-up material that can of course include MUD and FUD about others if that is your preference.

Then there is when during a 30 minute briefing, the vendor or solution provider is still talking about trends, customer pain points, what competitors are doing at 21 minutes into the call with no sign of an announcement, update or news in site

Lets not forget about the trick where the vendor marketing or PR person reaches out and says that the CEO, CMO, CTO or some other CxO or Chief Jailable Officer (CJO) wants to talk with you. Part of the trick is when the CxO actually makes it to the briefing and is not ready, does not know why the call is occurring, or, thinks that a request for an audience has been made with them for an interview or something else.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

A treat is when 3 to 4 minutes into a briefing, the vendor or solution provider has already framed up what and why they are doing something. This means getting to what they are announcing or planning on doing and getting into a conversation to discuss what they are doing and making good follow-up content and resources available.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Sometimes a treat is when a briefer goes on autopilot nailing their script for 29 of a 30 minute session then use the last-minute to ask if there are any questions. The reason autopilot briefings can be a treat is when they are going over what is in the slide deck, webex, or press release thus affording an opportunity to get caught up on other things while talk at you. Hmm, perhaps need to consider playing some tricks in reward for those kind of treats? ;)

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Do not be scared, not everybody is out to trick you with treats, and not all treats have tricks attached to them. Be prepared, figure out who is playing tricks with treats, and who has treats without tricks.

Oh, and as a former IT customer, vendor and analyst, one of my favorites is contact information of my dogs to vendors who require registration on their websites for basic things such as data sheets. Another is supplying contact information of competing vendors sales reps to vendors who also require registration for basic data sheets or what should otherwise be generally available information as opposed to more premium treats. Of course there are many more fun tricks, however lets leave those alone for now.

Note: Zombie voting rules apply which means vote early, vote often, and of course vote for those who cannot include those that are dead (real or virtual).

Where To Learn More

View additiona related material 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

Watch out for tricks and treats, have a safe and fun Zombie (aka Halloween) season. See you while out and about this fall and don’t forget to take part in the ongoing zombie technology poll. Oh, and be safe with trick or treat and vendor fun games

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

Posted on

What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

Updated 10/9/2018

What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) is a collection of techniques, technologies, tools and best practices that are used to address data growth management challenges. Dedupe is currently the industry darling for DFR particularly in the scope or context of backup or other repetitive data.

However DFR expands the scope of expanding data footprints and their impact to cover primary, secondary along with offline data that ranges from high performance to inactive high capacity.

Consequently the focus of DFR is not just on reduction ratios, its also about meeting time or performance rates and data protection windows.

This means DFR is about using the right tool for the task at hand to effectively meet business needs, and cost objectives while meeting service requirements across all applications.

Examples of DFR technologies include Archiving, Compression, Dedupe, Data Management and Thin Provisioning among others.

Read more about DFR in Part I and Part II of a two part series found here and here.

Where to learn more

Learn more about data footprint reducton (DFR), data footprint overhead 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

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

Posted on

Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?

Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Updated 9/28/18

There are many faces and thus functionalities of virtualization beyond the one most commonly discussed which is consolidation or aggregation. Other common forms of virtualization include emulation (which is part of enabling consolidation) which can be in the form of a virtual tape library for storage to bridge new disk technology to old software technology, processes, procedures and skill sets. Other forms of virtualization functionality for life beyond consolidation include abstraction for transparent movement of applications or operating systems on servers, or data on storage to support planned and un-planned maintenance, upgrades, BC/DR and other activities.

So the gist is that there are many forms of virtualization technologies and techniques for servers, storage and even I/O networks to address different issues including life beyond consolidation. However the next wave of consolidation could and should be that of reducing the number of logical images, or, the impact of the multiple operating systems and application images, along with their associated management costs.

This may be easier said than done, however, for those looking to cut costs even further than from what can be realized by reducing physical footprints (e.g. going from 10 to 1 or from 250 to 25 physical servers), there could be upside however it will come at a cost. The cost is like that of reducing data and storage footprint impacts with such as data management and archiving.

Savings can be realized by archiving and deleting data via data management however that is easier said than done given the cost in terms of people time and ability to decide what to archive, even for non-compliance data along with associated business rules and policies to be defined (for automation) along with hardware, software and services (managed services, consulting and/or cloud and SaaS).

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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