Tag: NAS

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HDS buys BlueArc, any surprises here?

Technically here in the northern hemisphere it is still summer, so there is another summer wedding to announce.

The other day Hitachi Data Systems (aka HDS) announced that they finally tied the knot buying their Network Attached Storage (NAS) partner BlueArc whom they have been in a OEM premarital arrangement for the last five years or so (wow, was that a long engagement or what?). HDS being a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. a Japanese company it should be no surprise that they operate in a cool, calculated conservative manner with products that have over the past several decades been known for delivering resiliency, functionality, performance and value.

To those in the IT and specifically data storage industry, the only surprise about HDS buying BlueArc should be what took them so long to do so myself included. With unstructured data, big data, high performance computing, high productivity computing (aka HPC), and big bandwidth needs expanding, it only makes sense that HDS finally ties the knot formally acquiring BlueArc signaling what I hope are a few things for their collective future together.

Things that I hope HDS can accomplish with their acquisition of BlueArc include among others:

  • Leverage the BlueArc hardware and performance combine with the HDS software suite to expand further upstream (and downstream) as well as into different adjacent markets leveraging their success over the long courtship where both parties got to know each other more.
  • Signal to the industry that they are truly committed to a long term NAS product solution strategy. HDS has been doing a good job of sticking with BlueArc for the past five or so years having had several previous NAS partner relationships including with NetApp, NSS and others besides their own internal projects.
  • Expand their focus to lead with NAS pulling storage with it in addition to using NAS to accessorize (or bling aka Mr. T starter kit to go with Mr. T storage videos) storage systems which means of course, going more direct toe to toe with the likes of former partner NetApp, EMC, HP (with IBRIX), IBM and Dell among many others. Ironically former HDS partner NetApp acquired the Engenio storage group from LSI whose products competed with HDS in some spaces, while BlueArc was a Engenio partner.
  • Continue to develop both the hardware and software feature functionality around the BlueArc products in addition to further integration across the joint product lines for both traditional, as well as clustered, scale out, bulk, big data, big bandwidth and HPC environments.
  • Sharpen their NAS message and solution offerings including providing the support, tools and programs to enable both their joint direct sales forces as well as their partner value added reseller (VAR) and channel networks.

Check out (here) some additional comments and perspectives by Ray Lucchesi (aka twitter @raylucchesi) over on his blog pertaining to HDS buying BlueArc.

Congratulations to both HDS and BlueArc along with best wishes, this is a deal that is good for both, now, or once the honeymoon is over, lets see how this is executed upon building on their prior joint success to expand into new market opportunities on a global basis. HDS has tools and people to move into and leverage these new as well as existing opportunities, lets see how they can execute on those hopefully not spending too much time or money on the honeymoon while their competitors are out being busy in some of those same accounts in this last month of an important sales quarter (all quarters are important when it comes to sales).

Disclosure for those interested and FWIW: BlueArc had been a client of StorageIO a few years ago, however not currently. HDS is not nor have they been a client of StorageIO, however in prior life I was a customer of theirs in addition to being a partner and supplier when I was on the vendor side of the table.

 

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

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Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book released

Ok, it’s now official, following its debut at the VMworld 2011 book store last week in Las Vegas, my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) is now formally released with general availability announced today along with companion material located at https://storageioblog.com/book3 including the Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking LinkedIn group page launched a few months ago. Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CVDSN) a 370 page hard cover print is my third solo book that follows The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press 2009) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier 2004).

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking Book by Greg Schulz
CVDSN book was on display at VMworld 2011 book store last week along with a new book by Duncan Epping (aka @DuncanYB ) and Frank Denneman (aka @frankdenneman ) titled VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive. You can get your copy of Duncan and Franks new book on Amazon here.

Greg Schulz during book signing at VMworld 2011
Here is a photo of me on the left visiting a VMworld 2011 attendee in the VMworld book store.

 

Whats inside the book, theme and topics covered

When it comes to clouds, virtualization, converged and dynamic infrastructures Dont be scared however do look before you leap to be be prepared including doing your homework.

What this means is that you should do your homework, prepare, learn, and get involved with proof of concepts (POCs) and training to build the momentum and success to continue an ongoing IT journey. Identify where clouds, virtualization and data storage networking technologies and techniques compliment and enable your journey to efficient, effective and productive optimized IT services delivery.

 

There is no such thing as a data or information recession: Do more with what you have

A common challenge in many organizations is exploding data growth along with associated management tasks and constraints, including budgets, staffing, time, physical facilities, floor space, and power and cooling. IT clouds and dynamic infrastructure environments enable flexible, efficient and optimized, cost-effective and productive services delivery. The amount of data being generated, processed, and stored continues to grow, a trend that does not appear to be changing in the future. Even during the recent economic crisis, there has been no slow down or information recession. Instead, the need to process, move, and store data has only increased, in fact both people and data are living longer. CVDSN presents options, technologies, best practices and strategies for enabling IT organizations looking to do more with what they have while supporting growth along with new services without compromising on cost or QoS delivery (see figure below).

Driving Return on Innovation the new ROI: Doing more, reducing costs while boosting productivity

 

Expanding focus from efficiency and optimization to effectiveness and productivity

A primary tenant of a cloud and virtualized environment is to support growing demand in a cost-effective manner  with increased agility without compromising QoS. By removing complexity and enabling agility, information services can be delivered in a timely manner to meet changing business needs.

 

There are many types of information services delivery model options

Various types of information services delivery modes should be combined to meet various needs and requirements. These complimentary service delivery options and descriptive terms include cloud, virtual and data storage network enabled environments. These include dynamic Infrastructure, Public & Private and Hybrid Cloud, abstracted, multi-tenant, capacity on demand, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) among others.

Convergence combing different technology domains and skill sets

Components of a cloud and virtual environment include desktop, servers, and storage, networking, hardware, and software, services along with APIs and software stacks. This include virtual and physical desktops, data, voice and storage networks, LANs, SANs, MANs, WANs, faster blade and rack servers with more memory, SSD and high-capacity storage and associated virtualization tools and management software. True convergence combines leveraging technology and people, processes and best practices aligned to make the most of those resources to deliver cost-effective services delivery.

 

Best people, processes, practices and products (the four Ps)

Bringing all the various components together is the Ps (people skill sets, process, practices and products). This means leveraging and enhancing people skill sets and experience, process and procedures to optimize workflow for streamlined service orchestration, practices and policies to be more effectively reducing waste without causing new bottlenecks, and products such as racks, stacks, hardware, software, and managed or cloud services.

 

Service categories and catalogs, templates SLO and SLA alignment

Establishing service categories aligned to known service levels and costs enables resources to be aligned to applicable SLO and SLA requirements. Leveraging service templates and defined policies can enable automation and rapid provisioning of resources including self-service requests.

 

Navigating to effective IT services delivery: Metrics, measurements and E2E management

You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about; likewise, without situational awareness or navigation tools, you are flying blind. E2E (End to End) tools can provide monitoring and usage metrics for reporting and accounting, including enabling comparison with other environments. Metrics include customer service satisfaction, SLO and SLAs, QoS, performance, availability and costs to service delivered.

 

The importance of data protection for virtual, cloud and physical environments

Clouds and virtualization are important tools and technologies for protecting existing consolidated or converged as well as traditional environments. Likewise, virtual and cloud environments or data placed there also need to be protected. Now is the time to rethink and modernize your data protection strategy to be more effective, protecting, preserving and serving more data for longer periods of time with less complexity and cost.

 

Packing smart and effectively for your journey: Data footprint reduction (DFR)

Reducing your data footprint impact leveraging data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques, technologies and best practices is important for enabling an optimized, efficient and effective IT services delivery environment. Reducing your data footprint is enabled with clouds and virtualization providing a means and mechanism for archiving inactive data and for transparently moving it. On the other hand, moving to a cloud and virtualized environment to do more with what you have is enhanced by reducing the impact of your data footprint. The ABCDs of data footprint reduction include Archiving, Backup modernization, Compression and consolidation, Data management and dedupe along with Storage tiering and thin provisioning among other techniques.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book by Greg Schulz

How the book is laid out:

  • Table of content (TOC)
  • How the book is organized and who should read it
  • Preface
  • Section I: Why the need for cloud, virtualization and data storage networks
  • Chapter 1: Industry trends and perspectives: From issues and challenges to opportunities
  • Chapter 2: Cloud, virtualization and data storage networking fundamentals
  • Section II: Managing data and resources: Protect, preserve, secure and serve
  • Chapter 3: Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM)
  • Chapter 4: Data and storage networking security
  • Chapter 5: Data protection (Backup/Restore, BC and DR)
  • Chapter 6: Metrics and measurement for situational awareness
  • Section III: Technology, tools and solution options
  • Chapter 7: Data footprint reduction: Enabling cost-effective data demand growth
  • Chapter 8: Enabling data footprint reduction: Storage capacity optimization
  • Chapter 9: Storage services and systems
  • Chapter 10: Server virtualization
  • Chapter 11: Connectivity: Networking with your servers and storage
  • Chapter 12: Cloud and solution packages
  • Chapter 13: Management and tools
  • Section IV: Putting IT all together
  • Chapter 14: Applying what you have learned
  • Chapter 15: Wrap-up, what’s next and book summary
  • Appendices:
  • Where to Learn More
  • Index and Glossary

Here is the release that went out via Business Wire (aka Bizwire) earlier today.

 

Industry Veteran Greg Schulz of StorageIO Reveals Latest IT Strategies in “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” Book
StorageIO Founder Launches the Definitive Book for Enabling Cloud, Virtualized, Dynamic, and Converged Infrastructures

Stillwater, Minnesota – September 7, 2011  – The Server and StorageIO Group (www.storageio.com), a leading independent IT industry advisory and consultancy firm, in conjunction with  publisher CRC Press, a Taylor and Francis imprint, today announced the release of “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking,” a new book by Greg Schulz, noted author and StorageIO founder. The book examines strategies for the design, implementation, and management of hardware, software, and services technologies that enable the most advanced, dynamic, and flexible cloud and virtual environments.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking

The book supplies real-world perspectives, tips, recommendations, figures, and diagrams on creating an efficient, flexible and optimized IT service delivery infrastructures to support demand without compromising quality of service (QoS) in a cost-effective manner. “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” looks at converging IT resources and management technologies to facilitate efficient and effective delivery of information services, including enabling information factories. Schulz guides readers of all experience levels through various technologies and techniques available to them for enabling efficient information services.

Topics covered in the book include:

  • Information services model options and best practices
  • Metrics for efficient E2E IT management and measurement
  • Server, storage, I/O networking, and data center virtualization
  • Converged and cloud storage services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS)
  • Public, private, and hybrid cloud and managed services
  • Data protection for virtual, cloud, and physical environments
  • Data footprint reduction (archive, backup modernization, compression, dedupe)
  • High availability, business continuance (BC), and disaster recovery (DR)
  • Performance, availability and capacity optimization

This book explains when, where, with what, and how to leverage cloud, virtual, and data storage networking as part of an IT infrastructure today and in the future. “Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking” comprehensively covers IT data storage networking infrastructures, including public, private and hybrid cloud, managed services, virtualization, and traditional IT environments.

“With all the chatter in the market about cloud storage and how it can solve all your problems, the industry needed a clear breakdown of the facts and how to use cloud storage effectively. Greg’s latest book does exactly that,” said Greg Brunton of EDS, an HP company.

Click here to listen and watch Schulz discuss his new book in this Video about Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking book by Greg Schulz video.

About the Book

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking has 370 pages, with more than 100 figures and tables, 15 chapters plus appendices, as well as a glossary. CRC Press catalog number K12375, ISBN-10: 1439851735, ISBN-13: 9781439851739, publication September 2011. The hard cover book can be purchased now at global venues including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Digital Guru and CRCPress.com. Companion material is located at https://storageioblog.com/book3 including images, additional information, supporting site links at CRC Press, LinkedIn Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking group, and other books by the author. Direct book editorial review inquiries to John Wyzalek of CRC Press at john.wyzalek@taylorfrancis.com (twitter @jwyzalek) or +1 (917) 351-7149. For bulk and special orders contact Chris Manion of CRC Press at chris.manion@taylorandfrancis.com or +1 (561) 998-2508. For custom, derivative works and excerpts, contact StorageIO at info@storageio.com.

About the Author

Greg Schulz is the founder of the independent IT industry advisory firm StorageIO. Before forming StorageIO, Schulz worked for several vendors in systems engineering, sales, and marketing technologist roles. In addition to having been an analyst, vendor and VAR, Schulz also gained real-world hands on experience working in IT organizations across different industry sectors. His IT customer experience spans systems development, systems administrator, disaster recovery consultant, and capacity planner across different technology domains, including servers, storage, I/O networking hardware, software and services. Today, in addition to his analyst and research duties, Schulz is a prolific writer, blogger, and sought-after speaker, sharing his expertise with worldwide technology manufacturers and resellers, IT users, and members of the media. With an insightful and thought-provoking style, Schulz is also author of the books “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC Press, 2009) which is on the Intel developers recommended reading list and the SNIA-endorsed reading book “Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures” (Elsevier, 2004). Schulz is available for interviews and commentary, briefings, speaking engagements at conferences and private events, webinars, video and podcast along with custom advisory consultation sessions. Learn more at https://storageio.com.

End of press release.

Wrap up

I want to express thanks to all of those involved with the project that spanned over the past year.

Stayed tuned for more news and updates pertaining to Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking along with related material including upcoming events as well as chapter excerpts. Speaking of events, here is information on an upcoming workshop seminar that I will be involved with for IT storage and networking professionals to be held October 4th and 5th in the Netherlands.

You can get your copy now at global venues including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Digital Guru and CRCPress.com.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

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StorageIO going Dutch again: October 2011 Seminar for storage professionals

Greg Schulz of StorageIO in conjunction with or dutch partner Brouwer Storage Consultancy will be presenting a two day workshop seminar for IT storage, virtualization, and networking professionals Monday 3rd and Tuesday 4th of October 2011 at Ampt van Nijkerk Netherlands.

Brouwer Storage ConsultanceyThe Server and StorageIO Group

This two day interactive education seminar for storage professionals will focus on current data and storage networking trends, technology and business challenges along with available technologies and solutions. During the seminar learn what technologies and management techniques are available, how different vendors solutions compare and what to use when and where. This seminar digs into the various IT tools, techniques, technologies and best practices for enabling an efficient, effective, flexible, scalable and resilient data infrastructure.

The format of this two seminar will be a mix of presentation and interactive discussion allowing attendees plenty of time to discuss among themselves and with seminar presenters. Attendees will gain insight into how to compare and contrast various technologies and solutions in addition to identifying and aligning those solutions to their specific issues, challenges and requirements.

Major themes that will be discussed include:

  • Who is doing what with various storage solutions and tools
  • Is RAID still relevant for today and tomorrow
  • Are hard disk drives and tape finally dead at the hands of SSD and clouds
  • What am I routinely hearing, seeing or being asked to comment on
  • Enabling storage optimization, efficiency and effectiveness (performance and capacity)
  • Opportunities for leveraging various technologies, techniques,trends
  • Supporting virtual servers including re-architecting data protection
  • How to modernize data protection (backup/restore, BC, DR, replication, snapshots)
  • Data footprint reduction (DFR) including archive, compression and dedupe
  • Clarifying cloud confusion, don’t be scared, however look before you leap
  • Big data, big bandwidth and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI)

In addition this two day seminar will look at what are some new and improved technologies and techniques, who is doing what along with discussions around industry and vendor activity including mergers and acquisitions. In addition to seminar handout materials, attendees will also receive a copy Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) by Greg Schulz that looks at enabling efficient, optimized and effective information services delivery across cloud, virtual and traditional environments.

Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking Book

Buzzwords and topic themes to be discussed among others include E2E, FCoE and DCB, CNAs, SAS, I/O virtualization, server and storage virtualization, public and private cloud, Dynamic Infrastructures, VDI, RAID and advanced data protection options, SSD, flash, SAN, DAS and NAS, object storage, big data and big bandwidth, backup, BC, DR, application optimized or aware storage, open storage, scale out storage solutions, federated management, metrics and measurements, performance and capacity, data movement and migration, storage tiering, data protection modernization, SRA and SRM, data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe), unified and multi-protocol storage, solution bundle and stacks.

For more information or to register contact Brouwer Storage Consultancy

Brouwer Storage Consultancy
Olevoortseweg 43
3861 MH Nijkerk
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31-33-246-6825
Cell: +31-652-601-309
Fax: +31-33-245-8956
Email: info@brouwerconsultancy.com
Web: www.brouwerconsultancy.com

Brouwer Storage Consultancey

Learn about other events involving Greg Schulz and StorageIO at www.storageio.com/events

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), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
twitter @storageio

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

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Getting SASy, the other shared storage option for disk and SSD systems

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The Virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to Getting SASsy, the other shared server to storage interconnect for disk and SSD systems. Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is better known as an interface for connecting hard disk drives (HDD) to servers and storage systems; however it is also widely used for attaching storage systems to physical as well as virtual servers. An important storage requirement for virtual machine (VM) environments with more than one physical machine (PM) server is shared storage. SAS has become a viable interconnect along with other Storage Area Network (SAN) interfaces including Fibre Channel (FC), Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI for block access.

Read more here.

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

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Summer 2011 StorageIO News Letter

StorageIO News Letter Image
Summer 2011 Newsletter

Welcome to the Summer 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Spring 2011 edition.

You can get access to this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

 

Click on the following links to view the Summer 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

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 2006-2011 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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SMB, SOHO and low end NAS gaining enterprise features

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, nuff said for now.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

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Unified storage systems showdown: NetApp FAS vs. EMC VNX

Unified storage systems that support concurrent block, file and in some cases object based access have become popular in terms of industry adoption as well as customer deployments with solutions from many vendors across different price bands, or market (customer) sectors. Two companies that are leaders in this space are also squared off against each other (here and here) to compete for existing, each others, as well as new customers in adjacent or different markets. Those companies are EMC and NetApp that I have described as two similar companies on parallel tracks offset by time.

Two companies on parralel tracks offset by time

Recently I was asked to provide some commentary about unified storage systems in general, as well as EMC and NetApp that you can read here, or view additional commentary on related themes here, here and here. EMC has a historical block based storage DNA that has evolved to file and object based while NetApp originated in the file space having moved into block based storage along with object based access. EMC converged various product technologies including those developed organically (e.g. internally) as well as via acquisition as part of their unified approach. NetApp who has had a unified produce has more recently added a new line of block products with their acquisition of Engenio from LSI. Obviously there are many other vendors with unified storage solutions that are either native (e.g. the functionality is built into the actual technology) or by parterning with others to combine their block or file based solutions as a unified offering.

What is unified storage, what does it enable, and why is it popular now?
Over the past couple of years, multifunction systems that can do both block- and file-based storage have become more popular. These systems simplify the acquisition process by removing the need to choose while enabling flexibility to use something else later. NAS solutions have evolved to support both NFS and CIFS and other TCP-based protocols, including HTTP and FTP, concurrently. NAS or file sharing–based storage continues to gain popularity because of its ease of use and built-in data management capabilities. However, some applications, including Microsoft Exchange or databases, either require block-based storage using SAS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel, or have manufacture configuration guidelines for block-based storage.

Multi protocol storage products enable the following:

  • Acquisition and installation without need for a specialist
  • Use by professionals with varied skills
  • Reprovisioning for different applications requirements
  • Expansion and upgrades to boost future capacity needs

    • Figure 1 shows variations of how storage systems, gateways, or appliances can provide multiple functionality support with various interfaces and protocols. The exact protocols, interfaces, and functionality supported by a given system, software stack, gateway, or appliance will vary by specific vendor implementation. Most solutions provide some combination of block and file storage, with increasing support for various object-based access as well. Some solutions provide multiple block protocols concurrently, while others support block, file, and object over Ethernet interfaces. In addition to various front-end or server and application-facing support, solutions also commonly utilize multiple back-end interfaces, protocols, and tiered storage media.

    Unified and multiprotocol storage, learn more in Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011)

    Figure 1: Multi protocol and function unified storage examples

    For low-end SMB, ROBO, workgroup, SOHO, and consumers, the benefit of multi protocol and unified storage solutions is similar to that of a multifunction printer, copier, fax, and scanner—that is, many features and functionality in a common footprint that is easy to acquire, install, and use in an affordable manner.

    For larger environments, the value proposition of multi protocol and multi functionality is the flexibility and ability to adapt to different usage scenarios that enable a storage system to take on more personalities. What this means is that by being able to support multiple interfaces and protocols along with different types of media and functionality, a storage system becomes multifunctional. A multifunction storage system may be configured for on-line primary storage with good availability and performance and for lower-cost, high-capacity storage in addition to being used as backup target. In other scenarios, a multifunction device may be configured to perform a single function with the idea of later redeploying it to use a different personality or mode of functionality.

    An easy way to determine whether you need multi protocol storage is to look at your environment and requirements. If all you need is FC, FCoE, SAS, iSCSI, or NAS, and a multi protocol device is going to cost you more, it may not be a good fit.

    If you think you may ever need multi protocol capability, and there’s no extra charge for it, go ahead. If you’re not being penalized in performance, extra management software fees, functionality or availability, and you have the capability, why wouldnt you implement a unified storage system?

    Look for products that have the ability to scale to meet your current and future storage capacity, performance, and availability needs or that can coexist under common management with additional storage systems.

    Vendors of unified storage in addition to EMC and NetApp include BlueArc, Fujitsu, Dell, Drobo, HDS (with BlueArc), HP, IBM, Huawei, Oracle, Overland, Quantum, Symantec and Synology among others.

    So what does this all mean? Simple, if you are not already using unified storage in some shape or form, either at work or perhaps even at home, most likely it will be in your future. Thus the question of not if, rather when, where, with what and how.

    Ok, nuff said for now.

    Cheers gs

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

    twitter @storageio

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

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    Dell Storage Forum 2011 revisited

    About a month ago I was invited by Dell to make a quick trip down to Orlando to attend the Dell Storage Forum 2011 (e.g. twitter #dellsf11). Given that on Tuesday June 7th Minneapolis was having a heat wave with 100 degree (F) temperatures, it was actually cooler in Orlando.

    Make no mistake however, there were plenty of technologies that were cool and being kept cool at the Hilton adjacent to Disney as Dell continues to expand their footprint into the hot data storage market. The event brought together three aspects of the Dell storage story which were the mergers of the recently acquired Compellent user group with the Dell Equallogic user group along with the rest of the Dell storage and data management lineup. While the limelight was focused on Compellent and Equalogic, the Dell disk Dudes (and Dudettes e.g. Gina Rosenthal aka twitter @gminks and Sheryl Koenigsberg aka twitter @storagediva ) have been involved with storage for many years in addition to the recent acquisitions.

    During the event I was invited to tag along with Roger Lund (twitter @rogerlund) an IT customer of Dells and Ed Saipetch (twitter @edsai) an Dell partner to go talk with the Dell NAS dudes (aka Unified, clustered, grid, rain, big data, bulk, scale out NAS) team formerly known as Exanet. The team is mix of Dell, former Exanet and new members who have been relatively quietly enhancing their technology in addition to creating packaged solution bundles with other Dell products such as the FS7500 (coupled with EqualLogic). For those not familiar with Exanet, have a read here or hear and for those not familiar with scale out NAS (aka bulk, grid, clustered, big data, etc) have a read here.

    There are lots of interesting things in the works or possible and the team that we spoke with are full of energy, ideas, support from management not to mention having some interesting technology tools to work with ranging from Ocarina (data footprint reduction aka DFR), Kace, Scalent, Powervault MD series, servers and micro servers, not to mention EqualLogic and Compellent among others including those from various partners.

    NAS was not the only thing cool at the event, there was the Dell object storage solution (aka DX) based on Caringo CAS (Content Addressable Storage) OEM software technology that has been the Rx (prescription) for healthcare, medical and other archives. Keep in mind that Dell also earlier this year acquired Insight one that just happens to be involved with healthcare and medical data or information management.

    Speaking of archives and objects there was also some activity this past week with Dell and Rainstor making an announcement of their joint solutions in addition. Speaking of making sure that data on Dell storage remains available, accessible and protected, preserved and served, there were also backup/restore as well as many other pieces of technology, services and solutions. There was also a good presence by Dell partners at the event including Brocade, Commvault, Quantum and Symantec among others.

    Here is a link to a video from when I was a guest with hosts Cali Lewis and John McArthur on the Wikibon/Silicon Angle The Cube show while at the Dell Event. During the discussion we had some fun as well as discussed not to be scared of clouds and virtualization, however look before you leap, doing your homework to be prepared along with other themes in my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press).

    Speaking of Dell, I had a nice conversation with Michael Dell during the storage beers tweet up. Did we talk about SMB or SOHO NAS, SSD, tape, HHDD, Brocade, block vs. file vs. object, data footprint reduction, big backup vs. big data, clouds, 3PAR, Equallogic vs. Compellent, HP vs. EMC?

    Nope, we talked about the Dallas Mavericks (who went on to win the NBA title for 2011), social media and other items. If you have never meet Michael Dell, he is one of the most relaxed, confident and approachable CEOs of any big or large company I have meet.

    In addition to visiting with Michael Dell, I also had the pleasure of meeting many other great people from Dell, their partners and others face to face including many twitter tweeps. All in all it was a great day and a half trip down to the Dell event, look forward to seeing and hearing more from Dell in the future.

    Oh, and for disclosure purposes, Dell covered my RT coach class airfare while I picked up my own hotel, airport transfers, parking and incidentals.

    Thanks again to Gina Rosenthal for making it all happen!

    Ok, nuff said for now.

    Cheers gs

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

    twitter @storageio

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

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    Spring 2011 Server and StorageIO News Letter

    StorageIO News Letter Image
    Spring 2011 Newsletter

    Welcome to the Spring 2011 edition of the Server and StorageIO Group (StorageIO) newsletter. This follows the Winter 2011 edition.

    You can access this news letter via various social media venues (some are shown below) in addition to StorageIO web sites and subscriptions.

     

    Click on the following links to view the Spring 2011 edition as an HTML or PDF or, to go to the newsletter page to view previous editions.

    Follow via Goggle Feedburner here or via email subscription here.

    You can also subscribe to the news letter by simply sending an email to newsletter@storageio.com

    Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO newsletter, let me know your comments and feedback.

    Cheers gs

    Nuff said for now

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
    twitter @storageio

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

    Posted on

    Is FCoE Struggling to Gain Traction, or on a normal adoption course?

    Here is an article by Drew Robb over at Enterprise Storage Forum about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and its state of adoption. Drews article includes comments and perspectives from myself around where FCoE is going and why it is on a long road and not a sprint for a short temporal technology play (e.g. not a quick passing fad or bandwagon trend).

    If you measure FCoE adoption in months, sure, its been slow to gain adoption and deployment similar to how Ethernet, Fibre Channel (FC) and even iSCSI took time to evolve. Part of the time involved is for developing the standards, implementing the technology as well as expanding the capabilities of the new tools. Another part of the time required for technologies that are targeted to be around for a decade or more include ecosystem maturity, education not to mention customers being comfortable with along with having budget to buy the new items.

    I have previously said that FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment and depending on your view, that could be either entering, exiting or there to stay. Not surprisingly some cheerleaders thought that saying FCoE was in the trough of disillusionment was being cynical, while some cynics were cheerleading.

    My point around FCoE is that any technology or paradigm that goes through a hype cycle that will actually have long term legs or be around for years if not decades goes through a post initial hype disillusionment phase before reappearing. Technologies or trends that go through the trough of disillusionment that will eventually reappear sometimes go to Some Day Isle for rest and relaxation (R and R). Some Day Isle for those not familiar with it is a visional or fictional place that some day you will go to, a wishful happy place so to speak that is perfect for hyperbole R and R. After some R and R, these trends, technologies or techniques often reappear well rested and ready for the next wave of buzz, fud, hype and activity.

    Certainly there have been and will continue to be more battles or matches tied to early deployments along with plenty of hype or FUD. After all, if FCoE were to simply pack up and go away like some cynics or naysayers suggest, what will they have to talk, blog, write or speak about? Similarly if FCoE magically goes mainstream tomorrow, the cheerleaders will have to find a new bandwagon or Shiny New Toy (SNT) to rally around.

    Also as I have said in the past, its not if, rather when FCoE will be deployed in yours or your customers environment along with how and using what tools or technologies. Another question to pose around FCoE as a converged technology is will you use it in a true converged manner meaning adapting how server, storage and networking resources are managed including best practices? Or, will you use FCoE in a hybrid SAN or LAN mode using traditional SAN and LAN management practice and separate teams perhaps even battling over who owns the tools or technology.

    Fwiw, in case you did not pick up on it from my previous posts, tips, articles and coverage in books, I think that FCoE has a very bright future as does NAS and iSCSI along with shared SAS as complimentary technologies when used for the applicable scenario.

    What is your take, Is FCoE struggling to gain traction?

    Is FCoE on a normal technology evolution path and timeline?

    Is it too early to tell what the future holds for FCoE?

    Is FCoE too little to late and if so why?

    Ok, nuff said for now.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and coming summer 2011 Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC)
    twitter @storageio

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

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    What records will EMC break in NYC January 18, 2011?

    What records will EMC break in NYC January 18, 2011?

    In case you have not seen or heard, EMC is doing an event next week in New York City (NYC) at the AXA Equitable Center winter weather snow storm clouds permitting (and adequate tools or technologies to deal with the snow removal), that has a theme around breaking records. If you have yet to see any of the advertisements, blogs, tweets, facebook, friendfeed, twitter, yourtube or other mediums messages, here (and here and here) are a few links to learn more as well as register to view the event.

    Click on the above image to see more

    There is already speculation along with IT industry wiki leaks of what will be announced or talked about next week that you can google or find at some different venues.

    The theme of the event is breaking records.

    What might we hear?

    In addition to the advisor, author, blogger and consultant hats that I wear, Im also in the EMCs analysts relations program and as such under NDA, consequently, what the actual announcement will be next week, no comment for now. BTW, I also wear other hats including one from Boeing even though I often fly on Airbus products as well.

    If its not Boeing Im not going, except I do also fly Airbus, Embrear and Bombardiar products
    Other hats I wear

    However, how about some fun as to what might be covered at next weeks event with getting into a wiki leak situation?

    • A no brainier would be product (hardware, software, services) related as it is mid January and if you have been in the industry for more than a year or two, you might recall that EMC tends to a mid winter launch around this time of year along with sometimes an early summer refresh. Guess what time of the year it is.
    • Im guessing lots of superlatives, perhaps at a record breaking pace (e.g. revolutionary first, explosive growth, exponential explosive growth, perfect storm among others that could be candidates for the Storagebrain wall of fame or shame)
    • Maybe we will even hear that EMC has set a new record of number of members in Chads army aka the vspecialists focused on vSphere related topics along with a growing (quietly) number of Microsoft HyperV specialist.
    • That EMC has a record number of twitter tweeps engaged in conversations (or debates) with different audiences, collectives, communities, competitors, customers, individuals, organizations, partners or venues among others.
    • Possibly that their involvement in the CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) has resulted in enough savings to offset the impact of hosting the event making it carbon and environment neutral. After all, we already know that EMC has been in the CDP as in Continual or Constant Data Protection as well as Complete or Comprehensive Data Protection along with Cloud Data Protection not to mention Common Sense Data Protection (CSDP) for sometime now.
    • Perhaps something around the number of acquisitions, patents, products, platforms, products and partners they have amassed recently.
    • For investors, wishful thinking that they will be moving their stock into record territories.
    • Im also guessing we will hear or see a record number of tweets, posts, videos and stories.
    • To be fair and balanced, Im also expecting a record number of counter tweets, counter posts, counter videos and counter stories coming out of the event.

    Some records I would like to see EMC break however Im not going to hold my breath at least for next week include:

    • Announcement of upping the game in performance benchmarking battles with record setting or breaking various SPC benchmark results submitted on their own (instead of via a competitor or here) in different categories of block storage devices along with entries for SSD based, clustered and virtualized. Of course we would expect to hear how those benchmarks and workload simulations really do not matter which would be fine, at least they would have broken some records.
    • Announcement of having shipped more hard disk drives (HDD) than anyone else in conjunction with shipping more storage than anyone else. Despite being continually declared dead (its not) and SSD gaining traction, EMC would have a record breaking leg to stand on if the qualify amount of storage shipped as external or shared or networked (SAN or NAS) as opposed to collective (e.g. HP with servers and storage among others).
    • Announcement that they are buying Cisco, or Cisco is buying them, or that they and Cisco are buying Microsoft and Oracle.
    • Announcement of being proud of the record setting season of the Patriots, devastated to losing a close and questionable game to the NY Jets, wishing them well in the 2010 NFL Playoffs (Im just sayin…).
    • Announcement of being the first vendor and solution provider to establish SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, DaaS and many other XaaS offerings via their out of this world new moon base (plans underway for Mars as part of a federated offering).
    • Announcement that Fenway park will be rebranded as the house that EMC built (or rebuilt).

    Disclosure: I will be in NYC on Tuesday the 18th as one of EMCs many guests that they have picked up airfare and lodging, thanks to Len Devanna and the EMC social media crew for reaching out and extending the invitation.

    Other guests of the event will include analysts, advisors, authors, bloggers, beat writers, consultants, columnist, customers, editors, media, paparazzi, partners, press, protesters (hopefully polite ones), publishers, pundits, twitter tweepps and writers among others.

    I wonder if there will also be a record number of disclosures made by others attending the event as guests of EMC?

    More after (or maybe during) the event.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

    Posted on

    As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

    As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

    server storage data infrastructure i/o iop hdd ssd trends

    Updated 2/10/2018

    Despite having been repeatedly declared dead at the hands of some new emerging technology over the past several decades, the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) continues to spin and evolve as it moves towards its 60th birthday.

    More recently HDDs have been declared dead due to flash SSD that according to some predictions, should have caused the HDD to be extinct by now.

    Meanwhile, having not yet died in addition to having qualified for its AARP membership a few years ago, the HDD continues to evolve in capacity, smaller form factor, performance, reliability, density along with cost improvements.

    Back in 2006 I did an article titled Happy 50th, hard drive, but will you make it to 60?

    IMHO it is safe to say that the HDD will be around for at least a few more years if not another decade (or more).

    This is not to say that the HDD has outlived its usefulness or that there are not other tiered storage mediums to do specific jobs or tasks better (there are).

    Instead, the HDD continues to evolve and is complimented by flash SSD in a way that HDDs are complimenting magnetic tape (another declared dead technology) each finding new roles to support more data being stored for longer periods of time.

    After all, there is no such thing as a data or information recession!

    What the importance of this is about technology tiering and resource alignment, matching the applicable technology to the task at hand.

    Technology tiering (Servers, storage, networking, snow removal) is about aligning the applicable resource that is best suited to a particular need in a cost as well as productive manner. The HDD remains a viable tiered storage medium that continues to evolve while taking on new roles coexisting with SSD and tape along with cloud resources. These and other technologies have their place which ideally is finding or expanding into new markets instead of simply trying to cannibalize each other for market share.

    Here is a link to a good story by Lucas Mearian on the history or evolution of the hard disk drive (HDD) including how a 1TB device that costs about $60 today would have cost about a trillion dollars back in the 1950s. FWIW, IMHO the 1 trillion dollars is low and should be more around 2 to 5 trillion for the one TByte if you apply common costs for management, people, care and feeding, power, cooling, backup, BC, DR and other functions.

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

    IMHO, it is safe to say that the HDD is here to stay for at least a few more years (if not decades) or at least until someone decides to try a new creative marketing approach by declaring it dead (again).

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

    What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

    What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

    Updated 10/9/2018

    What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Where to learn more

    Learn more about data footprint reducton (DFR), data footprint overhead and related topics via the following links:

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What this all means

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

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Cheers Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    Has FCoE entered the trough of disillusionment?

    This is part of an ongoing series of short industry trends and perspectives blog posts briefs based on what I am seeing and hearing in my conversations with IT professionals on a global basis.

    These short posts compliment other longer posts along with traditional industry trends and perspective white papers, research reports, videos, podcasts, webcasts as well as solution brief content found a www.storageioblog.com/reports and www.storageio.com/articles.

    Has FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) entered the trough of disillusionment?

    IMHO Yes and that is not a bad thing if you like FCoE (which I do among other technologies).

    The reason I think that it is good that FCoE is in or entering the trough is not that I do not believe in FCoE. Instead, the reason is that most if not all technologies that are more than a passing fad often go through a hype and early adopter phase before taking a breather prior to broader longer term adoption.

    Sure there are FCoE solutions available including switches, CNAs and even storage systems from various vendors. However, FCoE is still very much in its infancy and maturing.

    Based on conversations with IT customer professionals (e.g those that are not vendor, vars, consultants, media or analysts) and hearing their plans, I believe that FCoE has entered the proverbial trough of disillusionment which is a good thing in that FCoE is also ramping up for deployment.

    Another common question that comes up regarding FCoE as well as other IO networking interfaces, transports and protocols is if they are temporal (temporary short life span) technologies.

    Perhaps in the scope that all technologies are temporary however it is their temporal timeframe that should be of interest. Given that FCoE will probably have at least a ten to fifteen year temporal timeline, I would say in technology terms it has a relative long life for supporting coexistence on the continued road to convergence which appears to be around Ethernet.

    That is where I feel FCoE is at currently, taking a break from the initial hype, maturing while IT organizations begin planning for its future deployment.

    I see FCoE as having a bright future coexisting with other complimentary and enabling technologies such as IO Virtualization (IOV) including PCI SIG MRIOV, Converged Networking, iSCSI, SAS and NAS among others.

    Keep in mind that FCoE does not have to be seen as competitive to iSCSI or NAS as they all can coexist on a common DCB/CEE/DCE environment enabling the best of all worlds not to mention choice. FCoE along with DCB/CEE/DCE provides IT professionals with choice options (e.g. tiered I/O and networking) to align the applicable technology to the task at hand for physical or

    Again, the questions pertaining to FCoE for many organizations, particularly those not going to iSCSI or NAS for all or part of their needs should be when, where and how to deploy.

    This means that for those with long lead time planning and deployment cycles, now is the time to putting your strategy into place for what you will be doing over the next couple of years if not sooner.

    For those interested, here is a link (may require registration) to a good conversation taking place over on IT Toolbox regarding FCoE and other related themes that may be of interest.

    Here are some links to additional related material:

    • FCoE Infrastructure Coming Together
    • 2010 and 2011 Trends, Perspectives and Predictions: More of the same?
    • SNWSpotlight: 8G FC and FCoE, Solid State Storage
    • NetApp and Cisco roll out vSphere compatible FCoE solutions
    • Fibre Channel over Ethernet FAQs
    • Fast Fibre Channel and iSCSI switches deliver big pipes to virtualized SAN environments.
    • Poll: Networking Convergence, Ethernet, InfiniBand or both?
    • I/O Virtualization (IOV) Revisited
    • Will 6Gb SAS kill Fibre Channel?
    • Experts Corner: Q and A with Greg Schulz at StorageIO
    • Networking Convergence, Ethernet, Infiniband or both?
    • Vendors hail Fibre Channel over Ethernet spec
    • Cisco, NetApp and VMware combine for ‘end-to-end’ FCoE storage
    • FCoE: The great convergence, or not?
    • I/O virtualization and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE): How do they differ?
    • Chapter 9 – Networking with your servers and storage: The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC)
    • Resilient Storage Networks: Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures (Elsevier)

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

    Of course let me know what your thoughts and perspectives are on this and other related topics.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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