Tag: HCI

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Updated Software Defined Data Infrastructure Webinars and Fall 2016 events

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Webinars and Fall 2016 events

server storage I/O trends

Here is the updated Server StorageIO fall 2016 webinar and event activities covering software defined data center, data infrastructure, virtual, cloud, containers, converged, hyper-converged server, storage, I/O network, performance and data protection among other topics.

December 7, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – BrightTalk
Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Decision Making

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, HCI and CI Decision Making

Are Converged Infrastructures (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructures (HCI), Cluster in Box or Cloud in Box (CiB) solutions for you? The answer is it depends on what your needs, requirements, application among other criteria are. In addition are you focused on a particular technology solution or architecture approach, or, looking for something that adapts to your needs? Join us in this discussion exploring your options for different scenarios as we look beyond they hype including to next wave of hyper-scale converged along with applicable decision-making criteria. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– What are your application and environment needs along with other objectives
– Explore various approaches for hyper-small and hyper-large environments
– What are you converging, hardware, hypervisors, management or something else?
– Does HCI mean hyper-vendor-lock-in, if so, is that a bad thing?
– When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

November 29-30, 2016 (New) – Converged & Hyper-Converged Decision Making
Is Converged Infrastructure Right For You?
Workshop Seminar – Nijkerk The Netherlands

Converged and server storage I/O data infrastructure trends
Agenda and topics to be covered include:

  • When should decide to evaluate CI/HCI vs. traditional approach
  • What are decision and evaluation criteria for apples to apples vs. Apples to pears
  • What are the costs, benefits, and caveats of the different approaches
  • How different applications such as VDI or VSI or database have different needs
  • What are the network, storage, software license and training cost implications
  • Different comparison criteria for smaller environments remote office vs. Larger enterprise
  • How will you protect and secure a CI, HCI environment (HA, BC, BR, DR, Backup)
  • What is the risk and benefit of startups, companies with limited portfolios vs. Big vendors
  • Do it yourself (DiY) vs. Turnkey software vs. Bundled tin wrapped software solution
  • We will also look at associated trends including software-defined, NVM/SSD, NVMe, VMware, Microsoft, KVM, Citrix/Xen, Docker, OpenStack among others.

Organized by:
Brouwer Storage Consultancy

November 28, 2016 (New) – Server Storage I/O Fundamental Trends V2.1116
Whats New, Whats the buzz, what you need to know about and whos doing what
Workshop Seminar – Nijkerk The Netherlands

Converged and server storage I/O data infrastructure trends
Agenda and topics that will be covered include:

  • Who’s doing what, who are the new emerging vendors, solutions and technologies to watch
  • Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), flash solid state device (SSD), Storage Class Memory (SCM)
  • Networking with your servers and storage including NVMe, NVMeoF and RoCE
  • Cloud, Object and Bulk storage for data protection, archiving, near-line, scale-out
  • Data protection and software defined storage management (backup, BC, BR, DR, archive)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Nano, S2D and Hyper-V
  • VMware, OpenStack, Ceph, Docker and Containers, CI and HCI
  • EMC is gone, now there is Dell EMC and what that means
  • Various vendors and solutions from legacy to new and emerging
  • Recommendations, usage or deployment scenarios and tips
  • Some examples of who’s doing what includes AWS, Brocade, Cisco, Dell EMC, Enmotus, Futjistu, Google, HDS, HP and Huawei, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, Mellanox, Micron, Microsoft, NetApp, Nutanix, Oracle, Pure, Quantum, Qumulo, Reduxio, Rubrik, Samsung, SANdisk, Seagate, Simplivity and Tintri, Veeam, Veritas, VMware and WD among others.

Organized by:
Brouwer Storage Consultancy

November 23, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT BrightTalk
BCDR and Cloud Backup Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Data Protection

BC DR Cloud Backup and Data Protection

The answer is BCDR and Cloud Backup, however what was the question? Besides how to protect preserve and secure your data, applications along with data Infrastructures against various threat risk issues, what are some other common questions? For example how to modernize, rethink, re-architect, use new and old things in new ways, these and other topics, techniques, trends, tools have a common theme of BCDR and Cloud Backup. Join us in this discussion exploring your options for protecting data, applications and your data Infrastructures spanning legacy, software-defined virtual and cloud environments. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
– Do clouds need to be backed-up or protected?
– How to leverage clouds for various data protection objectives
– When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

November 23, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
Cloud Storage – Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

Cloud Storage Decision Making

You have been told, or determined that you need (or want) to use cloud storage, ok, now what? What type of cloud storage do you need or want, or do you simply want cloud storage? However, what are your options as well as application requirements including Performance, Availability, Capacity and Economics (PACE) along with access or interfaces? Where are your applications and where will they be located? What are your objectives for using cloud storage or is it simply you have heard or told its cheaper. Join us in this discussion exploring your options, considerations for cloud storage decision-making. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
– Storage for primary, secondary, performance, availability, capacity, backup, archiving
– Public, private and hybrid cloud storage options from block, file, object to application service
– When, where, why and how to use cloud storage for different scenarios

November 22, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT – BrightTalk
Cloud Infrastructure Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

Cloud Infrastructure and Hybrid Software Defined

At the core of cloud (public, private, hybrid) next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that exist to protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for cloud services (and underlying data infrastructures). Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services options for cloud infrastructures. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers and clouds
– Various types of clouds along with cloud services that determine how resources get defined
– When, where, why and how to use cloud Infrastructures along with associated resources

November 15, 2016 (New) – 11AM PT Webinar – Redmond Magazine and Solarwinds
The O.A.R. of Virtualization Scaling
A journey of optimization, automation, and reporting

Your journey to a flexible, scalable and secure IT universe begins now. Join Microsoft MVP and VMware vSAN and vExpert Greg Schulz of Server StorageIO along with VMware vExpert, Cisco Champion and Head Geek of Virtualization and Cloud Practice Kong Yang of SolarWinds for an interactive discussion empowering you to become the master of your software defined and virtual data center. Topics will include:

  • Trust your instruments and automation, however, verify they are working properl
  • Insight into how your environment, as well as automation tools, are working
  • Leverage automation to handle recurring tasks so you can focus on more productive activities
  • Capture, retain and transfer knowledge and tradecraft experiences into automation policies
  • Automated system management is only as good as the policies and data they rely upon
  • Optimize via automation that relies on reporting for insight, awareness and analytics 

November 3, 2016 (New) – Webinar 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and
Dell Software
Tailor Your Backup Data Repositories to
Fit Your Security and Management Needs

Does data protection storage have you working overtime to take care of it? Do you have the flexibility to protect, preserve, secure and serve different workgroups or customers in a shared environment? Is your environment looking to expand with new applications and remote offices, yet your data protection is slowing you down? 

In this webinar we will look at current and emerging trends along with issues including how different threat risk challenges impact your evolving environment, as well as opportunities to address them. It’s time to deploy technology that works for you and your environment instead of you working for the solution. 

Attend and learn about:

  • Data protection trends, issues, regulatory compliance, challenges and opportunities
  • How to utilize purpose built appliances to protect and defend your systems, applications and data from various threat risks
  • Importance of timely insight and situational awareness into your data protection infrastructure
  • Protecting centralized and distributed remote office branch offices (ROBO) workgroups
  • What you can do today to optimize your environment

October 27, 2016 (New) – Webinar 10AM PT – Virtual Instruments
The Value of Infrastructure Insight

This webinar looks at the value of data center infrastructure insight both as a technology as well as a business productivity enabler. Besides productivity, having insight into how data infrastructure resources (servers, storage, networks, system software) are used, enables informed analysis, troubleshooting, planning, forecasting as well as cost-effective decision-making. In other words, data center infrastructure insight, based on infrastructure performance analytics, enables you to avoid flying blind, having situational awareness for proactive Information Technology (IT) management. Your return on innovation is increased, and leveraging insight awareness along with metrics that matter drives return on investment (ROI) along with enhanced service delivery.

October 20, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
Next-Gen Data Centers Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) including Servers, Storage and Virtualization

Cloud Storage Decision Making

At the core of next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that enable, protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for virtual servers and storage. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around storage and virtualization for today, tomorrow, and in the years to come. Topics include:

– Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
– Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers
– Server and Storage Virtualization better together, with and without CI/HCI
– Many different facets (types) of Server virtualization and virtual storage
– When, where, why and how to use storage virtualization and virtual storage

September 20, 2016 – Webinar 8AM PT – BrightTalk
Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) Enabling Software Defined Data Centers – Part of Software-Defined Storage summit

Cloud Storage Decision Making

Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs. Software-Defined Infrastructures (SDI) are what enable Software-Defined Data Centers, and at the heart of a SDI is storage that is software-defined. This spans cloud, virtual and physical storage and is at the focal point of today. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around SDI and SDDC- today, tomorrow, and in the years to come.

September 13, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and
Dell Software
Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory
Whats New and How to Plan for Migration

Windows Server 2016 is expected to GA this fall and is a modernized version of the Microsoft operating system that includes new capabilities such as Active Directory (AD) enhancements. AD is critical to organizational operations providing control and secure access to data, networks, servers, storage and more from physical, virtual and cloud (public and hybrid). But over time, organizations along with their associated IT infrastructures have evolved due to mergers, acquisitions, restructuring and general growth. As a result, yesterday’s AD deployments may look like they did in the past while using new technology (e.g. in old ways). Now is the time to start planning for how you will optimize your AD environment using new tools and technologies such as those in Windows Server 2016 and AD in new ways. Optimizing AD means having a new design, performing cleanup and restructuring prior to migration vs. simply moving what you have. Join us for this interactive webinar to begin planning your journey to Windows Server 2016 and a new optimized AD deployment that is flexible, scalable and elastic, and enables resilient infrastructures. You will learn:

  • What’s new in Windows Server 2016 and how it impacts your AD
  • Why an optimized AD is critical for IT environments moving forward
  • How to gain insight into your current AD environment
  • AD restructuring planning considerations

September 8, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT (Watch on Demand) – Redmond Magazine, Acronis and Unitrends
Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments

Your organization’s business depends on modern Microsoft® environments — Microsoft Azure and new versions of Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Hyper-V with RCT, and business applications — and you need a data protection solution that keeps pace with Microsoft technologies. If you lose mission-critical data, it can cost you $100,000 or more for a single hour of downtime. Join our webinar and learn how different data protection solutions can protect your Microsoft environment, whether you store data on company premises, at remote locations, in private and public clouds, and on mobile devices.

Where To Learn More

What This All Means

Its fall back to school and learning time, join me on these and other upcoming event activities.

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016

Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016

server storage I/O trends
Updated 12/8/16

In case you had not heard, Microsoft announced the general availability (GA, also known as Release To Manufacturing (RTM) ) of the newest version of its Windows server operating system aka Windows Server 2016 along with System Center 2016. Note that as well as being released to traditional manufacturing distribution mediums as well as MSDN, the Windows Server 2016 bits are also available on Azure.

Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2016 Welcome Screen – Source Server StorageIOlab.com

For some this might be new news, or a refresh of what Microsoft announced a few weeks ago (e.g. the formal announcement). Likewise, some of you may not be aware that Microsoft is celebrating WIndows Server 20th Birthday (read more here).

Yet for others who have participated in the public beta aka public technical previews (TP) over the past year or two or simply after the information coming out of Microsoft and other venues, there should not be a lot of surprises.

Whats New With Windows Server 2016

Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Desktop
Windows Server 2016 Desktop and tools – Source Server StorageIOlab.com

Besides a new user interface including visual GUI and Powershell among others, there are many new feature functionalities summarized below:

  • Enhanced time-server with 1ms accuracy
  • Nano and Windows Containers (Linux via Hyper-V)
  • Hyper-V enhanced Linux services including shielded VMs
  • Simplified management (on-premisess and cloud)
  • Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) and Storage Replica (SR) – view more here and here


Storage Replica (SR) Scenarios including synchronous and asynchronous – Via Microsoft.com

  • Resilient File System aka ReFS (now default file system) storage tiering (cache)
  • Hot-swap virtual networking device support
  • Reliable Change Tracking (RCT) for faster Hyper-V backups
  • RCT improves resiliency vs. VSS change tracking
  • PowerShell and other management enhancements
  • Including subordinated / delegated management roles
  • Compliment Azure AD with on premise AD
  • Resilient/HA RDS using Azure SQL DB for connection broker
  • Encrypted VMs (at rest and during live migration)
  • AD Federation Services (FS) authenticate users in LDAP dir.
  • vTPM for securing and encrypting Hyper-V VMs
  • AD Certificate Services (CS) increase support for TPM
  • Enhanced TPM support for smart card access management
  • AD Domain Services (DS) security resiliency for hybrid and mobile devices

Here is a Microsoft TechNet post that goes into more detail of what is new in WIndows Server 2016.

Free ebook: Introducing Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview (Via Microsoft Press)

Check out the above free ebook, after looking through it, I recommend adding it to your bookshelf. There are lots of good intro and overview material for Windows Server 2016 to get you up to speed quickly, or as a refresh.

Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) CI and HCI

Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) builds on Storage Spaces that appeared in earlier Windows and Windows Server editions. Some of the major changes and enhancements include ability to leverage local direct attached storage (DAS) such as internal (or external) dedicated NVMe, SAS and SATA HDDs as well as flash SSDs that used for creating software defined storage for various scenarios.

Scenarios include converged infrastructure (CI) disaggregated as well as aggregated hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) for Hyper-V among other workloads. Windows Server 2016 S2D nodes communicate (from a storage perspective) via a software storage bus. Data Protection and availability is enabled between S2D nodes via Storage Replica (SR) that can do software based synchronous and asynchronous replication.


Aggregated – Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) – Source Microsoft.com


Desegregated – Converged Infrastructure (CI) – Source Microsoft.com

The following is a Microsoft produced YouTube video providing a nice overview and insight into Windows Server 2016 and Microsoft Software Defined Storage aka S2D.




YouTube Video Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) via Microsoft.com

Server storage I/O performance

What About Performance?

A common question that comes up with servers, storage, I/O and software defined data infrastructure is what about performance?

Following are some various links to different workloads showing performance for Hyper-V, S2D and Windows Server. Note as with any benchmark, workload or simulation take them for what they are, something to compare that may or might not be applicable to your own workload and environments.

  • Large scale VM performance with Hyper-V and in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
  • Benchmarking Microsoft Hyper-V server, VMware ESXi and Xen Hypervisors (Via cisjournal PDF)
  • Server 2016 Impact on VDI User Experience (Via LoginVSI)
  • Storage IOPS update with Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet)
  • SQL Server workload (benchmark) Order Processing Benchmark using In-Memory OLTP (Via Github)
  • Setting up testing Windows Server 2016 and S2D using virtual machines (Via MSDN blogs)
  • Storage throughput with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D TP5 (Via TechNet)
  • Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)

Where To Learn More

For those of you not as familiar with Microsoft Windows Server and related topics, or that simply need a refresh, here are several handy links as well as resources.

  • Introducing Windows Server 2016 (Free ebook from Microsoft Press)
  • What’s New in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft S2D Software Storage Bus (Via TechNet)
  • Understanding Software Defined Storage with S2D in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft Storage Replica (SR) (Via TechNet)
  • Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)
  • Microsoft Windows S2D Software Defined Storage (Via TechNet)
  • Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
  • Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
  • Resilient File System aka ReFS (Via TechNet)
  • DISKSPD now on GitHub, and the mysterious VMFLEET released (Via TechNet)
  • Hyper-converged solution using Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • NVMe, SSD and HDD storage configurations in Storage Spaces Direct TP5 (Via TechNet)
  • General information about SSD at www.thessdplace.com and NVMe at www.thenvmeplace.com
  • How to run nested Hyper-V and Windows Server 2016 (Via Altaro and via MSDN)
  • How to run Nested Windows Server and Hyper-V on VMware vSphere ESXi (Via Nokitel)
  • Get the Windows Server 2016 evaluation bits here
  • Microsoft Azure Stack overview and related material via Microsoft
  • Introducing Windows Server 2016 (Via MicrosoftPress)
  • Various WIndows Server and S2D lab scripts (Via Github)
  • Storage Spaces Direct – Lab Environment Setup (Via Argon Systems)
  • Setting up S2D with a 4 node configuration (Via StarWind blog)
  • SQL Server workload (benchmark) Order Processing Benchmark using In-Memory OLTP (Via Github)
  • Setting up testing Windows Server 2016 and S2D here using virtual machines (Via MSDN blogs)
  • Hyper-V large-scale VM performance for in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
  • BrightTalk Webinar – Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) are in your Future (if not already here)
  • Microsoft TechNet: Understand the cache in Storage Spaces Direct
  • BrightTalk Weibniar – Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Enabling Software-Defined Data Centers
  • Happy 20th Birthday Windows Server, ready for Server 2016?
  • Server StorageIO resources including added links, tools, reports, events and more.

What This All Means

While Microsoft Windows Server recently celebrated its 20th birthday (or anniversary), a lot has changed as well as evolved. This includes Windows Servers 2016 supporting new deployment and consumption models (e.g. lightweight Nano, full data center with desktop interface, on-premises, bare metal, virtualized (Hyper-V, VMware, etc) as well as cloud). Besides how consumed and configured, which can also be for CI and HCI modes, Windows Server 2016 along with Hyper-V extend the virtualization and container capabilities into non-Microsoft environments specifically around Linux and Docker. Not only are the support for those environments and platforms enhanced, so to are the management capabilities and interfaces from Powershell to Bash Linux shell being part of WIndows 10 and Server 2016.

What this all means is that if you have not looked at Windows Server in some time, its time you do, even if you are not a WIndows or Microsoft fan, you will want to know what it is that has been updated (perhaps even update your fud if that is the case) to stay current. Get your hands on the bits and try Windows Server 2016 on a bare metal server, or as a VM guest, or via cloud including Azure, or simply leverage the above resources to learn more and stay informed.

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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Fall 2015 Server Storage I/O Cloud Virtual Seminars Going Dutch

Storage I/O trends

Fall 2015 Server Storage I/O Cloud Virtual Seminars Going Dutch

StorageIO events, object storage, ssd cloud, virtualization and big data

It’s that time of the year again where the fall 2015 events and activities are underway which also includes a week of sessions in Holland October 13-16. I will be participating in four days of workshop seminars being organized by Brouwer Storage Consultancy in Nijkerk covering server storage decision-making, converged and bulk storage options, software defined storage management, data center infrastructure management and data protection along with industry trends and update sessions.

Brouwer Storage Consultnacy

October 13th: Symposium – Software Defined Storage Management

09:00 -17:00

DOWNLOAD FLYER (Dutch)

REGISTER HERE

FREE Session! Access for end-users only, through invitation or contacting BSC.

Event Location: Hotel & Gasterij De Roode Schuur, Oude Barneveldseweg 98, 3862PS Nijkerk – www.deroodeschuur.nl

Brouwer Storage Making Decision Seminar Workshops

October 14th: Server Storage I/O Fundamental Trends V2.015 – What’s New, What’s the buzz, what you need to know about.

09:00 -17:00

DOWNLOAD Abstract/Agenda

REGISTER HERE

Event Location: Golden Tulip Ampt van Nijkerk Hotel, Berencamperweg 4, 3861MC, Nijkerk – www.goldentulipamptvannijkerk.com/en

Brouwer Storage Making Decision Seminar Workshops

October 15th: Symposium – Data Center Infrastructure Management

09:00 -17:00

DOWNLOAD Abstract / Agenda

REGISTER Here

FREE Session! Access, through invitation or contacting BSC.

Event Location: Hotel & Gasterij De Roode Schuur, Oude Barneveldseweg 98, 3862PS Nijkerk – www.deroodeschuur.nl

Going Dutch Storage Seminars

October 16th: "Converged Day" Server and Storage Decision making – How do you want or need your storage packaged?

09:00 -17:00

DOWNLOAD Abstract / Agenda

REGISTER HERE

Event Location: Golden Tulip Ampt van Nijkerk Hotel, Berencamperweg 4, 3861MC, Nijkerk – www.goldentulipamptvannijkerk.com/en

Going Dutch Server Storage I/O

Brouwer Storage Consultnacy

Learn more at the Brouwer Storage Consultancy site here, or getting in touch with them to reserve your seat at these events.

Office: Olevoortseweg 43
3861 MH Nijkerk
The Netherlands

T +31-33-246-6825
C +31-652-601-309
F +31-33-245-8956
E info@brouwerconsultancy.com

Where to read, watch and learn more

Watch for more events, seminars, live video, webinars and virtual trade shows by visiting the StorageIO events page.

StorageIO events, object storage, ssd cloud, virtualization and big data

What this all means and wrap up

Smart server and storage for cloud, virtual and physical or legacy environments starts with being informed, knowing your requirements, options and having insight into industry trends that are applicable to your environment. These sessions are vendor and technology neutral held off-site at hotel venues in Nijkerk Netherlands so no need to worry about the sales teams coming in to sell you something during the breaks or lunch which are provided. There are also opportunities throughout the workshops for engagement, discussion and interaction with other attendees that includes your peers from various commercial, government and service providers among others. Hope to see in Nijkerk to discuss server stowage I/O cloud virtual and other industry trends, technologies, techniques in October.

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

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How many I/O iops can flash SSD or HDD do?

How many i/o iops can flash ssd or hdd do with vmware?

sddc data infrastructure Storage I/O ssd trends

Updated 2/10/2018

A common question I run across is how many I/O iopsS can flash SSD or HDD storage device or system do or give.

The answer is or should be it depends.

This is the first of a two-part series looking at storage performance, and in context specifically around drive or device (e.g. mediums) characteristics across HDD, HHDD and SSD that can be found in cloud, virtual, and legacy environments. In this first part the focus is around putting some context around drive or device performance with the second part looking at some workload characteristics (e.g. benchmarks).

What about cloud, tape summit resources, storage systems or appliance?

Lets leave those for a different discussion at another time.

Getting started

Part of my interest in tools, metrics that matter, measurements, analyst, forecasting ties back to having been a server, storage and IO performance and capacity planning analyst when I worked in IT. Another aspect ties back to also having been a sys admin as well as business applications developer when on the IT customer side of things. This was followed by switching over to the vendor world involved with among other things competitive positioning, customer design configuration, validation, simulation and benchmarking HDD and SSD based solutions (e.g. life before becoming an analyst and advisory consultant).

Btw, if you happen to be interested in learn more about server, storage and IO performance and capacity planning, check out my first book Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) that has a bit of information on it. There is also coverage of metrics and planning in my two other books The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press). I have some copies of Resilient Storage Networks available at a special reader or viewer rate (essentially shipping and handling). If interested drop me a note and can fill you in on the details.

There are many rules of thumb (RUT) when it comes to metrics that matter such as IOPS, some that are older while others may be guess or measured in different ways. However the answer is that it depends on many things ranging from if a standalone hard disk drive (HDD), Hybrid HDD (HHDD), Solid State Device (SSD) or if attached to a storage system, appliance, or RAID adapter card among others.

Taking a step back, the big picture

hdd image
Various HDD, HHDD and SSD’s

Server, storage and I/O performance and benchmark fundamentals

Even if just looking at a HDD, there are many variables ranging from the rotational speed or Revolutions Per Minute (RPM), interface including 1.5Gb, 3.0Gb, 6Gb or 12Gb SAS or SATA or 4Gb Fibre Channel. If simply using a RUT or number based on RPM can cause issues particular with 2.5 vs. 3.5 or enterprise and desktop. For example, some current generation 10K 2.5 HDD can deliver the same or better performance than an older generation 3.5 15K. Other drive factors (see this link for HDD fundamentals) including physical size such as 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch small form factor (SFF), enterprise or desktop or consumer, amount of drive level cache (DRAM). Space capacity of a drive can also have an impact such as if all or just a portion of a large or small capacity devices is used. Not to mention what the drive is attached to ranging from in internal SAS or SATA drive bay, USB port, or a HBA or RAID adapter card or in a storage system.

disk iops
HDD fundamentals

How about benchmark and performance for marketing or comparison tricks including delayed, deferred or asynchronous writes vs. synchronous or actually committed data to devices? Lets not forget about short stroking (only using a portion of a drive for better IOP’s) or even long stroking (to get better bandwidth leveraging spiral transfers) among others.

Almost forgot, there are also thick, standard, thin and ultra thin drives in 2.5 and 3.5 inch form factors. What’s the difference? The number of platters and read write heads. Look at the following image showing various thickness 2.5 inch drives that have various numbers of platters to increase space capacity in a given density. Want to take a wild guess as to which one has the most space capacity in a given footprint? Also want to guess which type I use for removable disk based archives along with for onsite disk based backup targets (compliments my offsite cloud backups)?

types of disks
Thick, thin and ultra thin devices

Beyond physical and configuration items, then there are logical configuration including the type of workload, large or small IOPS, random, sequential, reads, writes or mixed (various random, sequential, read, write, large and small IO). Other considerations include file system or raw device, number of workers or concurrent IO threads, size of the target storage space area to decide impact of any locality of reference or buffering. Some other items include how long the test or workload simulation ran for, was the device new or worn in before use among other items.

Tools and the performance toolbox

Then there are the various tools for generating IO’s or workloads along with recording metrics such as reads, writes, response time and other information. Some examples (mix of free or for fee) include Bonnie, Iometer, Iorate, IOzone, Vdbench, TPC, SPC, Microsoft ESRP, SPEC and netmist, Swifttest, Vmark, DVDstore and PCmark 7 among many others. Some are focused just on the storage system and IO path while others are application specific thus exercising servers, storage and IO paths.

performance tools
Server, storage and IO performance toolbox

Having used Iometer since the late 90s, it has its place and is popular given its ease of use. Iometer is also long in the tooth and has its limits including not much if any new development, never the less, I have it in the toolbox. I also have Futremark PCmark 7 (full version) which turns out has some interesting abilities to do more than exercise an entire Windows PC. For example PCmark can use a secondary drive for doing IO to.

PCmark can be handy for spinning up with VMware (or other tools) lots of virtual Windows systems pointing to a NAS or other shared storage device doing real world type activity. Something that could be handy for testing or stressing virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) along with other storage systems, servers and solutions. I also have Vdbench among others tools in the toolbox including Iorate which was used to drive the workloads shown below.

What I look for in a tool are how extensible are the scripting capabilities to define various workloads along with capabilities of the test engine. A nice GUI is handy which makes Iometer popular and yes there are script capabilities with Iometer. That is also where Iometer is long in the tooth compared to some of the newer generation of tools that have more emphasis on extensibility vs. ease of use interfaces. This also assumes knowing what workloads to generate vs. simply kicking off some IOPs using default settings to see what happens.

Another handy tool is for recording what’s going on with a running system including IO’s, reads, writes, bandwidth or transfers, random and sequential among other things. This is where when needed I turn to something like HiMon from HyperIO, if you have not tried it, get in touch with Tom West over at HyperIO and tell him StorageIO sent you to get a demo or trial. HiMon is what I used for doing start, stop and boot among other testing being able to see IO’s at the Windows file system level (or below) including very early in the boot or shutdown phase.

Here is a link to some other things I did awhile back with HiMon to profile some Windows and VDI activity test profiling.

What’s the best tool or benchmark or workload generator?

The one that meets your needs, usually your applications or something as close as possible to it.

disk iops
Various 2.5 and 3.5 inch HDD, HHDD, SSD with different performance

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

That depends, however continue reading part II of this series to see some results for various types of drives and workloads.

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.

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