Tag: hardware

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Saving Money with Green IT: Time To Invest In Information Factories

There is a good and timely article titled Green IT Can Save Money, Too over at Business Week that has a familiar topic and theme for those who read this blog or other content, articles, reports, books, white papers, videos, podcasts or in-person speaking and keynote sessions that I have done..

I posted a short version of this over there, here is the full version that would not fit in their comment section.

Short of calling it Green IT 2.0 or the perfect storm, there is a resurgence and more importantly IMHO a growing awareness of the many facets of Green IT along with Green in general having an economic business sustainability aspect.

While the Green Gap and confusion still exists, that is, the difference between what people think or perceive and actual opportunities or issues; with growing awareness, it will close or at least narrow. For example, when I regularly talk with IT professionals from various sized, different focused industries across the globe in diverse geographies and ask them about having to go green, the response is in the 7-15% range (these are changing) with most believing that Green is only about carbon footprint.

On the other hand, when I ask them if they have power, cooling, floor space or other footprint constraints including frozen or reduced budgets, recycling along with ewaste disposition or RoHS requirements, not to mention sustaining business growth without negatively impacting quality of service or customer experience, the response jumps up to 65-75% (these are changing) if not higher.

That is the essence of the green gap or disconnect!

Granted carbon dioxide or CO2 reduction is important along with NO2, water vapors and other related issues, however there is also the need to do more with what is available, stretch resources and footprints do be more productive in a shrinking footprint. Keep in mind that there is no such thing as an information, data or processing recession with all indicators pointing towards the need to move, manage and store larger amounts of data on a go forward basis. Thus, the need to do more in a given footprint or constraint, maximizing resources, energy, productivity and available budgets.

Innovation is the ability to do more with less at a lower cost without compromise on quality of service or negatively impacting customer experience. Regardless of if you are a manufacturer, or a service provider including in IT, by innovating with a diverse Green IT focus to become more efficient and optimized, the result is that your customers become more enabled and competitive.

By shifting from an avoidance model where cost cutting or containment are the near-term tactical focus to an efficiency and productivity model via optimization, net unit costs should be lowered while overall service experience increase in a positive manner. This means treating IT as an information factory, one that needs investment in the people, processes and technologies (hardware, software, services) along with management metric indicator tools.

The net result is that environmental or perceived Green issues are addressed and self-funded via the investment in Green IT technology that boosts productivity (e.g. closing or narrowing the Green Gap). Thus, the environmental concerns that organizations have or need to address for different reasons yet that lack funding get addressed via funding to boost business productivity which have tangible ROI characteristics similar to other lean manufacturing approaches.

Here are some additional links to learn more about these and other related themes:

Have a read over at Business Week about how Green IT Can Save Money, Too while thinking about how investing in IT infrastructure productivity (Information Factories) by becoming more efficient and optimized helps the business top and bottom line, not to mention the environment as well.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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Summer Book Update and Back to School Reading

August and thus Summer 2009 in the northern hemisphere are swiftly passing by and start of a new school year is just around the corner which means it is also time for final vacations, time at the beach, pool, golf course, amusement park or favorite fishing hole among other past times. In order to help get you ready for fall (or late summer) book shopping for those with IT interests, here are some Amazon lists (here, here and here) for ideas, after all, the 2009 holiday season is not that far away!

Here’s a link to my Amazon.com Authors page that includes coverage of both my books, "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) and "Resilient Storage Networks – Designing Scalable Flexible Data Infrastructures" (Elsevier).

The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)Resilient Storage Networks - Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier)

Click here to look inside "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) and or inside "Resilient Storage Networks" (Elsevier).

Its been six months since the launch announcement of my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) and general availability at Amazon.com and other global venues here and here. In celebration of the six month anniversary of the book launch (thank you very much to all who have bought a copy!), here is some coverage including what is being said, related articles, interviews, book reviews and more.

Article: New Green Data Center: shifting from avoidance to becoming more efficient IT-World August 2009

wsradio.com interview discussing themes and topics covered in the book including closing the green gap and shifting towards an IT efficiency and productivity for business sustainability.

Closing the green gap: Discussion about expanding data centers with environmental benefits at SearchDataCenter.com

From Greg Brunton – EDS/An HP Company: “Greg Schulz has presented a concise and visionary perspective on the Green issues, He has cut through the hype and highlighted where to start and what the options are. A great place to start your green journey and a useful handbook to have as the journey continues.”

From Rick Bauer – Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) – Education and Technology Director”
“Greg is one of the smartest “good guys” in the storage industry.
He has been a voice of calm amid all the “green IT hype” over the past few years. So when he speaks of the possible improvements that Green Tech can bring, it’s a much more realistic approach…”

From CMG (Computer Measurement Group) MeasureIT
I must admit that I have been slightly skeptical at times, when it comes to what the true value is behind all of the discussions on “green” technologies in the data center. As someone who has seen both the end user and vendor side of things, I think my skepticism gets heightened more than it normally would be. This book really helped dispel my skepticism.

The book is extremely well organized and easy to follow. Each chapter has a very good introduction and comprehensive summary. This book could easily serve as a blueprint for organizations to follow when they look for ideas on how to design new data centers. It’s a great addition to an IT Bookshelf. – Reviewed by Stephen R. Guendert, PhD (Brocade and CMG MeasureIT). Click here to read the full review in CMG MeasureIT.

From Tom Becchetti – IT Architect: “This book is packed full of information. From ecological and energy efficiencies, to virtualization strategies and what the future may hold for many of the key enabling technologies. Greg’s writing style benefits both technologists and management levels.”

From MSP Business Journal: Greg Schulz named an Eco-Tech Warrior – April 2009

From David Marshall at VMblog.com: If you follow me on Linked in, you might have seen that I had been reading a new book that came out at the beginning of the year titled, “The Green and Virtual Data Center” by Greg Schulz. Rather than writing about a specific virtualization platform and how to get it up and running, Schulz takes an interesting approach at stepping back and looking at the big picture. After reading the book, I reached out to the author to ask him a few more questions and to share his thoughts with readers of VMBlog.com. I know I’m not Oprah’s Book Club, but I think everyone here will enjoy this book. Click here to read more what David Marshal has to say.

From Zen Kishimoto of Altaterra Research: Book Review May 2009

From Kurt Marko of Processor.com Green and Virtual Book Review – April 2009

From Serial Storage Wire (STA): Green and SASy = Energy and Economic, Effective Storage – March 2009

From Computer Technology Review: Recent Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center – March 2009

From Alan Radding in Big Fat Finance Blog: Green IT for Finance Operations – April 2009

From VMblog: Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center – March 2009

From StorageIO Blog: Recent Comments and Tips – March 2009

From VMblog: Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center – March 2009

From Data Center Links John Rath comments on “The Green and Virtual Data Center”

From InfoStor Dave Simpson comments on “The Green and Virtual Data Center”

From Sys-Con Georgiana Comsa comments on “The Green and Virtual Data Center”

From Ziff Davis Heather Clancy comments on “The Green and Virtual Data Center”

From Byte & Switch Green IT and the Green Gap February 2009

From GreenerComputing: Enabling a Green and Virtual Data Center February 2009

From Sys-con: Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center – March 2009

From ServerWatch: Green IT: Myths vs. Realities – February 2009

From Byte & Switch: Going Green and the Economic Downturn – February 2009

From Business Wire: Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center Book – January 2009

Additional content and news can be found here and here with upcoming events listed here.

Interested in Kindle? Here’s a link to get a Kindle copy of "Resilient Storage Networks" (Elsevier) or to send a message via Amazon to publisher CRC that you would like to see a Kindle version of "The Green and Virtual Data Center". While you are at it, I also invite you to become a fan of my books at Facebook.

Thanks again to everyone who has obtained their copy of either of my books, also thanks to all of those who have done reviews, interviews and helped in many other ways!

Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Cheers – gs

Greg Schulz – twitter @storageio

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StorageIO in the news

StorageIO is regularly quoted and interviewed in various industry and vertical market venues and publications both on-line and in print on a global basis. The following is coverage, perspectives and commentary by StorageIO on IT industry trends including servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, services, virtualization, cloud, cluster, grid, SSD, data protection, Green IT and more.

Realizing that some prefer blogs to webs to twitters to other venues, here are some recent links among others to media coverage and comments by me on a different topics that are among others found at www.storageio.com/news.html:

  • Virtualization Review: Comments on Clouds, Virtualizaiton and Cisco move into servers – July 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Storage Resource Managemet (SRM) and related tools – July 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on flash SSD – July 2009
  • SearchDataBackup: Comments on Data backup reporting tools’ trends – July 2009
  • SearchServerVirtualization: Comments on Hyper-V R2 matches VMware with 64-processor support – July 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on HP buying IBRIX for clustered and Cloud NAS – July 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on HP buying IBRIX for clustered and Cloud NAS – July 2009
  • eWeek: Comments on NetApps next moves after DDUP and EMC – July 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on NetApps next moves after DDUP and EMC – July 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on EMC buying DataDomain, NetApps next moves – July 2009
  • SearchVirtualization: Comments on Microsft HyperV features and VMware – July 2009
  • SearchITchannel: Comments on social media for business – June 2009
  • SearchSMBstorage: Comments on Storage Resource Management (SRM) for SMBs – June 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on IT Merger & Acquisition activity – June 2009
  • Evolving Solutions: Comments on Storage Consolidation, Networking & Green IT – June 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on EMC letter to DDUP – June 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on best practices for effective thin provisioning – June 2009
  • Processor: Comments on Cloud computing, SaaS and SOAs – June 2009
  • Serverwatch: Comments in How EMC’s World Pulls the Data Center Together – June 2009
  • Processor: Comments on Virtual Security Is No Walk In The Park – May 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on EPA launching Green Storage specification – May 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Storage Provisioning Tools – May 2009
  • Enterprise Systems Journal: Comments on Tape: The Zombie Technology – May 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Oracle Keeping Sun Storage Business – May 2009
  • IT Health Blogging: Discussion about iSCSI vs. Fibre Channel for Virtual Environments – May 2009
  • IT Business Edge: Discussion about IT Data Center Futures – May 2009
  • IT Business Edge: Comments on Tape being a Green Technology – April 2009
  • Big Fat Finance Blog: Quoted in story about Green IT for Finance Operaitons – April 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on FLASH and SSD Storage – April 2009
  • SearchStorage AU: Comments on Data Classificaiton – April 2009
  • IT Knowledge Exchange: Comments on FCoE and Converged Networking Coming Together – April 2009
  • SearchSMBStorage: Comments on Data Deduplicaiton for SMBs – April 2009
  • SearchSMBStorage: Comments on Blade Storage for SMBs – April 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on MAID technology remaining underutilized – April 2009
  • SearchDataCenter: Closing the green gap: Expanding data centers with environmental benefits – April 2009
  • ServerWatch: Comments on What’s Selling In the Data Storage Market? – April 2009
  • ServerWatch: Comments on Oracle Buys Sun: The Consequences – April 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Tiered Storage – April 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Data Classification for Storage Managers – April 2009
  • wsradio.com Interview closing the Green Gap


  • IT Knowledge Exchange: Comments on FCoE eco-system maturing – April 2009
  • Internet Revolution: Comments on the Pre-mature death of the disk drive – April 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on EMC V-MAX announcement – April 2009
  • MSP Business Journal: Greg Schulz named an Eco-Tech Warrior – April 2009
  • Storage Magazine: Comments on Power-smart disk systems – April 2009
  • Storage Magazine: Comments on Replication Alternatives – April 2009
  • StorageIO Blog: Comments and Tape as a Green Storage Medium – April 2009
  • Inside HPC: Recent Comments on Tape and Green IT – April 2009
  • Processor.com: Recent Comments on Green and Virtual – April 2009
  • SearchDataCenter: Interview: Closing the green gap: Expanding data centers with environmental benefits – April 2009
  • Enterprise Systems Journal: Recent Comments and Tips – March 2009
  • Computer Technology Review: Recent Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center – March 2009
  • VMblog: Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center – March 2009
  • Sys-con: Comments on The Green and Virtual Data Center – March 2009
  • Server Watch: Comments on IBM possibly buying Sun – March 2009
  • Bnet: Comments on IBM possibly buying Sun – March 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on Tiered Storage 101 – March 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments – Cisco pushes into Servers March 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments – Cisco Entering Server Market March 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments – State of Storage Job Market – March 2009
  • SearchSMBStorage: Comments on SMB Storage Options – March 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Sun Proposes New Solid State Storage Spec – March 2009
  • Enterprise Storage Forum: Comments on Despite Economy, Storage Bargains Hard to Find – March 2009
  • TechWorld: Comments on Where to Stash Your Data – February 2009
  • ServerWatch: Green IT: Myths vs. Realities – February 2009
  • Byte & Switch: Going Green and the Economic Downturn – February 2009
  • CTR: Comments on Tape Hardly Being On Way Out – February 2009
  • Processor: Comments on SSD (FLASH and RAM) – February 2009
  • Internet News: Comments on Steve Wozniak joining SSD startup – February 2009
  • SearchServerVirtualization: Comments on I/O and Virtualization – February 2009
  • Technology Inc.: Comments on Data De-dupe for DR – February 2009
  • SearchStorage: Comments on NetApp SMB NAS – February 2009

    • Check out the Tips, Tools and White Papers, and News pages for additional commentary, coverage and related content or events.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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    Green IT Confusion Continues, Opportunities Missed!

    I continue to see those looking for fast silver bullets in the quest to be green, efficient, optimized or sustainable while addressing issues ranging from power/energy, cooling, floor-space/footprint, EH&S (environmental health & safety) not to mention recycling. Yet, I’m also continued to be  amazed by the focus and emphasis around reduce as in reduce your capacity and your performance or processing capabilities in the form of consolidation or aggregation along with energy avoidance which for some is applicable.

    However, there is also the other side of the tale which is shifting from avoidance to becoming more efficient, that is doing more with what you have or with less while boosting productivity. For example, having a server or processor that can do more work in the same or smaller physical footprint drawing the same or less energy and requiring less cooling is a form of reducing overall impact yet boosting productivity. The same can be done with data and I/O networks, storage and even software.

    Similar to automobiles after the 1970s oil and energy crisis, the focus was on reduction, conservation and avoidance as the form of being efficient. Over time, this approach gave way to levering more efficient engines and vehicles that boosted the MPG city and highway, change in driving or usage habits, awareness of issues including applicable metrics and energy costs, as well as the continuing quest for alternative fuels.

    This is no different than what is happening with the IT organizations or compute focused entities in that there has been an initial focus of avoidance to meet short term tactical requirements, not to mention all of the green hype of a few years ago. Today there is a shift taking place towards efficiency and awareness that optimization and efficiency is more than consolidation, that it also includes boosting productivity as part of achieving reduced energy and cooling demands.

    How this can be done is to leverage multiple different techniques including new servers with processors that have intelligent power management (IPM) also known as adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) or other marketing terms enabling variable performance and energy consumption. For example, vary clock cycles and turn on cores when needed, then to turn off cores, slow clock speed down when there is less work to be done. Likewise there are improvements with cooling closer to the heat source ranging from leveraging inert liquid cooling inside the cabinet of computers to surface attached cooling to emerging micro cooling located inside silicon. There is a fascination with using virtualization to consolidate and reduce servers that are underutilized, which again is applicable for some environments and applications.

    However not all servers including many that are underutilized lend themselves to being consolidated for various reasons including quality of service (QoS) or performance, security, vendor support or software compatibility, politics or finance among others. This however does not mean that they cannot be virtualized, it more than likely mean that they cannot be consolidated. There is a common myth that virtualization equals consolidation and vice versa, however virtualization can also be used for abstraction, transparency, emulation and enabling agility including support for load-balancing, scale-up and scale-out performance oriented clustering among other uses. Thus there is another side of virtualization and that is to achieve   efficiency, life beyond consolidation.

    Needless to say there are many more technologies and techniques to address various issues now along with those that are emerging. The good news in all of this is the growing awareness that there are many different faces or facets of being green. That green wash and green hype may be on the endangered species list, that green means more than reducing carbon footprints or recycling or energy avoidance. That green is really about shifting and becoming more efficient, more optimized to support more processing, more work in a cost effective manner to sustain growth on a go forward basis. For high performance compute (HPC) or other large scale IT organizations, there is a notion that small improvements on a large broad scale have significant impact.

    Some organizations are in pursuit of technologies of solutions that promise significant saving ratios over small sets or instances, solutions that provide  smaller reduction or savings over a larger basis can prove to be more effective. For example, if power is a concern, powering down servers or storage that promises 85-100% savings might only be applicable to less than 5% of the devices. However, if 85-100% of the devices can be upgraded to newer models that boost productivity by 5-15% (or more) in the same or smaller footprint, using 5-15% (or more) less power, the results add up quickly. Think of it this way, a 1% saving for an environment using 1,000 kilo watt hour (kWh) or 1mWh of energy is a savings of 10kWh. The point being that for large environments, don’t forget to look at small savings that apply to a large installed base that then add up to big benefits.

    The net result is that one can pursue being green or being perceived as being green which can have a high cost, or, can pursue various efficiency that help the overall organization by boosting productivity, helping the top and bottom line, doing more in a smaller footprint and guess what, the result is not only economic, it’s also environmental positive. Thus, the byproduct of shifting towards efficiency (and not just avoidance) is to become green!

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    Clarifying Clustered Storage Confusion

    Clustered storage can be iSCSI, Fibre Channel block based or NAS (NFS or CIFS or proprietary file system) file system based. Clustered storage can also be found in virtual tape library (VTL) including dedupe solutions along with other storage solutions such as those for archiving, cloud, medical or other specialized grids among others.

    Recently in the IT and data storage specific industry, there has been a flurry of merger and acquisition (M&A) (Here and here), new product enhancement or announcement activity around clustered storage. For example, HP buying clustered file system vendor IBRIX complimenting their previous acquisition of another clustered file system vendor (PolyServe) a few years ago, or, of iSCSI block clustered storage software vendor LeftHand earlier this year. Another recent acquisition is that of LSI buying clustered NAS vendor ONstor, not to mention Dell buying iSCSI block clustered storage vendor EqualLogic about a year and half ago, not to mention other vendor acquisitions or announcements involving storage and clustering.

    Where the confusion enters into play is the term cluster which means many things to different people, and even more so when clustered storage is combined with NAS or file based storage. For example, clustered NAS may infer a clustered file system when in reality a solution may only be multiple NAS filers, NAS heads, controllers or storage processors configured for availability or failover.

    What this means is that a NFS or CIFS file system may only be active on one node at a time, however in the event of a failover, the file system shifts from one NAS hardware device (e.g. NAS head or filer) to another. On the other hand, a clustered file system enables a NFS or CIFS or other file system to be active on multiple nodes (e.g. NAS heads, controllers, etc.) concurrently. The concurrent access may be for small random reads and writes for example supporting a popular website or file serving application, or, it may be for parallel reads or writes to a large sequential file.

    Clustered storage is no longer exclusive to the confines of high-performance sequential and parallel scientific computing or ultra large environments. Small files and I/O (read or write), including meta-data information, are also being supported by a new generation of multipurpose, flexible, clustered storage solutions that can be tailored to support different applications workloads.

    There are many different types of clustered and bulk storage systems. Clustered storage solutions may be block (iSCSI or Fibre Channel), NAS or file serving, virtual tape library (VTL), or archiving and object-or content-addressable storage. Clustered storage in general is similar to using clustered servers, providing scale beyond the limits of a single traditional system—scale for performance, scale for availability, and scale for capacity and to enable growth in a modular fashion, adding performance and intelligence capabilities along with capacity.

    For smaller environments, clustered storage enables modular pay-as-you-grow capabilities to address specific performance or capacity needs. For larger environments, clustered storage enables growth beyond the limits of a single storage system to meet performance, capacity, or availability needs.

    Applications that lend themselves to clustered and bulk storage solutions include:

    • Unstructured data files, including spreadsheets, PDFs, slide decks, and other documents
    • Email systems, including Microsoft Exchange Personal (.PST) files stored on file servers
    • Users’ home directories and online file storage for documents and multimedia
    • Web-based managed service providers for online data storage, backup, and restore
    • Rich media data delivery, hosting, and social networking Internet sites
    • Media and entertainment creation, including animation rendering and post processing
    • High-performance databases such as Oracle with NFS direct I/O
    • Financial services and telecommunications, transportation, logistics, and manufacturing
    • Project-oriented development, simulation, and energy exploration
    • Low-cost, high-performance caching for transient and look-up or reference data
    • Real-time performance including fraud detection and electronic surveillance
    • Life sciences, chemical research, and computer-aided design

    Clustered storage solutions go beyond meeting the basic requirements of supporting large sequential parallel or concurrent file access. Clustered storage systems can also support random access of small files for highly concurrent online and other applications. Scalable and flexible clustered file servers that leverage commonly deployed servers, networking, and storage technologies are well suited for new and emerging applications, including bulk storage of online unstructured data, cloud services, and multimedia, where extreme scaling of performance (IOPS or bandwidth), low latency, storage capacity, and flexibility at a low cost are needed.

    The bandwidth-intensive and parallel-access performance characteristics associated with clustered storage are generally known; what is not so commonly known is the breakthrough to support small and random IOPS associated with database, email, general-purpose file serving, home directories, and meta-data look-up (Figure 1). Note that a clustered storage system, and in particular, a clustered NAS may or may not include a clustered file system.

    Clustered Storage Model: Source The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
    Figure 1 – Generic clustered storage model (Courtesy “The Green and Virtual Data Center  (CRC)”

    More nodes, ports, memory, and disks do not guarantee more performance for applications. Performance depends on how those resources are deployed and how the storage management software enables those resources to avoid bottlenecks. For some clustered NAS and storage systems, more nodes are required to compensate for overhead or performance congestion when processing diverse application workloads. Other things to consider include support for industry-standard interfaces, protocols, and technologies.

    Scalable and flexible clustered file server and storage systems provide the potential to leverage the inherent processing capabilities of constantly improving underlying hardware platforms. For example, software-based clustered storage systems that do not rely on proprietary hardware can be deployed on industry-standard high-density servers and blade centers and utilizes third-party internal or external storage.

    Clustered storage is no longer exclusive to niche applications or scientific and high-performance computing environments. Organizations of all sizes can benefit from ultra scalable, flexible, clustered NAS storage that supports application performance needs from small random I/O to meta-data lookup and large-stream sequential I/O that scales with stability to grow with business and application needs.

    Additional considerations for clustered NAS storage solutions include the following.

    • Can memory, processors, and I/O devices be varied to meet application needs?
    • Is there support for large file systems supporting many small files as well as large files?
    • What is the performance for small random IOPS and bandwidth for large sequential I/O?
    • How is performance enabled across different application in the same cluster instance?
    • Are I/O requests, including meta-data look-up, funneled through a single node?
    • How does a solution scale as the number of nodes and storage devices is increased?
    • How disruptive and time-consuming is adding new or replacing existing storage?
    • Is proprietary hardware needed, or can industry-standard servers and storage be used?
    • What data management features, including load balancing and data protection, exists?
    • What storage interface can be used: SAS, SATA, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel?
    • What types of storage devices are supported: SSD, SAS, Fibre Channel, or SATA disks?

    As with most storage systems, it is not the total number of hard disk drives (HDDs), the quantity and speed of tiered-access I/O connectivity, the types and speeds of the processors, or even the amount of cache memory that determines performance. The performance differentiator is how a manufacturer combines the various components to create a solution that delivers a given level of performance with lower power consumption.

    To avoid performance surprises, be leery of performance claims based solely on speed and quantity of HDDs or the speed and number of ports, processors and memory. How the resources are deployed and how the storage management software enables those resources to avoid bottlenecks are more important. For some clustered NAS and storage systems, more nodes are required to compensate for overhead or performance congestion.

    Learn more about clustered storage (block, file, VTL/dedupe, archive), clustered NAS, clustered file system, grids and cloud storage among other topics in the following links:

    "The Many faces of NAS – Which is appropriate for you?"

    Article: Clarifying Storage Cluster Confusion
    Presentation: Clustered Storage: “From SMB, to Scientific, to File Serving, to Commercial, Social Networking and Web 2.0”
    Video Interview: How to Scale Data Storage Systems with Clustering
    Guidelines for controlling clustering
    The benefits of clustered storage

    Along with other material on the StorageIO Tips and Tools or portfolio archive or events pages.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    Wide World of Archiving – Life Beyond Compliance

    Earlier this week I did a keynote talk at a TechTarget event in the New York city area titled the “Wide World of Archiving – Life Beyond Compliance” with the basic theme that archiving and data preservation for future or possible future use is not unique or exclusive to SARBOX, HIPPA, CFR, PCI, OHSAS, ISO or other members of the common alphabet soup of governmental or industry regulatory compliance needs.

    The basic theme is that archiving can be used to discuss many IT and business pain points and issues from preserving project oriented or seasonal data to off-loading un-used or seldom used data to free up resources to meet power, cooling, floor space and environmental (PCFE) issues
    “aka Green”     along with boosting performance for on-line access as well as backup, BC and DR.

    The challenge however is that archiving while a powerful technique, is also complex in that it requires hardware and mediums to park your data onto, software to find and then execute policies defined by someone to move data to the archive medium and if applicable, delete or cleanup data that has been moved all of which has cost and application specific issues. Then the human side which is more involved than simply throwing head count at the tasks and avoiding the mistakes of the Mythical Man Month.

    The human side of archiving is the glue to make it work in that similar to cleaning out your garage, attic, basement or store-room, you can have someone come and do the real work, however do they have the insight to know what to keep and what to discard? Sure that’s an overly simple example, and there are plenty of search and discovery software management tool vendors who will be more than happy to show you a demo of their wares that will discovery and classify and categorize and index what data you have as well as interface with policy managers, data movers and archiving devices.

    However who is going to tell the management tools what policies are applicable and the different variances for your different business segments or activities? Consequently the key to making archiving work particularly on a broader basis is to get internal personal familiar with your business, IT personal, as well as external subject matter experts involved all of which leads to a challenge and dilemma of is it cheaper to just buy more energy-efficient, space-saving storage than to pay the fees to find, manage, move and archive data. Talking with one of the attendees who brought up some good points that this all makes sense however there is a scaling challenge and when dealing with 100’s of TBytes or PBytes, the complexity increases.

    This is where the notion of scaling with stability comes into play in that many solutions exist to address different functionality for example archiving, de-duping, compression, server or storage virtualization, thin-provisioning among many others however how do they scale with stability. That is, how stable or reliable do the solutions remain when scaling from 10s to 100’s to 10,000’s or even 100,000’s users, email boxes, sessions, streams or from 10’s of TBytes to 10’s of PBytes? How does the performance hold up, how does the availability hold up, how does the management and on-going care and feeding change for the better or worse? Concerns around scaling is a common issue I hear from IT organizations pertaining to both hardware and software tools in that what works great during a WebEx demo or PowerPoint or pdf slide show may be different from real-world performance, management, reliability and complexity concerns. After all, have you ever seen a WebEx or live office or PowerPoint or PDF slide deck showing a hardware or software based solution that could not scale or provide transparent interoperability? That would be akin to finding a used car sales rep who gives you a tour of how a car was refurbished inside and out after it was declared totaled by the previous owners insurance company after the last great flood or hurricane.

    Getting back to archiving, and not trying to conquer all of your data at one time, take a divide and conquer approach, go for some low hanging fruit where your chances of success go up that you can then build some momentum and perhaps a business case to do a larger project. Also, one solution particularly one archiving software solution may not be applicable to all of your needs in that you may need a tool specialized for email, one for databases and another general purpose tool. Likewise you may need to engage different subject matter experts to help you with policy definition and establishing rules to meet different requirements which is where business partners can come into play with either their in-house staff, partners, or associates that they work with for different issues and needs.

    Look beyond the hardware and software, look at the people or human and knowledge side of archiving as well as look beyond archiving for compliance as there is a much bigger wide world of archiving and opportunity. If you remember the ABC sports TV show “Wide World of Sports” you may recall Jim McCay saying “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sports… the thrill of victory… and the agony of defeat… the human drama of athletic competition… This is “ABC’s Wide World of Sports!”.

    From an archiving perspective, keep this in mind in that there is a wide world of opportunities for archiving, the thrill of victory are the benefits, the agony of defeat are the miss-steps, lack of scaling, out of control costs or complexity, the human drama is how to make or break a solution, this is the “Wide World of Archiving”…

    Rest assured, some form of archiving structured database, semi-structured email with attachments and un-structured word, PowerPoint, PDF, MP3 and other data is in your future, it’s a matter of when. Archiving is just one of many tools available for effectively managing your data and addressing data footprint sprawl particular for data that you can not simply delete and ignore, if you need it to go forward, you need to keep it. Or, as a friend of mine says You can’t go forward unless you can go back. Likewise, you can’t manage what you don’t know about; you can’t move and delete what you can’t manage.

    Look for solution providers who are not looking to simply get you to buy the latest and greatest archiving storage device, or, the slickest archiving management tool with a Uhi Gui that rivals those on an Wii or Xbox, or, that is looking to simply run up billable hours. That’s a balancing act requires investing time with different business solution providers to see where their core business is, how they can scale, where and how they make their money to help you decide where and how they are fit as opposed to simply adding complexity to your environment and existing issues.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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