Cloud Conversations AWS Azure Service Maps via Microsoft

Cloud Conversations AWS Azure Service Maps via Microsoft

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Updated 1/21/2018

Microsoft has created an Amazon Web Service AWS Azure Service Map. The AWS Azure Service Map is a list created by Microsoft looks at corresponding services of both cloud providers.

Azure AWS service map via Microsoft.com
Image via Azure.Microsoft.com

Note that this is an evolving work in progress from Microsoft and use it as a tool to help position the different services from Azure and AWS.

Also note that not all features or services may not be available in different regions, visit Azure and AWS sites to see current availability.

As with any comparison they are often dated the day they are posted hence this is a work in progress. If you are looking for another Microsoft created why Azure vs. AWS then check out this here. If you are looking for an AWS vs. Azure, do a simple Google (or Bing) search and watch all the various items appear, some sponsored, some not so sponsored among others.

Whats In the Service Map

The following AWS and Azure services are mapped:

  • Marketplace (e.g. where you select service offerings)
  • Compute (Virtual Machines instances, Containers, Virtual Private Servers, Serverless Microservices and Management)
  • Storage (Primary, Secondary, Archive, Premium SSD and HDD, Block, File, Object/Blobs, Tables, Queues, Import/Export, Bulk transfer, Backup, Data Protection, Disaster Recovery, Gateways)
  • Network & Content Delivery (Virtual networking, virtual private networks and virtual private cloud, domain name services (DNS), content delivery network (CDN), load balancing, direct connect, edge, alerts)
  • Database (Relational, SQL and NoSQL document and key value, caching, database migration)
  • Analytics and Big Data (data warehouse, data lake, data processing, real-time and batch, data orchestration, data platforms, analytics)
  • Intelligence and IoT (IoT hub and gateways, speech recognition, visualization, search, machine learning, AI)
  • Management and Monitoring (management, monitoring, advisor, DevOps)
  • Mobile Services (management, monitoring, administration)
  • Security, Identity and Access (Security, directory services, compliance, authorization, authentication, encryption, firewall
  • Developer Tools (workflow, messaging, email, API management, media trans coding, development tools, testing, DevOps)
  • Enterprise Integration (application integration, content management)

Down load a PDF version of the service map from Microsoft here.

Where To Learn More

Learn more about related technology, trends, tools, techniques, and tips with 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 one hand this can and will likely be used as a comparison however use caution as both Azure and AWS services are rapidly evolving, adding new features, extending others. Likewise the service regions and site of data centers also continue to evolve thus use the above as a general guide or tool to help map what service offerings are similar between AWS and Azure.

By the way, if you have not heard, its Blogtober, check out some of the other blogs and posts occurring during October here.

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.

August 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter



Server StorageIO August 2017 Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 17, Issue VII (Pre VMworld 2017)

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

Its end of summer season here in north america which means wrapping up holidays, vacations, back to school shopping (and going to school), as well as the start of the fall IT technology conference season. VMworld 2017 USA is this week in Las Vegas and there will be several announcements coming out of that event. Given all of the activity so far this month, I’m going to cover the VMworld and related topics in a special early September issue of this newsletter.

Speaking of VMworld 2017, if you are going to be there in Las Vegas, stop by the book store located in the community village area on Tuesday at 1PM I will be doing a book signing, meet and greet, stop by and say hello.

Thanks to all who participated in the recent thevPad top 100 vBloggers event, I am honored to have StorageIOblog listed in the top 100 vBlogs. Also congratulations to new and returning fellow Microsoft MVPs and VMware vExperts. There is a lot going on in the industry, lets get to it in this Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter.

In This Issue

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter (pre VMworld edition).

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

Acronis announced True Image 2018 for home based data protection (backup), while Crashplan aka code42 announced they were getting out of the consumer, small office home office (SOHO) backup and data protection space to focus on the enterprise.

Cisco bought software defined storage converged infrastructure software vendor Springpath for about $320M USD. Cisco and Swiftstack (object storage software) also announced interoperability news with the UCS S32600 storage server platform.

GPU vendor NVIDIA announced Quadro Virtual Data Center workstation technology.

Meanwhile ioFABRIC announced their new Vicinity 3.0 software defined management solution.

Microsemi (remember PMC Sierra) announced release of its Flashtec PCIe controllers to help speed adoption deployment of SSDs including NVMe based.

Microsoft bought Cycle Computing to enhance Azure services, while also making Azure Blob storage tiering available as part of an ongoing public preview. For those not aware, Azure Blob is similar to what other services call objects. Get in on the public preview here. For those who live in a hybrid world where your environment and experience include both Windows and Linux, check out Windows Services for Linux here. With this service which can install onto an Windows 10 system along side Win32 (e.g. it co-exists, its not a virtual machine), you can choose from the Windows Store which Linux distro you want (e.g. Centos, Ubuntu, etc).

Need to learn, refresh or simply gain a better understanding of Microsoft PowerShell for software defined management of Windows, Azure and other environments? Check out this great post from Microsoft Blogs.

For those who work in a Windows or Azure environment, here are some useful icons for Powerpoint, Visio, PNG and SVG from Microsoft. With Microsoft Ignite coming up in September, watch for some interesting update enhancements to Windows Server from a server storage I/O perspective.

NextPlatform.com has an interesting article on Exascale Timeline for Storage and I/O systems worth a read. Panzura global name space and scale out software defined storage management software announced mobile client file sharing. After dropping their own cloud business, Verizon is now a virtual network services partner with Amazon.

Over at all flash array (AFA) SSD vendor Pure, revenues are growing closer to an annual $1B USD rate despite loss per share, Pure also announced a change in leadership with current CEO Scott Dietzen stepping aside for Charles Giancarlo to take the lead spot.

VMware has been talking about the continued increase in customer adoption and deployment of VSAN now they are showing they eat their own dog food. Check out this post here from VMware that shows how many and what size VSAN clusters they are using for various internal operations. Also on the VMware storage front, learn more about enhancements for large and small file allocation blocks with vSphere VMFS6.

With all of the pre and post VMworld related announcements, remember to check out the tools available over at the VMware flings site including vSphere HTML5 Web Client, HCIBench, vRealize Operations Export, VisualEsxtop, ESXi Embedded Host Client, VMware OS Optimization Tool and many others. Watch for VMworld coverage in the September newsletter along with posts at www.storageioblog.com

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

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Who Will Rule the Storage World?
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Google Cloud Platform Gaining Data Storage Momentum
Via InfoGoto: Comments on Singapore High Rise Data Centers
Via InfoGoto: Comments on New Tape Storage Capacity

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

Server StorageIOblog Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

In Case You Missed It #ICYMI

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Tips and Articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via NetworkWorld: Do you have an IT trade craft skills gap?

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

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

Sep. 21, 2017 – MSP CMG – Minneapolis MN
Sep. 20, 2017 – Redmond Data Protection and Backup – Webinar
Sep. 14, 2017 – Fujifilm IT Executive Summit – Seattle WA
Sep. 12, 2017 – SNIA Software Developers Conference (SDC) – Santa Clara CA
Sep. 7, 2017 – WiPro – Planning Your Software Defined Journey – New York City
August 29, 2017 – VMworld – Las Vegas

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

Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

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

fundamental Data Infrastructure resource components
Fundamental Data Infrastructure resources

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

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

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

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

Focus on Data Storage Present and Future Predictions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Future Data Storage World All Cloud?

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

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

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

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

What About Other Vendors, Solutions or Services?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

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

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) Resources Are You Ready?

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends
Updated 6/29/17

What Is GDPR

If your initial response is that you are not in Europe and do not need to be concerned about GDPR you might want to step back and review that thought. While it is possible that some organizations may not be affected by GDPR in Europe directly, there might be indirect considerations. For example, GDPR, while focused on Europe, has ties to other initiatives in place or being planned for elsewhere in the world. Likewise unlike earlier regulatory compliance that tended to focus on specific industries such as healthcare (HIPPA and HITECH) or financial (SARBOX, Dodd/Frank among others), these new regulations can be more far-reaching.

Where To Learn More

Acronis GDPR Resources

  • Acronis Outlines GDPR position

Quest GDPR Resources

Microsoft and Azure Cloud GDPR Resources

Do you have or know of relevant GDPR information and resources? Feel free to add them via comments or send us an email, however please watch the spam and sales pitches as they will be moderated.

What This All Means

Now is the time to start planning, preparing for GDPR if you have not done so and need to, as well as becoming more generally aware of it and other initiatives. One of the key takeaways is that while the word compliance is involved, there is much more to GDPR than just compliance as we have seen in the part. With GDPR and other initiatives data protection becomes the focus including privacy, protect, preserve, secure, serve as well as manage, have insight, awareness along with associated reporting.

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

Dell EMC World 2017 Day One news announcement summary

server storage I/O trends

Dell EMC World 2017 Day One news announcement summary

This is the first day of the first combined Dell EMC World 2017 being held in Las Vegas Nevada. Last year’s event in Las Vegas was the end of the EMC World, while this being the first of the combined Dell EMC World events that succeeded its predecessors.

What this means is an expanded focus because of the new Dell EMC that has added servers among other items to the event focus. Granted, EMC had been doing servers via its VCE and converged divisions, however with the Dell EMC integration completed as of last fall, the Dell Server group is now part of the Dell EMC organization.

The central theme of this Dell EMC world is REALIZE with a focus on four pillars:

  • Digital Transformation (Pivotal focus) of applications
  • IT Transformation (Dell EMC, Virtustream, VMware) data center modernization
  • Workforce transformation (Dell Client Solutions) devices from mobile to IoT
  • Information Security (RSA and Secureworks)

software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

What Did Dell EMC Announce Today

Note that while there are focus areas of the different Dell Technologies business units aligned to the pillars, there is also leveraging across those areas and groups. For example, VMware NSX spans into security, and  PowerEdge servers span into other pillars as a core data infrastructure building block.

What Dell EMC and Dell Technologies announced today.

  • Wave of Innovations to help customers realize digital transformation
  • New 14th generation PowerEdge Servers that are core building blocks for data infrastructures
  • Flexible consumption models (financing and more) from desktop to data center
  • Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Converged (CI) and Cloud like systems
  • New All-Flash (ADA) SSD Storage Systems (VMAX, XtremIO X2, Unity, SC, Isilon)
  • Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) and Cloud Protection solutions
  • Using Gen14 servers several Software Defined Storage (SDS) enhancements
  • Open Networking and software-defined networks (SDN) with 25G
  • Last week Dell EMC announced Microsoft Azure Stack hybrid cloud solutions

New 14th generation PowerEdge Servers that are core building blocks for data infrastructures

Dell EMC has announced the 14th generation of Intel-powered Dell EMC PowerEdge server portfolio systems. These includes servers that get defined with software for software-defined data centers (SDDC), software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI) for the cloud, virtual, the container as well as storage among other applications. Target application workloads and environments range from high-performance compute (HPC), and high-productivity (or profitability) compute (the other HPC), super compute (SC), little data and big data analytics, legacy and emerging business applications as well as cloud and beyond. Enhancements besides new Intel processor technology includes enhanced iDRAC, OpenManage, REST interface, QuickSync, Secure Boot among other management, automation, security, performance, and capacity updates.

Other Dell EMC enhancements with Gen14 include support for various NVDIMM to enable persistent memory also known as storage class memories such as 3D Xpoint among others. Note at this time, Dell EMC is not saying much about speeds, feeds and other details, stay tuned for more information on these in the weeks and months to come.

Dell EMC has also been leaders with deploying NVMe from PCIe flash cards to 8639 U.2 devices such as 2.5” drives. Thus it makes sense to see continued adoption and deployment of those devices along with SAS, SATA support. Note that Broadcom (formerly known as Avago) recently announced the release of their PCIe SAS, SATA and NVMe based adapters.

The reason this is worth mentioning is that in the past Dell has OEM sourced Avago (formerly known as LSI) based adapters. Given Dell EMC use of NVMe drives, it only makes sense to put two and two together.

Let’s wait a few months to see what the speeds, feeds, and specifications are to put the rest of the puzzle together. Speaking of NVMe, also look for Dell EMC to also supporting PCIe AIC and U.2 (8639) NVMe devices, also leverage M.2 Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) aka Gum sticks as boot devices.

While these are all Intel focused, I would expect Dell EMC not to sit back, instead, watch for what they do with other processors and servers including ARMs among others.

Increased support for more GPUs to support VDI and other graphic intensive workloads such as video rendering, imaging among others. Part of enhanced GPU support is improvements (multi-vector cooling) to power and cooling including sensing the type of PCIe card, and then adjusting cooling fans and subsequent power draw accordingly. The benefit should be more proper cooling to reduce power to support more work and productivity.

Flexible consumption models (financing and more) from desktop to data center

Dell Technologies has announced several financing, procurement, and consumption models with cloud-like flexible options for different IT and data center, along with mobile device technologies. These range from licensing to deployment as a service, consumption and other options via Dell Financial Services (DFS).

Highlights include:

  • DFS Flex on Demand is available now in select countries globally.
  • DFS Cloud Flex for HCI is available now for Dell EMC VxRail and Dell EMC XC Series and has planned availability for Q3 2017 in Dell EMC VxRack Systems.
  • PC as a Service is available now in select countries globally.
  • Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions are available now in select countries globally.
  • DFS Flex on Demand is available now in select countries globally.
  • DFS Cloud Flex for HCI is available now for Dell EMC VxRail and Dell EMC XC Series and has planned VxRack systems in Q3 2017.
  • PC as a Service solution is available now in select countries globally.
  • Dell EMC VDI Complete Solutions are available now in select countries.
  • Dell Technologies transformation license agreement (TLA) is available now in select countries

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI), Converged (CI) and Cloud like systems

Enhancements to VxRail system, VxRACK Systems, and XC Series leveraging Del EMC Gen14 PowerEdge servers along with other improvements. Note that this also includes continued support for VMware, Microsoft as well as Nutanix software-defined solutions.

New All-Flash (ADA) SSD Storage Systems (VMAX, XtremIO X2, Unity, SC, Isilon)

Storage system enhancements include from high-end (VMAX and XtremIO) to mid-range (Unity and SC) along with scale-out NAS (Isilon)

Highlights of the announcements include:

  • New VMAX 950F all flash array (AFA)
  • New XtremIO X2 with enhanced software, more powerful hardware
  • New Unity AFA systems
  • New SC5020 midrange hybrid storage
  • New generation of Isilon storage with improved performance, capacity, density

Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) and Cloud Protection solutions

Data protection enhancement highlights include:

  • New Turnkey Integrated Data Protection Appliance (IDPA) with four models (DP5300, DP5800, DP8300, and DP8800) starting at 34 TB usable scaling up to 1PB usable. Data services including encryption, data footprint reduction such as dedupe, remote monitoring, Maintenance service dispatch, along with application integration. Application integration includes MongoDB, Hadoop, MySQL.

  • Enhanced cloud capabilities powered by Data Domain virtual edition (DD VE 3.1) along with data protection suite enable data to be protected too, and restored from Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3) as well as Microsoft Azure.

Open Networking and software-defined networks (SDN) with 25G

Dell EMC Open Networking highlights include:

  • Dell EMCs first 25GbE open networking top of rack (TOR) switch including S5100-ON series (With OS10 enterprise edition software) complimenting new PowerEdge Gen14 servers with native 25GbE support. Switches support 100GbE uplinks fabric connectivity for east-west (management) network traffic. Also announced is the S4100-ON series and N1100-ON series that are in addition to recently announce N3100-ON and N2100-ON switches.

  • Dell EMCs first optimized Open Networking platform for unified storage network switching including support for 16Gb/32GB Fibre Channel

  • New Network Function Virtualization (NFV) and IoT advisory consulting services

Note that Dell EMC is announcing the availability of these networking solutions in Dell Technologies 2018 fiscal year which occurs before the traditional calendar year.

Using Gen14 servers, several Software Defined Storage (SDS) enhancements

Dell EMC announced enhancements to their Software Defined Storage (SDS) portfolio that leveraging the PowerEdge 14th generation server portfolio. These improvements include ScaleIO, Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS), IsilonSD Edge and Preview of Project Nautilus.

Where to learn more

What this all means

This is a summary of what has been announced so far on the first morning of the first day of the first new Dell EMC world. Needless to say, there is more detail to look at for the above announcements from speeds, feeds, functionality and related topics that will get addressed in subsequent posts. Overall this is a good set of announcements expanding capabilities of the combined Dell EMC while enhancing existing systems as well as well as solutions.

Ok, nuff said (for now…)

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review

server storage I/O trends

Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review

Perhaps you are aware or use Microsoft Azure, how about Azure Stack?

This is part one of a two-part series looking at Microsoft Azure Stack providing an overview, preview and review. Read part two here that looks at my experiences installing Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3).

For those who are not aware, Azure Stack is a private on-premises extension of the Azure public cloud environment. Azure Stack now in technical preview three (e.g. TP3), or what you might also refer to as a beta (get the bits here).

In addition to being available via download as a preview, Microsoft is also working with vendors such as Cisco, Dell EMC, HPE, Lenovo and others who have announced Azure Stack support. Vendors such as Dell EMC have also made proof of concept kits available that you can buy including server with storage and software. Microsoft has also indicated that once launched for production versions scaling from a few to many nodes, that a single node proof of concept or development system will also remain available.

software defined data infrastructure SDDI and SDDC
Software-Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) aka Software-defined Data Centers, Cloud, Virtual and Legacy

Besides being an on-premises, private cloud variant, Azure Stack is also hybrid capable being able to work with public cloud Azure. In addition to working with public cloud Azure, Azure Stack services and in particular workloads can also work with traditional Microsoft, Linux and others. You can use pre built solutions from the Azure marketplace, in addition to developing your applications using Azure services and DevOps tools. Azure Stack enables hybrid deployment into public or private cloud to balance flexibility, control and your needs.

Azure Stack Overview

Microsoft Azure Stack is an on premise (e.g. in your own data center) private (or hybrid when connected to Azure) cloud platform. Currently Azure Stack is in Technical Preview 3 (e.g. TP3) and available as a proof of concept (POC) download from Microsoft. You can use Azure Stack TP3 as a POC for learning, demonstrating and trying features among other activities. Here is link to a Microsoft Video providing an overview of Azure Stack, and here is a good summary of roadmap, licensing and related items.

In summary, Microsoft Azure Stack is:

  • A onsite, on premise, in your data center extension of Microsoft Azure public cloud
  • Enabling private and hybrid cloud with strong integration along with common experiences with Azure
  • Adopt, deploy, leverage cloud on your terms and timeline choosing what works best for you
  • Common processes, tools, interfaces, management and user experiences
  • Leverage speed of deployment and configuration with a purpose-built integrate solution
  • Support existing and cloud native Windows, Linux, Container and other services
  • Available as a public preview via software download, as well as vendors offering solutions

What is Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3)

This version of Azure Stack is a single node running on a lone physical machine (PM) aka bare metal (BM). However can also be installed into a virtual machine (VM) using nesting. For example I have Azure Stack TP3 running nested on a VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 systems with a Windows Server 2016 VM as its base operating system.

Microsoft Azure Stack architecture
Click here or on the above image to view list of VMs and other services (Image via Microsoft.com)

The TP3 POC Azure Stack is not intended for production environments, only for testing, evaluation, learning and demonstrations as part of its terms of use. This version of Azure Stack is associated with a single node identity such as Azure Active Directory (AAD) integrated with Azure, or Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) for standalone modes. Note that since this is a single server deployment, it is not intended for performance, rather, for evaluating functionality, features, APIs and other activities. Learn more about Azure Stack TP3 details here (or click on image) including names of various virtual machines (VMs) as well as their roles.

Where to learn more

The following provide more information and insight about Azure, Azure Stack, Microsoft and Windows among related topics.

  • Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review
  • Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview Review Part II
  • Azure Stack Technical Preview (get the bits aka software download here)
  • Azure Stack deployment prerequisites (Microsoft)
  • Microsoft Azure Stack troubleshooting (Microsoft Docs)
  • Azure Stack TP3 refresh tips (Azure Stack)
  • Here is a good post with a tip about not applying certain Windows updates to Azure stack TP3 installs.
  • Configure Azure stack TP3 to be available on your own network (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 Marketplace syndication (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 deployment experiences (Azure Stack)
  • Frequently asked questions for Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Deploy Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Connect to Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Azure Active Directory (AAD) and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
  • Azure Stack TP2 deployment experiences by Niklas Akerlund (@vNiklas) useful for tips for TP3
  • Deployment Checker for Azure Stack Technical Preview (Microsoft Technet)
  • Azure stack and other tools (Github)
  • How to enable nested virtualization on Hyper-V Windows Server 2016
  • Dell EMC announce Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack Data Sheet (Dell EMC PDF)
  • Dell EMC Cloud Chats (Dell EMC Blog)
  • Microsoft Azure stack forum
  • Dell EMC Microsoft Azure Stack solution
  • Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Overview Review of Microsoft ReFS (Reliable File System) and resource links
  • Via WServerNews.com Cloud (Microsoft Azure) storage considerations
  • Via CloudComputingAdmin.com Cloud Storage Decision Making: Using Microsoft Azure for cloud storage
  • www.thenvmeplace.com, www.thessdplace.com, www.objectstoragecenter.com and www.storageio.com/converge
  • What this all means

    A common question is if there is demand for private and hybrid cloud, in fact, some industry expert pundits have even said private, or hybrid are dead which is interesting, how can something be dead if it is just getting started. Likewise, it is early to tell if Azure Stack will gain traction with various organizations, some of whom may have tried or struggled with OpenStack among others.

    Given a large number of Microsoft Windows-based servers on VMware, OpenStack, Public cloud services as well as other platforms, along with continued growing popularity of Azure, having a solution such as Azure Stack provides an attractive option for many environments. That leads to the question of if Azure Stack is essentially a replacement for Windows Servers or Hyper-V and if only for Windows guest operating systems. At this point indeed, Windows would be an attractive and comfortable option, however, given a large number of Linux-based guests running on Hyper-V as well as Azure Public, those are also primary candidates as are containers and other services.

    Continue reading more in part two of this two-part series here including installing Microsoft Azure Stack TP3.

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview Review Part II

    server storage I/O trends

    Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview (Part II) Install Review

    This is part two of a two-part series looking at Microsoft Azure Stack with a focus on my experiences installing Microsoft Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) including into a nested VMware vSphere ESXi environment. Read part one here that provides a general overview of Azure Stack.

    Azure Stack Review and Install

    Being familiar with Microsoft Azure public cloud having used it for a few years now, I wanted to gain some closer insight, experience, expand my trade craft on Azure Stack by installing TP3. This is similar to what I have done in the past with OpenStack, Hadoop, Ceph, VMware, Hyper-V and many others, some of which I need to get around to writing about sometime. As a refresher from part one of this series, the following is an image via Microsoft showing the Azure Stack TP3 architecture, click here or on the image to learn more including the names and functions of the various virtual machines (VMs) that make up Azure Stack.

    Microsoft Azure Stack architecture
    Click here or on the above image to view list of VMs and other services (Image via Microsoft.com)

    Whats Involved Installing Azure Stack TP3?

    The basic steps are as follows:

    • Read this Azure Stack blog post (Azure Stack)
    • Download the bits (e.g. the Azure Stack software) from here, where you access the Azure Stack Downloader tool.
    • Planning your deployment making decisions on Active Directory and other items.
    • Prepare the target server (physical machine aka PM, or virtual machine VM) that will be the Azure Stack destination.
    • Copy Azure Stack software and installer to target server and run pre-install scripts.
    • Modify PowerShell script file if using a VM instead of a PM
    • Run the Azure Stack CloudBuilder setup, configure unattend.xml if needed or answer prompts.
    • Server reboots, select Azure Stack from two boot options.
    • Prepare your Azure Stack base system (time, network NICs in static or DHCP, if running on VMware install VMtools)
    • Determine if you will be running with Azure Active Directory (AAD) or standalone Active Directory Federated Services (ADFS).
    • Update any applicable installation scripts (see notes that follow)
    • Deploy the script, then extended Azure Stack TP3 PoC as needed

    Note that this is a large download of about 16GB (23GB with optional WIndows Server 2016 demo ISO).

    Use the AzureStackDownloader tool to download the bits (about 16GB or 23GB with optional Windows Server 2016 base image) which will either be in several separate files which you stitch back together with the MicrosoftAzureStackPOC tool, or as a large VHDX file and smaller 6.8GB ISO (Windows Server 2016). Prepare your target server system for installation once you have all the software pieces downloaded (or do the preparations while waiting for download).

    Once you have the software downloaded, if it is a series of eight .bin files (7 about 2GB, 1 around 1.5GB), good idea to verify their checksums, then stitch them together on your target system, or on a staging storage device or file share. Note that for the actual deployment first phase, the large resulting cloudbuilder.vhdx file will need to reside in the C:\ root location of the server where you are installing Azure Stack.

    server storageio nested azure stack tp3 vmware

    Azure Stack deployment prerequisites (Microsoft) include:

    • At least 12 cores (or more), dual socket processor if possible
    • As much DRAM as possible (I used 100GB)
    • Put the operating system disk on flash SSD (SAS, SATA, NVMe) if possible, allocate at least 200GB (more is better)
    • Four x 140GB or larger (I went with 250GB) drives (HDD or SSD) for data deployment drives
    • A single NIC or adapter (I put mine into static instead of DHCP mode)
    • Verify your physical or virtual server BIOS has VT enabled

    The above image helps to set the story of what is being done. On the left is for bare metal (BM) or physical machine (PM) install of Azure Stack TP3, on the right, a nested VMware (vSphere ESXi 6.5) with virtual machine (VM) 11 approach. Note that you could also do a Hyper-V nested among other approaches. Shown in the image above common to both a BM or VM is a staging area (could be space on your system drive) where Azure Stack download occurs. If you use a separate staging area, then simply copy the individual .bin files and stitch together into the larger .VHDX, or, copy the larger .VHDX, which is better is up to your preferences.

    Note that if you use the nested approach, there are a couple of configuration (PowerShell) scripts that need to be updated. These changes are to trick the installer into thinking that it is on a PM when it checks to see if on physical or virtual environments.

    Also note that if using nested, make sure you have your VMware vSphere ESXi host along with specific VM properly configured (e.g. that virtualization and other features are presented to the VM). With vSphere ESXi 6.5 virtual machine type 11 nesting is night and day easier vs. earlier generations.

    Something else to explain here is that you will initially start the Azure Stack install preparation using a standard Windows Server (I used a 2016 version) where the .VHDX is copied into its C:\ root. From there you will execute some PowerShell scripts to setup some configuration files, one of which needs to be modified for nesting.

    Once those prep steps are done, there is a Cloudbuilder deploy script that gets run that can be done with an unattend.xml file or manual input. This step will cause a dual-boot option to be added to your server where you can select Azure Stack or your base prep Windows Server instance, followed by reboot.

    After the reboot occurs and you choose to boot into Azure Stack, this is the server instance that will actually run the deployment script, as well as build and launch all the VMs for the Azure Stack TP3 PoC. This is where I recommend having a rough sketch like above to annotate layers as you go to remember what layer working at. Don’t worry, it becomes much easier once all is said and done.

    Speaking of preparing your server, refer to Microsoft specs, however in general give the server as much RAM and cores as possible. Also if possible place the system disk on a flash SSD (SAS, SATA, NVMe) and make sure that it has at least 200GB, however 250 or even 300GB is better (just in case you need more space).

    Additional configuration tips include allocating four data disks for Azure, if possible make these SSDs as well as, however more important IMHO to have at least the system on fast flash SSD. Another tip is to enable only one network card or NIC and put it into static vs. DHCP address mode to make things easier later.

    Tip: If running nested, vSphere 6.5 worked the smoothest as had various issues or inconsistencies with earlier VMware versions, even with VMs that ran nested just fine.

    Tip: Why run nested? Simple, I wanted to be able to use using VMware tools, do snapshots to go back in time, plus share the server with some other activities until ready to give Azure Stack TP3 its own PM.

    Tip: Do not connect the POC machine to the following subnets (192.168.200.0/24, 192.168.100.0/27, 192.168.101.0/26, 192.168.102.0/24, 192.168.103.0/25, 192.168.104.0/25) as Azure Stack TP3 uses those.

    storageio azure stack tp3 vmware configuration

    Since I decided to use a nested VM deploying using VMware, there were a few extra steps needed that I have included as tips and notes. Following is view via vSphere client of the ESXi host and VM configuration.

    The following image combines a couple of different things including:

    A: Showing the contents of C:\Azurestack_Supportfiles directory

    B: Modifying the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 file if deploying on virtual machine (See tips and notes)

    C: Showing contents of staging area including individual .bin files along with large CloudBuilder.vhdx

    D: Running the PowerShell script commands to prepare the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 and related items

    prepariing azure stack tp3 cloudbuilder for nested vmware deployment

    From PowerShell (administrator):

    # Variables
    $Uri = 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/Azure stack/master/Deployment/'
    $LocalPath = 'c:\AzureStack_SupportFiles'

    # Create folder
    New-Item $LocalPath -type directory

    # Download files
    ( 'BootMenuNoKVM.ps1', 'PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1', 'Unattend.xml', 'unattend_NoKVM.xml') | foreach { Invoke-WebRequest ($uri + $_) -OutFile ($LocalPath + '\' + $_) }

    After you do the above, decide if you will be using an Unattend.xml or manual entry of items for building the Azure Stack deployment server (e.g. a Windows Server). Note that the above PowerShell script created the C:\azurestack_supportfiles folder and downloads the script files for building the cloud image using the previously downloaded Azure Stack CloudBuilder.vhdx (which should be in C:\).

    Note and tip is that if you are doing a VMware or virtual machine based deployment of TP3 PoC, you will need to change C:\PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 in the Azure Stack support files folder. Here is a good resource on what gets changed via Github that shows an edit on or about line 87 of PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1. If you run the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 script on a virtual machine you will get an error message, the fix is relatively easy (after I found this post).

    Look in PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 for something like the following around line 87:

    if ((get-disk | where {$_.isboot -eq $true}).Model -match 'Virtual Disk')       {      Write-Host "The server is currently already booted from a virtual hard disk, to boot the server from the CloudBuilder.vhdx you will need to run this script on an Operating System that is installed on the physical disk of this server."      Exit      }
    

    You can either remove the "exit" command, or, change the test for "Virtual Disk" to something like "X", for fun I did both (and it worked).

    Note that you only have to make the above and another change in a later step if you are deploying Azure Stack TP3 as a virtual machine.

    Once you are ready, go ahead and launch the PrepareBootFromVHD.ps1 script which will set the BCDBoot entry (more info here).

    azure stack tp3 cloudbuilder nested vmware deployment

    You will see a reboot and install, this is installing what will be called the physical instance. Note that this is really being installed on the VM system drive as a secondary boot option (e.g. azure stack).

    azure stack tp3 dual boot option

    After the reboot, login to the new Azure Stack base system and complete any configuration including adding VMware Tools if using VMware nested. Some other things to do include make sure you have your single network adapter set to static (makes things easier), and any other updates or customizations. Before you run the next steps, you need to decide if going to use Azure Active Directory (AAD) or local ADFS.

    Note that if you are not running on a virtual machine, simply open a PowerShell (administrator) session, and run the deploy script. Refer to here for more guidance on the various options available including discussion on using AAD or ADFS.

    Note if you run the deployment script on a virtual machine, you will get an error which is addressed in the next section, otherwise, sit back and watch the progress..

    CloudBuilder Deployment Time

    Once you have your Azure Stack deployment system and environment ready, including a snapshot if on virtual machine, launch the PowerShell deployment script. Note that you will need to have decided if deploying with Azure Active Directory (AAD) or Azure Directory Federated Services (ADFS) for standalone aka submarine mode. There are also other options you can select as part of the deployment discussed in the Azure Stack tips here (a must read) and here. I chose to do a submarine mode (e.g. not connected to Public Azure and AAD) deployment.

    From PowerShell (administrator):

    cd C:\CloudDeployment:\Setup
    $adminpass = ConvertTo-SecureString "youradminpass" -AsPlainText -Force
    .\InstallAzureStackPOC.ps1 -AdminPassword $adminpass -UseADFS

    Deploying on VMware Virtual Machines Tips

    Here is a good tip via Gareth Jones (@garethjones294) that I found useful for updating one of the deployment script files (BareMetal_Tests.ps1 located in C:\CloudDeployment\Roles\PhysicalMachines\Tests folder) so that it would skip the bare metal (PM) vs. VM tests. Another good resource, even though it is for TP2 and early versions of VMware is TP2 deployment experiences by Niklas Akerlund (@vNiklas).

    Note that this is a bit of a chick and egg scenario unless you are proficient at digging into script files since the BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file does not get unpacked until you run the CloudBuilder deployment script. If you run the script and get an error, then make the changes below, and rerun the script as noted. Once you make the modification to the BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file, keep a copy in a safe place for future use.

    Here are some more tips for deploying Azure Stack on VMware,

    Per the tip mentioned about via Gareth Jones (tip: read Gareths post vs. simply cut and paste the following which is more of a guide):

    Open BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file in PowerShell ISE and navigate to line 376 (or in that area)
    Change $false to $true which will stop the script failing when checking to see if the Azure Stack is running inside a VM.
    Next go to line 453.
    Change the last part of the line to read “Should Not BeLessThan 0”
    This will stop the script checking for the required amount of cores available.

    After you make the above correction as with any error (and fix) during Azure Stack TP3 PoC deployment, simply run the following.

    cd C:\CloudDeployment\Setup
    .\InstallAzureStackPOC.ps1 -rerun
    

    Refer to the extra links in the where to learn more section below that offer various tips, tricks and insight that I found useful, particular for deploying on VMware aka nested. Also in the links below are tips on general Azure Stack, TP2, TP3, adding services among other insight.

    starting azure stack tp3 deployment

    Tip: If you are deploying Azure Stack TP3 PoC on virtual machine, once you start the script above, copy the modified BareMetal_Tests.ps1 file

    Once the CloudBuilder deployment starts, sit back and wait, if you are using SSDs, it will take a while, if using HDDs, it will take a long while (up to hours), however check in on it now and then to see progress of if any errors. Note that some of the common errors will occur very early in the deployment such as the BareMetal_Tests.ps1 mentioned above.

    azure stack tp3 deployment finished

    Checking in periodically to see how the deployment progress is progressing, as well as what is occurring. If you have the time, watch some of the scripts as you can see some interesting things such as the software defined data center (SDDC) aka software-defined data infrastructure (SDDC) aka Azure Stack virtual environment created. This includes virtual machine creation and population, creating the software defined storage using storage spaces direct (S2D), virtual network and active directory along with domain controllers among others activity.

    azure stack tp3 deployment progress

    After Azure Stack Deployment Completes

    After you see the deployment completed, you can try accessing the management portal, however there may be some background processing still running. Here is a good tip post on connecting to Azure Stack from Microsoft using Remote Desktop (RDP) access. Use RDP from the Azure Stack deployment Windows Server and connect to a virtual machine named MAS-CON01, launch Server Manager and for Local Server disable Internet Explorer Enhanced Security (make sure you are on the right system, see the tip mentioned above). Disconnect from MAS-CON01 (refer to the Azure Stack architecture image above), then reconnect, and launch Internet Explorer with an URL of (note documentation side to use which did not work for me).

    Note the username for the Azure Stack system is AzureStack\AzureStackAdmin with a password of what you set for administrative during setup. If you get an error, verify the URLs, check your network connectivity, wait a few minutes as well as verify what server you are trying to connect from and too. Keep in mind that even if deploying on a PM or BM (e.g. non virtual server or VM), the Azure Stack deployment TP3 PoC creates a "virtual" software-defined environment with servers, storage (Azure Stack uses Storage Spaces Direct [S2D] and software defined network.

    accessing azure stack tp3 management portal dashboard

    Once able to connect to Azure Stack, you can add new services including virtual machine image instances such as Windows (use the Server 2016 ISO that is part of Azure Stack downloads), Linux or others. You can also go to these Microsoft resources for some first learning scenarios, using the management portals, configuring PowerShell and troubleshooting.

    Where to learn more

    The following provide more information and insight about Azure, Azure Stack, Microsoft and Windows among related topics.

  • Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) Overview Preview Review
  • Azure Stack TP3 Overview Preview Review Part II
  • Azure Stack Technical Preview (get the bits aka software download here)
  • Azure Stack deployment prerequisites (Microsoft)
  • Microsoft Azure Stack troubleshooting (Microsoft Docs)
  • Azure Stack TP3 refresh tips (Azure Stack)
  • Here is a good post with a tip about not applying certain Windows updates to AzureStack TP3 installs.
  • Configure Azure Stack TP3 to be available on your own network (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 Marketplace syndication (Azure Stack)
  • Azure Stack TP3 deployment experiences (Azure Stack)
  • Frequently asked questions for Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Azure Active Directory (AAD) and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS)
  • Deploy Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Connect to Azure Stack (Microsoft)
  • Azure Stack TP2 deployment experiences by Niklas Akerlund (@vNiklas) useful for tips for TP3
  • Deployment Checker for Azure Stack Technical Preview (Microsoft Technet)
  • Azure stack and other tools (Github)
  • How to enable nested virtualization on Hyper-V Windows Server 2016
  • Dell EMC announce Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack (Dell EMC)
  • Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack Data Sheet (Dell EMC PDF)
  • Dell EMC Cloud Chats (Dell EMC Blog)
  • Microsoft Azure stack forum
  • Dell EMC Microsoft Azure Stack solution
  • Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016
  • Overview Review of Microsoft ReFS (Reliable File System) and resource links
  • Via WServerNews.com Cloud (Microsoft Azure) storage considerations
  • Via CloudComputingAdmin.com Cloud Storage Decision Making: Using Microsoft Azure for cloud storage
  • www.thenvmeplace.com, www.thessdplace.com, www.objectstoragecenter.com and www.storageio.com/converge
  • What this all means

    A common question is if there is demand for private and hybrid cloud, in fact, some industry expert pundits have even said private, or hybrid are dead which is interesting, how can something be dead if it is just getting started. Likewise, it is early to tell if Azure Stack will gain traction with various organizations, some of whom may have tried or struggled with OpenStack among others.

    Given a large number of Microsoft Windows-based servers on VMware, OpenStack, Public cloud services as well as other platforms, along with continued growing popularity of Azure, having a solution such as Azure Stack provides an attractive option for many environments. That leads to the question of if Azure Stack is essentially a replacement for Windows Servers or Hyper-V and if only for Windows guest operating systems. At this point indeed, Windows would be an attractive and comfortable option, however, given a large number of Linux-based guests running on Hyper-V as well as Azure Public, those are also primary candidates as are containers and other services.

    software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

    Some will say that if OpenStack is struggling in many organizations and being free open source, how Microsoft can have success with Azure Stack. The answer could be that some organizations have struggled with OpenStack while others have not due to lack of commercial services and turnkey support. Having installed both OpenStack and Azure Stack (as well as VMware among others), Azure Stack is at least the TP3 PoC is easy to install, granted it is limited to one node, unlike the production versions. Likewise, there are easy to use appliance versions of OpenStack that are limited in scale, as well as more involved installs that unlock full functionality.

    OpenStack, Azure Stack, VMware and others have their places, alongside, or supporting containers along with other tools. In some cases, those technologies may exist in the same environment supporting different workloads, as well as accessing various public clouds, after all, Hybrid is the home run for many if not most legality IT environments.

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    VMware vSAN 6.6 hyper-converged (HCI) software defined data infrastructure

    server storage I/O trends

    VMware vSAN 6.6 hyper-converged (HCI) software defined data infrastructure

    In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the first of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    VMware vSAN 6.6
    Image via VMware

    For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

    Software-defined data infrastructure

    Excuse Me, What is vSAN and who is if for

    Some might find it odd having to explain what vSAN is, on the other hand, not everybody is dialed into the VMware world ecosystem, so let’s give them some help, for everybody else, and feel free to jump ahead.

    For those not familiar, VMware vSAN is an HCI software-defined storage solution that converges compute (hypervisors and server) with storage space capacity and I/O performance along with networking. Being HCI means that with vSAN as you scale compute, storage space capacity and I/O performance also increases in an aggregated fashion. Likewise, increase storage space capacity and server I/O performance you also get more compute capabilities (along with memory).

    For VMware-centric environments looking to go CI or HCI, vSAN offers compelling value proposition leveraging known VMware tools and staff skills (knowledge, experience, tradecraft). Another benefit of vSAN is the ability to select your hardware platform from different vendors, a trend that other CI/HCI vendors have started to offer as well.

    CI and HCI data infrastructure

    Keep in mind that fast applications need a fast server, I/O and storage, as well as server storage I/O needs CPU along with memory to generate I/O operations (IOPs) or move data. What this all means is that HCI solutions such as VMware vSAN combine or converge the server compute, hypervisors, storage file system, storage devices, I/O and networking along with other functionality into an easy to deploy (and management) turnkey solution.

    Learn more about CI and HCI along with who some other vendors are as well as considerations at www.storageio.com/converge. Also, visit VMware sites to find out more about vSphere ESXi hypervisors, vSAN, NSX (Software Defined Networking), vCenter, vRealize along with other tools for enabling SDDC and SDDI.

    Give Me the Quick Elevator Pitch Summary

    VMware has enhanced vSAN with version 6.6 (V6.6) enabling new functionality, supporting new hardware platforms along with partners, while reducing costs, improving scalability and resiliency for SDDC and SDDI environments. This includes from small medium business (SMB) to mid-market to small medium enterprise (SME) as well as workgroup, departmental along with Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO).

    Being a HCI solution, management functions of the server, storage, I/O, networking, hypervisor, hardware, and software are converged to improve management productivity. Also, vSAN integrated with VMware vSphere among other tools enable modern, robust data infrastructure that serves, protect, preserve, secure and stores data along with their associated applications.

    Where to Learn More

    The following are additional resources to learn more about vSAN and related technologies.

    What this all means

    Overall a good set of enhancements as vSAN continues its evolution looking back just a few years ago, to where it is today and will be in the future. If you have not looked at vSAN recently, take some time beyond reading this piece to learn some more.

    Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) located here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    VMware vSAN V6.6 Part II (just the speeds feeds features please)

    server storage I/O trends

    VMware vSAN v6.6 Part II (just the speeds feeds features please)

    In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the second of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    VMware vSAN 6.6
    Image via VMware

    For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

    Just the Speeds and Feeds Please

    For those who just want to see the list of what’s new with vSAN V6.6, here you go:

    • Native encryption for data-at-rest
    • Compliance certifications
    • Resilient management independent of vCenter
    • Degraded Disk Handling v2.0 (DDHv2)
    • Smart repairs and enhanced rebalancing
    • Intelligent rebuilds using partial repairs
    • Certified file service & data protection solutions
    • Stretched clusters with local failure protection
    • Site affinity for stretched clusters
    • 1-click witness change for Stretched Cluster
    • vSAN Management Pack for vRealize
    • Enhanced vSAN SDK and PowerCLI
    • Simple networking with Unicast
    • vSAN Cloud Analytics with real-time support notification and recommendations
    • vSAN ConfigAssist with 1-click hardware lifecycle management
    • Extended vSAN Health Services
    • vSAN Easy Install with 1-click fixes
    • Up to 50% greater IOPS for all-flash with optimized checksum and dedupe
    • Support for new next-gen workloads
    • vSAN for Photon in Photon Platform 1.1
    • Day 0 support for latest flash technologies
    • Expanded caching tier choice
    • Docker Volume Driver 1.1

    What’s New and Value Proposition of vSAN 6.6

    Let’s take a closer look beyond the bullet list of what’s new with vSAN 6.6, as well as perspectives of those features to address different needs. The VMware vSAN proposition is to evolve and enable modernizing data infrastructures with HCI powered by vSphere along with vSAN.

    Three main themes or characteristics (and benefits) of vSAN 6.6 include addressing (or enabling):

    • Reducing risk while scaling
    • Reducing cost and complexity
    • Scaling for today and tomorrow

    VMware vSAN 6.6 summary
    Image via VMware

    Reducing risk while scaling

    Reducing (or removing) risk while evolving your data infrastructure with HCI including flexibility of choosing among five support hardware vendors along with native security. This includes native security, availability and resiliency enhancements (including intelligent rebuilds) without sacrificing storage efficiency (capacity) or effectiveness (performance productivity), management and choice.

    VMware vSAN DaRE
    Image via VMware

    Dat level Data at Rest Encryption (DaRE) of all vSAN dat objects that are enabled at a cluster level. The new functionality supports hybrid along with all flash SSD as well as stretched clusters. The VMware vSAN DaRE implementation is an alternative to using self-encrypting drives (SEDs) reducing cost, complexity and management activity. All vSAN features including data footprint reduction (DFR) features such as compression and deduplication are supported. For security, vSAN DaRE integrations with compliance key management technologies including those from SafeNet, Hytrust, Thales and Vormetric among others.

    VMware vSAN management
    Image via VMware

    ESXi HTML 5 based host client, along with CLI via ESXCLI for administering vSAN clusters as an alternative in case your vCenter server(s) are offline. Management capabilities include monitoring of critical health and status details along with configuration changes.

    VMware vSAN health management
    Image via VMware

    Health monitoring enhancements include handling of degraded vSAN devices with intelligence proactively detecting impending device failures. As part of the functionality, if a replica of the failing (or possible soon to fail) device exists, vSAN can take action to maintain data availability.

    Where to Learn More

    The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

    What this all means

    With each new release, vSAN is increasing its feature, functionality, resiliency and extensiveness associated with traditional storage and non-CI or HCI solutions. Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in Part I here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    VMware vSAN V6.6 Part III (reducing costs complexity)

    server storage I/O trends

    VMware vSAN V6.6 Part III (Reducing costs complexity)

    In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the third of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    VMware vSAN 6.6
    Image via VMware

    For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

    Reducing cost and complexity

    Reducing your total cost of ownership (TCO) including lower capital expenditures (CapEx) and operating (OPEX). VMware is claiming CapEx and OpEx reduced TCO of 50%. Keep in mind that solutions such as vSAN also can help drive return on investment (ROI) as well as return on innovation (the other ROI) via improved productivity, effectiveness, as well as efficiencies (savings). Another aspect of addressing TCO and ROI includes flexibility leveraging stretched clusters to address HA, BR, BC and DR Availability needs cost effectively. These enhancements include efficiency (and effectiveness e.g. productivity) at scale, proactive cloud analytics, and intelligent operations.

    VMware vSAN stretch cluster
    Image via VMware

    Low cost (or cost-effective) Local, Remote Resiliency and Data Protection with Stretched Clusters across sites. Upon a site failure, vSAN maintains availability is leveraging surviving site redundancy. For performance and productivity effectiveness, I/O traffic is kept local where possible and practical, reducing cross-site network workload. Bear in mind that the best I/O is the one you do not have to do, the second is the one with the least impact.

    This means if you can address I/Os as close to the application as possible (e.g. locality of reference), that is a better I/O. On the other hand, when data is not local, then the best I/O is the one involving a local or remote site with least overhead impact to applications, as well as server storage I/O (including networks) resources. Also keep in mind that with vSAN you can fine tune availability, resiliency and data protection to meet various needs by adjusting fault tolerant mode (FTM) to address a different number of failures to tolerate.

    server storage I/O locality of reference

    Network and cloud friendly Unicast Communication enhancements. To improve performance, availability, and capacity (CPU demand reduction) multicast communications are no longer used making for easier, simplified single site and stretched cluster configurations. When vSAN clusters upgrade to V6.6 unicast is enabled.

    VMware vSAN unicast
    Image via VMware

    Gaining insight, awareness, adding intelligence to avoid flying blind, introducing vSAN Cloud Analytics and Proactive Guidance. Part of a VMware customer, experience improvement program, leverages cloud-based health checks for easy online known issue detection along with relevant knowledge bases pieces as well as other support notices. Whether you choose to refer to this feature as advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), proactive rules enabled management problem isolation, solving resolution I will leave that up to you.

    VMware vSAN cloud analytics
    Image via VMware

    Part of the new tools analytics capabilities and prescriptive problem resolution (hmm, some might call that AI or advanced analytics, just saying), health check issues are identified, notifications along with suggested remediation. Another feature is the ability to leverage continuous proactive updates for advance remediation vs. waiting for subsequent vSAN releases. Net result and benefit are reducing time, the complexity of troubleshooting converged data infrastructure issues spanning servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, cloud, and configuration. In other words, enable you more time to be productive vs. finding and fixing problems leveraging informed awareness for smart decision-making.

    Where to Learn More

    The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

    What this all means

    Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in part I here, part II (just the speeds feeds please) located here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) found here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    VMware vSAN V6.6 Part IV (HCI scaling ROBO and data centers today)

    server storage I/O trends

    VMware vSAN V6.6 Part IV (HCI scaling ROBO and data centers today)

    In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the fourth of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here, as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    VMware vSAN 6.6
    Image via VMware

    For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

    Scaling HCI for ROBO and data centers today and for tomorrow

    Scaling with stability for today and tomorrow. This includes addressing your applications Performance, Availability, Capacity and Economics (PACE) workload requirements today and for the future. By scaling with stability means boosting performance, availability (data protection, security, resiliency, durable, FTT), effective capacity without one of those attributes compromising another.

    VMware vSAN data center scaling
    Image via VMware

    Scaling today for tomorrow also means adapting to today’s needs while also flexible to evolve with new application workloads, hardware as well as a cloud (public, private, hybrid, inter and intra-cloud). As part of continued performance improvements, enhancements to optimize for higher performance flash SSD including NVMe based devices.

    VMware vSAN cloud analytics
    Image via VMware

    Part of scaling with stability means enhancing performance (as well as productivity) or the effectiveness of a solution. Keep in mind that efficiency is often associated with storage (or server or network) space capacity savings or reductions. In that context then effectiveness means performance and productivity or how much work can be done with least overhead impact. With vSAN, V6.6 performance enhancements include reduced checksum overhead, enhanced compression, and deduplication, along with destaging optimizations.

    Other enhancements that help collectively contribute to vSAN performance improvements include VMware object handling (not to be confused with cloud or object storage S3 or Swift objects) as well as faster iSCSI for vSAN. Also improved are more accurate refined cache sizing guidelines. Keep in mind that a little bit of NAND flash SSD or SCM in the right place can have a significant benefit, while a lot of flash cache costs much cash.

    Part of enabling and leveraging new technology today includes support for larger capacity 1.6TB flash SSD drives for cache, as well as lower read latency with 3D XPoint and NVMe drives such as those from Intel among others. Refer to the VMware vSAN HCL for current supported devices which continue evolve along with the partner ecosystem. Future proofing is also enabled where you can grow from today to tomorrow as new storage class memories (SCM) among other flash SSD as well as NVMe enhanced storage among other technologies are introduced into the market as well as VMware vSAN HCL.

    VMware vSAN and data center class applications
    Image via VMware

    Traditional CI and in particular many HCI solutions have been optimized or focused on smaller application workloads including VDI resulting in the perception that HCI, in general, is only for smaller environments, or larger environment non-mission critical workloads. With vSAN V6.6 VMware is addressing and enabling larger environment mission critical applications including Intersystem Cache medical health management software among others. Other application workload extensions including support for higher performance demanding Hadoop big data analytics, a well as extending virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) workspace with XenDesktop/XenApp, along with Photon 1.1 container support.

    What about VMware vSAN 6.6. Packaging and License Options

    As part of vSAN 6.6 VMware several solution bundle packaged options for the data center as well as smaller ROBO environment. Contact your VMware representative or partner to learn more about specific details.

    VMware vSAN cloud analytics
    Image via VMware

    VMware vSAN cloud analytics
    Image via VMware

    Where to Learn More

    The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

    What this all means

    Continue reading more about VMware vSAN 6.6 in part I here, part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) located here as well as part V here (VMware vSAN evolution, where to learn more and summary).

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    VMware vSAN V6.6 Part V (vSAN evolution and summary)

    server storage I/O trends

    VMware vSAN V6.6 Part V (vSAN evolution and summary)

    In case you missed it, VMware announced vSAN v6.6 hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) software defined data infrastructure solution. This is the fifth of a five-part series about VMware vSAN V6.6. View Part I here, Part II (just the speeds feeds please) is located here, part III (reducing cost and complexity) found here, part IV (scaling ROBO and data centers today) located here.

    VMware vSAN 6.6
    Image via VMware

    For those who are not aware, vSAN is a VMware virtual Storage Area Network (e.g. vSAN) that is software-defined, part of being a software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) and software-defined data center (SDDC). Besides being software-defined vSAN is HCI combining compute (server), I/O networking, storage (space and I/O) along with hypervisors, management, and other tools.

    How has vSAN (formerly referred to as VSAN) Evolved

    A quick recap of the VMware vSAN progression which first appeared as part of vSphere 5.5. (e.g. vSAN 5.5 can be thought of 1.0 in some ways) consists of several releases. Since vSAN is tightly integrated with VMware vSphere along with associated management tools, there is a correlation between enhancements to the underlying hypervisor, and added vSAN functionality. Keep in mind sometimes by seeing where something has been, helps to view where going.

    Previous vSAN enhancements include:

    • 5.5 Hybrid (mixed HDD and flash)
    • 6.2 (2016) All flash (e.g. AFA) versions included data footprint reduction (DFR) technologies such as compression and dedupe along with performance Quality of Service (QoS) enhancements.
    • 6.5 Cross Cloud functionality including the announcement of container support, cloud-native apps, as well as upcoming vSphere, vSAN, NSX and other VMware software-defined data center (SDDC) and software-defined data infrastructure (SDDI) technology running natively on AWS (not on EC2) cloud infrastructure.
    • 6.6 Modern data infrastructure flexibility, scalability, resiliency, extensibility including performance, availability, capacity and economics (PACE).

    V5.5

    • Distributed RAID
    • Per-VM SPBM
    • Set and change FTT via policy
    • In-kernel hyper-convergence engine
    • RVC and Observer

    V6.0

    • All-flash architecture
    • Perf improvements (4xIOPS)
    • 64-node support
    • High-density storage blades
    • Fault domain awareness
    • Scalable snapshots and clones
    • Disk enclosure management

    V6.1

    • Windows Failover Clustering
    • Oracle RAC support
    • HW checksum and encryption
    • 2-node ROBO mode
    • UltraDIMM and NVMe support
    • Stretch clusters
    • 5 min RPO (vSphere Rep)
    • SMP-FT support
    • Health Check, vROps, Log Insight

    V6.2

    • IPv6 support
    • Software checksum
    • Nearline dedupe and compression on all-flash
    • Erasure coding on all-flash
    • QoS IOPS limits
    • Performance monitoring service

    V6.5

    • iSCSI
    • 2-Node direct connect
    • PowerCLI
    • Public APIs and SDK
    • 512e support
    • All-Flash to all editions

    Where to Learn More

    The following are additional resources to find out more about vSAN and related technologies.

    What this all means, wrap up and summary

    VMware continues to extend the software-defined data center (SDDC) and Software-Defined Data Infrastructure (SDDI) ecosystem with vSAN to address the needs from smaller SMB and ROBO environments to larger SME and enterprise workloads. To me a theme with V6.6 is expanding resiliency, scalability with stability to expand vSAN upmarket as well as into new workloads similar to how vSphere has evolved.

    With each new release, vSAN is increasing its feature, functionality, resiliency and extensiveness associated with traditional storage and non-CI or HCI solutions. Overall a good set of enhancements as vSAN continues its evolution looking back just a few years ago, to where it is today and will be in the future. If you have not looked at vSAN recently, take some time beyond reading this piece to learn some more.

    Ok, nuff said (for now…).

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

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

    NVMe Place NVM Non Volatile Memory Express Resources

    Updated 8/31/19
    NVMe place server Storage I/O data infrastructure trends

    Welcome to NVMe place NVM Non Volatile Memory Express Resources. NVMe place is about Non Volatile Memory (NVM) Express (NVMe) with Industry Trends Perspectives, Tips, Tools, Techniques, Technologies, News and other information.

    Disclaimer

    Please note that this NVMe place resources site is independent of the industry trade and promoters group NVM Express, Inc. (e.g. www.nvmexpress.org). NVM Express, Inc. is the sole owner of the NVM Express specifications and trademarks.

    NVM Express Organization
    Image used with permission of NVM Express, Inc.

    Visit the NVM Express industry promoters site here to learn more about their members, news, events, product information, software driver downloads, and other useful NVMe resources content.

     

    The NVMe Place resources and NVM including SCM, PMEM, Flash

    NVMe place includes Non Volatile Memory (NVM) including nand flash, storage class memories (SCM), persistent memories (PM) are storage memory mediums while NVM Express (NVMe) is an interface for accessing NVM. This NVMe resources page is a companion to The SSD Place which has a broader Non Volatile Memory (NVM) focus including flash among other SSD topics. NVMe is a new server storage I/O access method and protocol for fast access to NVM based storage and memory technologies. NVMe is an alternative to existing block based server storage I/O access protocols such as AHCI/SATA and SCSI/SAS devices commonly used for access Hard Disk Drives (HDD) along with SSD among other things.

    Server Storage I/O NVMe PCIe SAS SATA AHCI
    Comparing AHCI/SATA, SCSI/SAS and NVMe all of which can coexist to address different needs.

    Leveraging the standard PCIe hardware interface, NVMe based devices (that have an NVMe controller) can be accessed via various operating systems (and hypervisors such as VMware ESXi) with both in the box drivers or optional third-party device drivers. Devices that support NVMe can be 2.5″ drive format packaged that use a converged 8637/8639 connector (e.g. PCIe x4) coexisting with SAS and SATA devices as well as being add-in card (AIC) PCIe cards supporting x4, x8 and other implementations. Initially, NVMe is being positioned as a back-end to servers (or storage systems) interface for accessing fast flash and other NVM based devices.

    NVMe as back-end storage
    NVMe as a “back-end” I/O interface for NVM storage media

    NVMe as front-end server storage I/O interface
    NVMe as a “front-end” interface for servers or storage systems/appliances

    NVMe has also been shown to work over low latency, high-speed RDMA based network interfaces including RoCE (RDMA over Converged Ethernet) and InfiniBand (read more here, here and here involving Mangstor, Mellanox and PMC among others). What this means is that like SCSI based SAS which can be both a back-end drive (HDD, SSD, etc) access protocol and interface, NVMe can also being used for back-end can also be used as a front-end of server to storage interface like how Fibre Channel SCSI_Protocol (aka FCP), SCSI based iSCSI, SCSI RDMA Protocol via InfiniBand (among others) are used.

    NVMe features

    Main features of NVMe include among others:

    • Lower latency due to improve drivers and increased queues (and queue sizes)
    • Lower CPU used to handle larger number of I/Os (more CPU available for useful work)
    • Higher I/O activity rates (IOPs) to boost productivity unlock value of fast flash and NVM
    • Bandwidth improvements leveraging various fast PCIe interface and available lanes
    • Dual-pathing of devices like what is available with dual-path SAS devices
    • Unlock the value of more cores per processor socket and software threads (productivity)
    • Various packaging options, deployment scenarios and configuration options
    • Appears as a standard storage device on most operating systems
    • Plug-play with in-box drivers on many popular operating systems and hypervisors

    Shared external PCIe using NVMe
    NVMe and shared PCIe (e.g. shared PCIe flash DAS)

    NVMe related content and links

    The following are some of my tips, articles, blog posts, presentations and other content, along with material from others pertaining to NVMe. Keep in mind that the question should not be if NVMe is in your future, rather when, where, with what, from whom and how much of it will be used as well as how it will be used.

    • How to Prepare for the NVMe Server Storage I/O Wave (Via Micron.com)
    • Why NVMe Should Be in Your Data Center (Via Micron.com)
    • NVMe U2 (8639) vs. M2 interfaces (Via Gamersnexus)
    • Enmotus FuzeDrive MicroTiering (StorageIO Lab Report)
    • EMC DSSD D5 Rack Scale Direct Attached Shared SSD All Flash Array Part I (Via StorageIOBlog)
    • Part II – EMC DSSD D5 Direct Attached Shared AFA (Via StorageIOBlog)
    • NAND, DRAM, SAS/SCSI & SATA/AHCI: Not Dead, Yet! (Via EnterpriseStorageForum)
    • Non Volatile Memory (NVM), NVMe, Flash Memory Summit and SSD updates (Via StorageIOblog)
    • Microsoft and Intel showcase Storage Spaces Direct with NVM Express at IDF ’15 (Via TechNet)
    • MNVM Express solutions (Via SuperMicro)
    • Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (Via StorageIOblog)
    • PMC-Sierra Scales Storage with PCIe, NVMe (Via EEtimes)
    • RoCE updates among other items (Via InfiniBand Trade Association (IBTA) December Newsletter)
    • NVMe: The Golden Ticket for Faster Flash Storage? (Via EnterpriseStorageForum)
    • What should I consider when using SSD cloud? (Via SearchCloudStorage)
    • MSP CMG, Sept. 2014 Presentation (Flash back to reality – Myths and Realities – Flash and SSD Industry trends perspectives plus benchmarking tips)– PDF
    • Selecting Storage: Start With Requirements (Via NetworkComputing)
    • PMC Announces Flashtec NVMe SSD NVMe2106, NVMe2032 Controllers With LDPC (Via TomsITpro)
    • Exclusive: If Intel and Micron’s “Xpoint” is 3D Phase Change Memory, Boy Did They Patent It (Via Dailytech)
    • Intel & Micron 3D XPoint memory — is it just CBRAM hyped up? Curation of various posts (Via Computerworld)
    • How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do (Part I)?
    • How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do with VMware? (Part II)
    • I/O Performance Issues and Impacts on Time-Sensitive Applications (Via CMG)
    • Via EnterpriseStorageForum: 5 Hot Storage Technologies to Watch
    • Via EnterpriseStorageForum: 10-Year Review of Data Storage

    Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Express (NVMe) continues to evolve as a technology for enabling and improving server storage I/O for NVM including nand flash SSD storage. NVMe streamline performance enabling more work to be done (e.g. IOPs), data to be moved (bandwidth) at a lower response time using less CPU.

    NVMe and SATA flash SSD performance

    The above figure is a quick look comparing nand flash SSD being accessed via SATA III (6Gbps) on the left and NVMe (x4) on the right. As with any server storage I/O performance comparisons there are many variables and take them with a grain of salt. While IOPs and bandwidth are often discussed, keep in mind that with the new protocol, drivers and device controllers with NVMe that streamline I/O less CPU is needed.

    Additional NVMe Resources

    Also check out the Server StorageIO companion micro sites landing pages including thessdplace.com (SSD focus), data protection diaries (backup, BC/DR/HA and related topics), cloud and object storage, and server storage I/O performance and benchmarking here.

    If you are in to the real bits and bytes details such as at device driver level content check out the Linux NVMe reflector forum. The linux-nvme forum is a good source if you are developer to stay up on what is happening in and around device driver and associated topics.

    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

    Disclaimer

    Disclaimer: Please note that this site is independent of the industry trade and promoters group NVM Express, Inc. (e.g. www.nvmexpress.org). NVM Express, Inc. is the sole owner of the NVM Express specifications and trademarks. Check out the NVM Express industry promoters site here to learn more about their members, news, events, product information, software driver downloads, and other useful NVMe resources content.

    NVM Express Organization
    Image used with permission of NVM Express, Inc.

    Wrap Up

    Watch for updates with more content, links and NVMe resources to be added here soon.

    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.

    Part II: Revisiting re:Invent 2014, Lambda and other AWS updates

    server storage I/O trends

    Part II: Revisiting re:Invent 2014 and other AWS updates

    This is part two of a two-part series about Amazon Web Services (AWS) re:Invent 2014 and other recent cloud updates, read part one here.

    AWS re:Invent 2014

    AWS re:Invent announcements

    Announcements and enhancements made by AWS during re:Invent include:

    • Key Management Service (KMS)
    • Amazon RDS for Aurora
    • Amazon EC2 Container Service
    • AWS Lambda
    • Amazon EBS Enhancements
    • Application development, deployed and life-cycle management tools
    • AWS Service Catalog
    • AWS CodeDeploy
    • AWS CodeCommit
    • AWS CodePipeline

    AWS Lambda

    In addition to announcing new higher performance Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) compute instances along with container service, another new service is AWS Lambda. Lambda is a service that automatically and quickly runs your applications code in response to events, activities, or other triggers. In addition to running your code, Lambda service is billed in 100 millisecond increments along with corresponding memory use vs. standard EC2 per hour billing. What this means is that instead of paying for an hour of time for your code to run, you can choose to use the Lambda service with more fine-grained consumption billing.

    Lambda service can be used to have your code functions staged ready to execute. AWS Lambda can run your code in response to S3 bucket content (e.g. objects) changes, messages arriving via Kinesis streams or table updates in databases. Some examples include responding to event such as a web-site click, response to data upload (photo, image, audio, file or other object), index, stream or analyze data, receive output from a connected device (think Internet of Things IoT or Internet of Device IoD), trigger from an in-app event among others. The basic idea with Lambda is to be able to pay for only the amount of time needed to do a particular function without having to have an AWS EC2 instance dedicated to your application. Initially Lambda supports Node.js (JavaScript) based code that runs in its own isolated environment.

    AWS cloud example
    Various application code deployment models

    Lambda service is a pay for what you consume, charges are based on the number of requests for your code function (e.g. application), amount of memory and execution time. There is a free tier for Lambda that includes 1 million requests and 400,000 GByte seconds of time per month. A GByte second is the amount of memory (e.g. DRAM vs. storage) consumed during a second. An example is your application is run 100,000 times and runs for 1 second consuming 128MB of memory = 128,000,000MB = 128,000GB seconds. View various pricing models here on the AWS Lambda site that show examples for different memory sizes, times a function runs and run time.

    How much memory you select for your application code determines how it can run in the AWS free tier, which is available to both existing and new customers. Lambda fees are based on the total across all of your functions starting with the code when it runs. Note that you could have from one to thousands or more different functions running in Lambda service. As of this time, AWS is showing Lambda pricing as free for the first 1 million requests, and beyond that, $0.20 per 1 million request ($0.0000002 per request) per duration. Duration is from when you code runs until it ends or otherwise terminates rounded up to the nearest 100ms. The Lambda price also depends on the amount of memory you allocated for your code. Once past the 400,000 GByte second per month free tier the fee is $0.00001667 for every GB second used.

    Why use AWS Lambda vs. an EC2 instance

    Why would you use AWS Lambda vs. provisioning an Container, EC2 instance or running your application code function on a traditional or virtual machine?

    If you need control and can leverage an entire physical server with its operating system (O.S.), application and support tools for your piece of code (e.g. JavaScript), that could be an option. If you simply need to have an isolated image instance (O.S., applications and tools) for your code on a shared virtual on-premises environment then that can be an option. Likewise if you have the need to move your application to an isolated cloud machine (CM) that hosts an O.S. along with your application paying for those resources such as on an hourly basis, that could be your option. Simply need a lighter-weight container to drop your application into that’s where Docker and containers comes into play to off-load some of the traditional application dependencies overhead.

    However, if all you want to do is to add some code logic to support processing activity for example when an object, file or image is uploaded to AWS S3 without having to standup an EC2 instance along with associated server, O.S. and complete application activity, that’s where AWS Lambda comes into play. Simply create your code (initially JavaScript) and specify how much memory it needs, define what events or activities will trigger or invoke the event, and you have a solution.

    View AWS Lambda pricing along with free tier information here.

    Amazon EBS Enhancements

    AWS is increasing the performance and size of General Purpose SSD and Provisioned IOP’s SSD volumes. This means that you can create volumes up to 16TB and 10,000 IOP’s for AWS EBS general-purpose SSD volumes. For EBS Provisioned IOP’s SSD volumes you can create up to 16TB for 20,000 IOP’s. General-purpose SSD volumes deliver a maximum throughput (bandwidth) of 160 MBps and Provisioned IOP SSD volumes have been specified by AWS at 320MBps when attached to EBS optimized instances. Learn more about EBS capabilities here. Verify your IO size and verify AWS sizing information to avoid surprises as all IO sizes are not considered to be the same. Learn more about Provisioned IOP’s, optimized instances, EBS and EC2 fundamentals in this StorageIO AWS primer here.

    Application development, deployed and life-cycle management tools

    In addition to compute and storage resource enhancements, AWS has also announced several tools to support application development, configuration along with deployment (life-cycle management). These include tools that AWS uses themselves as part of building and maintaining the AWS platform services.

    AWS Config (Preview e.g. early access prior to full release)

    Management, reporting and monitoring capabilities including Data center infrastructure management (DCIM) for monitoring your AWS resources, configuration (including history), governance, change management and notifications. AWS Config enables similar capabilities to support DCIM, Change Management Database (CMDB), trouble shooting and diagnostics, auditing, resource and configuration analysis among other activities. Learn more about AWS Config here.

    AWS Service Catalog

    AWS announced a new service catalog that will be available in early 2015. This new service capability will enable administrators to create and manage catalogs of approved resources for users to use via their personalized portal. Learn more about AWS service catalog here.

    AWS CodeDeploy

    To support code rapid deployment automation for EC2 instances, AWS has released CodeDeploy. CodeDeploy masks complexity associated with deployment when adding new features to your applications while reducing human error-prone operations. As part of the announcement, AWS mentioned that they are using CodeDeploy as part of their own applications development, maintenance, and change-management and deployment operations. While suited for at scale deployments across many instances, CodeDeploy works with as small as a single EC2 instance. Learn more about AWS CodeDeploy here.

    AWS CodeCommit

    For application code management, AWS will be making available in early 2015 a new service called CodeCommit. CodeCommit is a highly scalable secure source control service that host private Git repositories. Supporting standard functionalities of Git, including collaboration, you can store things from source code to binaries while working with your existing tools. Learn more about AWS CodeCommit here.

    AWS CodePipeline

    To support application delivery and release automation along with associated management tools, AWS is making available CodePipeline. CodePipeline is a tool (service) that supports build, checking workflow’s, code staging, testing and release to production including support for 3rd party tool integration. CodePipeline will be available in early 2015, learn more here.

    Additional reading and related items

    Learn more about the above and other AWS services by actually truing hands on using their free tier (AWS Free Tier). View AWS re:Invent produced breakout session videos here, audio podcasts here, and session slides here (all sessions may not yet be uploaded by AWS re:Invent)

    What this all means

    AWS amazon web services

    AWS continues to invest as well as re-invest into its environment both adding new feature functionality, as well as expanding the extensibility of those features. This means that AWS like other vendors or service providers adds new check-box features, however they also like some increase the depth extensibility of those capabilities. Besides adding new features and increasing the extensibility of existing capabilities, AWS is addressing both the data and information infrastructure including compute (server), storage and database, networking along with associated management tools while also adding extra developer tools. Developer tools include life-cycle management supporting code creation, testing, tracking, testing, change management among other management activities.

    Another observation is that while AWS continues to promote the public cloud such as those services they offer as the present and future, they are also talking hybrid cloud. Granted you have to listen carefully as you may not simply hear hybrid cloud used like some toss it around, however listen for and look into AWS Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), along with what you can do using various technologies via the AWS marketplace. AWS is also speaking the language of enterprise and traditional IT from an applications and development to data and information infrastructure perspective while also walking the cloud talk. What this means is that AWS realizes that they need to help existing environments evolve and make the transition to the cloud which means speaking their language vs. converting them to cloud conversations to then be able to migrate them to the cloud. These steps should make AWS practical for many enterprise environments looking to make the transition to public and hybrid cloud at their pace, some faster than others. More on these and some related themes in future posts.

    The AWS re:Invent event continues to grow year over year, I heard a figure of over 12,000 people however it was not clear if that included exhibiting vendors, AWS people, attendees, analyst, bloggers and media among others. However a simple validation is that the keynotes were in the larger rooms used by events such as EMCworld and VMworld when they hosted in Las Vegas as was the expo space vs. what I saw last year while at re:Invent. Unlike some large events such as VMworld where at best there is a waiting queue or line to get into sessions or hands on lab (HOL), while becoming more crowded, AWS re:Invent is still easy to get in and spend some time using the HOL which is of course powered by AWS meaning you can resume what you started while at re:Invent later. Overall a good event and nice series of enhancements by AWS, looking forward to next years AWS re:Invent.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers gs

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

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