Tag: Performance

Posted on

Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD

Marketers particular those involved with anything resembling Solid State Devices (SSD) will tell you SSD is the future as will some researchers along with their fans and pundits. Some will tell you that the future only has room for SSD with the current flavor de jour being nand flash (both Single Level Cell aka SLC and Multi Level Cell aka MLC) with any other form of storage medium (e.g. Hard Disk Drives or HDD and tape summit resources) being dead and to avoid wasting your money on them.

Of course others and their fans or supporters who do not have an SSD play or product will tell forget about them, they are not ready yet.

Then there are those who take no sides per say, simply providing comments and perspectives along with things to be considered that also get used to spin stories for or against by others.

For the record, I have been a fan and user of various forms of SSD along with other variations of tiered storage mediums using them for where they fit best for several decades as a customer in IT, as a vendor, analyst and advisory consultant. Thus my perspective and opinion is that SSDs do in fact have a very bright future. However I also believe that other storage mediums are not dead yet although their roles are evolving while their technologies continue be developed. In other words, use the right technology and tool, packaged and deployed in the best most effective way for the task at hand.

Memory and tiered storage hirearchy
Memory and tiered storage hierarchy

Consequently while some SSD vendors, their fans, supporters, pundits and others might be put off by some recent UCSD research that does not paint SSD and particular nand flash in the best long-term light, it caught my attention and here is why. First I have already seen in different venues where some are using the research as a tool, club or weapon against SSD and in particular nand flash which should be no surprise. Secondly I have also seen those who don’t agree with the research at best dismiss the findings. Others are using it as a conversation or topic piece for their columns or other venues such as here.

The reason the UCSD research caught my eye was that it appeared to be looking at how will nand SSD technology evolve from where it is today to where it will be in ten years or so.

While ten years may seem like a long time, just look back at how fast things evolved over the past decade. Granted the UCSD research is open to discussion, debate and dismissal as clear in the comments of this article here. However the research does give a counter point or perspective to some of the hype which can mean somewhere between the two extremes, exists reality and where things are headed or need to be discussed. While I do not agree with all the observations or opinions of the research, it does give stimulus for discussing things including best practices around deployment vs. simply talking about adoption.

It has taken many decades for people to become comfortable or familiar with the pros and cons of HDD or tape for that matter.

Likewise some are familiar with (good or bad) with DRAM based SSD of earlier generations. On the other hand, while many people use various forms of nand flash SSD ranging from what is inside their cell phone or SD cards for cameras to USB thumb drives to SSD on drives, on PCIe cards or in storage systems and appliances, there is still an evolving comfort and confidence level for business and enterprise storage use. Some have embraced, some have dismissed, many if not most are intrigued wanting to know more, are using nand flash SSD in some shape or form, while gaining confidence.

Part of gaining confidence is moving beyond the industry hype looking at and understanding what are the pros, cons and how to leverage or work around the constraints. A long time ago a wise person told me that it is better to know the good, bad and ugly about a product, service or technology so that you could leverage the best, configure, plan and manage around the bad to avoid or minimized the ugly. Based on that philosophy I find many IT customers and even some VARs and vendors wanting to know the good, the bad and they ugly not for hanging out a vendor or their technology and products, rather so that they can be comfortable in knowing when, where, why and how to use to be most effective.

Industry Trends and Perspectives

Granted to get some of the not so good information may need NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) or other confidentially discussions as after all, what vendor or solution provider wants to show or let anything less than favorable out into the blogosphere, twittersphere, googleplus, tabloids, news sphere or other competitive landscapes venues.

Ok, lets bring this back to the UCSD research report titled The Bleak Future of NAND Flash Memory

UCSD research report: The Bleak Future of NAND Flash Memory
Click here or on the above image to read the UCSD research report

I’m not concerned that the UCSD research was less than favorable as some others might be, after all, it is looking out into the future and if a concern, provides a glimpse of what to keep an eye on.

Likewise, looking back, the research report could be taken as simply a barometer of what could happen if no improvements or new technologies evolve. For example, the HDD would have hit the proverbial brick wall also known as the super parametric barrier many years ago if new recording methods and materials had not been deployed including a shift to perpendicular recording, something that was recently added to tape.

Tomorrows SSDs and storage mediums will still be based on nand flash including SLC, MLC, eMLC along with other variants not to mention phased change memory (PCM) and other possible contenders.

Todays SSDs have shifted from being DRAM based with HDD or even flash-based persistent backing storage to nand flash-based, both SLC and MLC with enhanced or enterprise MLC appearing. Likewise the density of SSDs continue to increase meaning more data packed into the same die or footprint, more dies stacked in a chip package to boost capacity while decreasing cost. However what is also happening is behind the scenes which is a big differentiator with SSDs and that is the quality of some firmware and low-level page management at the flash translation layer (FTL). Hence they saying that anybody with a soldering iron and ability to pull together off the shelves FTLs and packaging can create some form of an SSD. How effective a product will be is based on the intelligence and robustness of the combination of the dies, FTL, controller and associated firmware and device drivers along with other packaging options plus the testing, validation and verification they undergo.

Various packaging options and where SSD can be deployed
Various SSD locations, types, packaging and usage scenario options

Good SSD vendors and solution providers I believe will be able to discuss your concerns around endurance, duty cycles, data integrity and other related topics to set up confidence with current and future issues, granted you may have to go under NDA to gain that insight. On the other hand, those who feel threatened or not able or interested in addressing or demonstrating confidence for the long haul will be more likely to dismiss studies, research, reports, opinions or discussions that dig deeper into creating confidence via understanding of how things work so that customers can more fully leverage those technologies.

Some will view and use reports such as the one from UCSD as a club or weapon against SSD and in particular against nand flash to help their cause or campaign while others will use it to stimulate controversy and page hit views. My reason for bringing up the topic and discussion it to stimulate thinking and help increase awareness and confidence in technologies such as SSD near and long-term. Regardless of if your view is that SSD will replace HDD, or that they will continue to coexist as tiered storage mediums into the future, gaining confidence in the technologies along with when, where and how to use them are important steps in shifting from industry adoption to customer deployment.

What say you?

Is SSD the best thing and you are dumb or foolish if you do not embrace it totally or a fan, pundit cheerleader view?

Or is SSD great when and where used in the right place so embrace it?

How will SSD continue to evolve including nand and other types of memories?

Are you comfortable with SSD as a long term data storage medium, or for today, its simply a good way to discuss performance bottlenecks?

On the other hand, is SSD interesting, however you are not comfortable or have confidence with the technology, yet you want to learn more, in other words a skeptics view?

Or perhaps the true cynic view which is that SSD are nothing but the latest buzzword bandwagon fad technology?

Ok, nuff said for now, other than here is some extra related SSD material:
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments: Part I Spinning up to speed on SSD
SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments, Part II: The call to duty, SSD endurance
Part I: EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching
Part II: EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
2012 industry trends perspectives and commentary (predictions)
Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) getting too big?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Data Center I/O Bottlenecks Performance Issues and Impacts
EMC VPLEX: Virtual Storage Redefined or Respun?
EMC interoperability support matrix

Cheers
gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

Posted on

New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)

Seagate recently announced the next generation Momentus XT Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) with a capacity of 750GB in a 2.5 inch form factor and MSRP of $245.00 USD including integrated NAND flash solid state device (SSD). As a refresher, the Momentus XT is a HHDD in that it includes a 4GB nand flash SSD integrated with a 500GB (or larger) 7,200 RPM hard disk drive (HDD) in a single 2.5 inch package.

Seagate Momentus XT
HHDD with integrated nand flash SSD photo courtesy Seagate.com

This is the fifth installment of a series that I have done since June 2010 when I received my first HHDD a Seagate Momentus XT. You can read the other installments of my momentus moments here, here, here and here.

Whats is new with the new generation.
Besides extra storage space capacity up to 750GB (was 500GB), there is twice as much single level cell (SLC) nand flash memory (8GB vs. 4GB in previous generation) along with an enhanced interface using 6Gb per second SATA that supports native command queuing (NCQ) for better performance. Note that NCQ was available on the previous generation Momentus XT that used a 3Gb SATA interface. Other enhancements include a larger block or sector size of 4096 bytes vs. traditional 512 bytes on previous generation storage devices.

This bigger sector size results in less overhead with managing data blocks on large capacity storage devices. Also new are caching enhancements are FAST Factor Flash Management, FAST Factor Boot and Adaptive Memory Technology. Not to be confused with EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering the other FAST; Seagate FAST is technology that exists inside the storage drive itself. FAST Factor boot enables systems to boot and be productive with speeds similar to SSD or several times faster than traditional HDDs.

The FAST Factor Flash Management provides the integrated intelligence to maximize use of the nand flash or SSD capabilities along with spinning HDD to boot performance, keep up compatibility with different systems and their operating systems. In addition to performance and interoperability, data integrity and SSD flash endurance are also enhanced for investment protection. The Adaptive Memory technology is a self learning algorithm to give SSD like performance for often used applications and data to close the storage capacity too performance gap that has increased along with data center bottlenecks.

Some questions and discussion comments:

When to use SSD vs. HDD vs. HHDD?
If you need the full speed of SSD to boost performance across all data access and cost is not an issue for available capacity that is where you should be focused. However if you are looking for lowest total cost of storage capacity with no need for performance, than lower cost high capacity HDDs should be on your shopping list. On the other hand, if you want a mix of performance and capacity at an effective price, than HHDDs should be considered.

Why the price jump compared to first generation HHDD?
IMHO, it has a lot to do with current market conditions, supply and demand.

With recent floods in Thailand and forecasted HDD and other technology shortages, the lay of supply and demand applies. This means that the supply may be constrained for some products causing demand to rise for others. Your particular vendor or supplier may have inventory however will be less likely to heavily discount while there are shortages or market opportunities to keep prices high. There are already examples of this if you check around on various sites to compare prices now vs. a few months ago. Granted it is the holiday shopping season for both people as well as organizations spending the last of their available budgets so more demand for available supplies.

What kind of performance or productivity have I seen with HHDDs?
While I have not yet tested and compared the second generation or new devices, I can attest to the performance improvements resulting in better productivity over the past year using Seagate Momentus XT HHDDs compared to traditional HDDs. Here is a post that you can follow to see some boot performance comparisons as part of some virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) sizing testing I did earlier this year that included both HHDD and HDD.

HHDD desktop 1

HDD desktop 1

HHDD desktop 2

Avg. IOPS

334

69 to 113

186 to 353

Avg. MByte sec

5.36

1.58 to 2.13

2.76 to 5.2

Percent IOPS read

94

80 to 88

92

Percent MBs read

87

63 to 77

84

Mbytes read

530

201 to 245

504

Mbytes written

128

60 to 141

100

Avg. read latency

2.24ms

8.2 to 9.5ms

1.3ms

Avg. write latency

10.41ms

20.5 to 14.96ms

8.6ms

Boot duration

120 seconds

120 to 240 sec

120

Click here to read the entire post about the above table

When will I jump on the SSD bandwagon?
Great question, I have actually been on the SSD train for several decades using them, selling them, covering, analyzing and consulting around them along with other storage mediums including HDD, HHDD, cloud and tape. I have some SSDs and will eventually put them into my laptops, workstations and servers as primary storage when the opportunity makes sense.

Will HHDDs help backup and other data protection tasks?
Yes, in fact I initially used my Momentus XTs as backup or data protection targets along with for moving large amounts of data between systems faster than what my network could support.

Why not use a SSD?
If you need the performance and can afford the price, go SSD!

On the other hand, if you are looking to add a small 64GB, 128GB or even 256GB SSD while retaining a larger capacity, slower and lower cost HDD, an HHDD should be considered as an option. By using an HHDD instead of both a SSD and HDD, you will cut the need of figuring out how to install both in space constrained laptops, desktop or workstations. In addition, you will cut the need to either manually move data between the different devices or avoid having to acquire software or drivers to do that for you.

How much does the new Seagate Momentus XT HHDD cost?
Manufactures Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) is listed at $245 for a 750GB version.

Does the Momentus XT HHDD need any special drivers, adapters or software?
No, they are plug and play. There is no need for caching or performance acceleration drivers, utilities or other software. Likewise no needs for tiering or data movement tools.

How do you install an HHDD into an existing system?
Similar to installing a new HDD to replace an existing one if you are familiar with that process. If not, it goes like this (or uses your own preferred approach).

  • Attach a new HHDD to an existing system using a cable
  • Utilize a disk clone or image tool to make a copy of the existing HDD to HHDD
  • Note that the system may not be able to be used during the copy, so plan ahead.
  • After the clone or image copy is made, shutdown system, remove existing HDD and replace it with the HHDD that was connected to the system during the copy (remember to remove the copy cable).
  • Reboot the system to verify all is well, note that it will take a few reboots before the HHDD will start to learn your data and files along with how they are used.
  • Regarding your old HDD, save it, put it in a safe place and use it as a disaster recovery (DR) backup. For example if you have a safe deposit box or somewhere else safe, put it there for when you will need it in the future.


Seagate Momentus XT and USB to SATA cable

Can an HHDD fit into an existing slot in a laptop, workstation or server?
Yes. In fact, unlike a HDD and SSD combination, that requires multiple slots or forcing one device to be external, HHDDs like the Momentus XT simply use the space where your current HDD is installed.

How do you move data to it?
Beyond the first installation described above, the HHDD appears as just another local device meaning you can move data to or from it like any other HDD, SSD or CD.

Do you need automated tiering software?
No, not unless you need it for some other reason or if you want to use an HHDD as the lower cost, larger capacity option as a companion to a smaller SSD.

Do I have any of the new or second generation HHDDs?
Not yet, maybe soon and I will do another momentus moment point when that time arrives. For the time being, I will continue to use the first generation Momentus XT HHDDs

Bottom line (for now), If you are considering a large capacity, HDDs check out the HHDDs for an added performance boost including faster boot times as well as accessing other data quicker.

On the other hand if you want an SSD however your budget restricts you to a smaller capacity version, look into how an HHDD can be a viable option for some of your needs.

Ok, nuff said

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

Posted on

Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage

Solid state devices (SSD) are a popular topic gaining both industry adoption and customer deployment to speed up storage performance. Here is a link to a recent conversation that I had with John Hillard to discuss industry trends and perspectives pertaining to using SSD to boost performance and productivity for SMB and other environments.

I/O consolidation from Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press) www.storageio.com/book3.html

SSDs can be a great way for organizations to do IO consolidation to reduce costs in place of using many hard disk drives (HDDs) grouped together to achieve a certain level of performance. By consolidating the IOs off of many HDDs that often end up being under utilized from a space capacity basis, organizations can boost performance for applications while reducing, or reusing HDD based storage capacity for other purposes including growth.

Here is some related material and comments:
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?
SSD and Storage System Performance
Are Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) getting too big?
Solid state devices and the hosting industry
Achieving Energy Efficiency using FLASH SSD
Using SSD flash drives to boost performance

Four ways to use SSD storage
4 trends that shape how agencies handle storage
Giving storage its due

You can read a transcript of the conversation and listen to the pod cast here, or download the MP3 audio here.

Ok, nuff said about SSD (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

Posted on

SNW Fall 2011 revisited and SNIA Emerald program

A couple of weeks ago I traveled down to Orlando Florida for a few days to attend the fall 2011 SNW (Storage Networking World) produced in conjunction by IDG Computerworld and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

While at the Orlando event, SNIA executive director Leo Legar asked me how many SNWs I had attended and my responses was on which continent?

My answer was part in fun however also serious as I have been attending SNWs (in addition to other SNIA events) for over ten years in both North and South America as well as in Europe including presenting SNIA tutorials and SNW sessions.

SNW is always good for meeting up with old friends and acquaintances along with meeting new ones including twitter tweeps (hashtag #snwusa #snw2011 @sniacloud @snwusa) and the recent event was no exception. Granted SNW is smaller than it was during its peak in the mid 2000s however it was great to go for a couple of days of meetings, checking out the expo hall and some sessions as well as getting out and about meeting people involved with servers, storage, networking, virtualization, cloud, hardware, software and services.

SNW remains as its name implies (Storage Networking World) an event around networking as in conversations, learning, knowledge exchange, information gathering and meetings not to mention the hands on lab. I found the two days I was there adequate to get the meetings and other activities I had planned, along with time for impromptu meetings. ANother observation was that during the peak of the large mega SNW events, while there were more meetings, they were also much shorter along the lines of speed dating vs. those a couple of weeks ago where there was time to have quality conversations.

Some of the news at the recent SNW event, involved SNIA and their Green Storage Initiative (GSI) announcing the availability of the Emerald program Green IT storage energy metrics that have been in the works for several years. The SNIA Emerald program consists of specifications, taxonomies, metrics and measurements standards to gauge various types of storage power or energy usage to gauge its effectiveness. In other words, yes, Green IT and Green storage are still alive, they just are not as trendy to talk about as they were a few years ago which a shift in focus towards productivity, effective use and supporting growth to help close the green gap and missed IT as well as business opportunities.

Also during the recent SNW event, I did a book signing event sponsored by SNIA. If you have not done so, check out the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) who arranged for several of my new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking to be given away. Book signings are fun in that I get to meet lots of people and hear what they are doing, encountering, looking for, have done, concerned or excited about. It was handy having SNIA CSI material available at the table as I was signing books and visiting with people to be able to give them information about things such as CDMI not to mention hearing what they were doing or looking for. Note to SNIA, if we do this again, lets make sure to have someone from the CSI at the table to join in the fun and conversations as there were some good ones. Learn more about the activities of the SNIA CSI including their Cloud Data Management Initiative (CDMI) here.

SNIA Cloud Storage Initiaive CSI

Thanks again to SNIA for arranging the book signing event and for those who were not able to get a copy of my new book before they ran out, my publisher CRC Press Taylor and Francis has arranged a special SNIA and SNW discount code. To take advantage of the SNIA and SNW discount code, go to the CRC Press web site (here) and apply the discount code KVK01 during checkout for catalog item K12375 (ISBN: 9781439851739).

30 percent discount code for Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking Book

Thanks again to Wayne Adams (@wma01606), Leo Legar and Michael Meleedy among others who arranged for a fantastic fall 2011 SNW event along with everyone who participated in the book signing event and other conversations while in Orlando and to those who were involved virtually via twitter.

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

Posted on

Why VASA is important to have in your VMware CASA

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to VMware vSphere V5.0 VASA.

This new post follows up on one that I did about a month ago pertaining to recent vSphere V5.0 storage and IO enhancements including Storage DRS (SDRS).

VMware vSphere Storage Aware API (VASA) is an Applications Programming Interface (API) that provides insight and awareness into supported storage systems configuration, current health, status and capabilities that can be used for enabling various management activities.

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

Posted on

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 Consultancey

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

Posted on

Measuring Windows performance impact for VDI planning

Here is a link to a recent guest post that I was invited to do over at The Virtualization Practice (TVP) pertaining to measuring the impact of Windows Boot performance and what that means for planning for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) initiatives.

With Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) initiatives adoption being a popular theme associated with cloud and dynamic infrastructure environments a related discussion point is the impact on networks, servers and storage during boot or startup activity to avoid bottlenecks. VDI solution vendors include Citrix, Microsoft and VMware along with various server, storage, networking and management tools vendors.

A common storage and network related topic involving VDI are boot storms when many workstations or desktops all startup at the same time. However any discussion around VDI and its impact on networks, servers and storage should also be expanded from read centric boots to write intensive shutdown or maintenance activity as well.

Having an understanding of what your performance requirements are is important to adequately design a configuration that will meet your Quality of Service (QoS) and service level objectives (SLOs) for VDI deployment in addition to knowing what to look for in candidate server, storage and networking technologies. For example, knowing how your different desktop applications and workloads perform on a normal basis provides a baseline to compare with during busy periods or times of trouble. Another benefit is that when shopping for example storage systems and reviewing various benchmarks, knowing what your actual performance and application characteristics are helps to align the applicable technology to your QoS and SLO needs while avoiding apples to oranges benchmark comparisons.

Check out the entire piece including some test results using the hIOmon tool from hyperIO to gather actual workstation performance numbers.

Keep in mind that the best benchmark is your actual applications running as close to possible to their typical workload and usage scenarios.

Also keep in mind that fast workstations need fast networks, fast servers and fast storage.

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

Posted on

StorageIO going Dutch: Seminar for Storage and I/O professionals

Data and Storage Networking Industry Trends and Technology Seminar

Greg Schulz of StorageIO in conjunction with or dutch parter Brouwer Storage Consultancy will be presenting a two day seminar for Storage Professionals Tuesday 24th and Wednesday 25th of May 2011 at Ampt van Nijkerk Netherlands.

Brouwer Storage Consultancey

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)
  • What do I see as 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

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. Greg will also preview the contents and themes of his new book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC) for enabling efficient, optimized and effective information services delivery across cloud, virtual and traditional environments.

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, 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 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

StorageIO Momentus Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (HHDD) Moments

This is the third in a series of posts that I have done about Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) along with pieces about Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Solid State Devices (SSDs). Granted the HDD received its AARP card several years ago when it turned 50 and is routinely declared dead (or read here) even though it continues to evolve along SSD maturing and both expanding into different markets as well as usage roles.

For those who have not read previous posts about Hybrid Hard Disk Drives (HHDDs) and the Seagate Momentus XT you can find them here and here.

Since my last post, I have been using the HHDDs extensively and recently installed the latest firmware. The release of new HHDD firmware by Seagate for the Momentus XT (SD 25) like its predecessor SD24 cleaned up some annoyances and improved on overall stability. Here is a Seagate post by Mark Wojtasiak discussing SD25 and feedback obtained via the Momentus XT forum from customers.

If you have never done a HDD firmware update, its not as bad or intimidating as might be expected. The Seagate firmware update tools make it very easy, that is assuming you have a recent good backup of your data (one that can be restored) and about 10 to 15 minutes of time for a couple of reboots.

Speaking of stability, the Momentus XT HHDDs have been performing well helping to speed up accessing large documents on various projects including those for my new book. Granted an SSD would be faster across the board, however the large capacity at the price point of the HHDD is what makes it a hybrid value proposition. As I have said in previous posts, if you have the need for speed all of the time and time is money, get an SSD. Likewise if you need as much capacity as you can get and performance is not your primary objective, then leverage the high capacity HDDs. On the other hand, if you need a balance of some performance boost with capacity boost and a good value, then check out the HHDDs.

Image of Momentus XT courtesy of www.Seagate.com

Lets shift gears from that of the product or technology to that of common questions that I get asked about HHDDs.

Common questions I get asked about HHDDs include:

What is a Hybrid Hard Disk Drive?

A Hybrid Hard Disk Drive includes a combination of rotating HDD, solid state flash persistent memory along with volatile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) in an integrated package or product. The value proposition and benefit is a balance of performance and capacity at a good price for those environments, systems or applications that do not need all SSD performance (and cost) vs. those that need some performance in addition to large capacity.

How the Seagate Momentus XT differs from other Hybrid Disks?
One approach is to take a traditional HDD and pair it with a SSD using a controller packaged in various ways. For example on a large scale, HDDs and SSDs coexist in the same tiered storage system being managed by the controllers, storage processors or nodes in the solution including automated tiering and cache promotion or demotion. The main difference however between other storage systems, tiering and pairing and HHDDs is that in the case of the Momentus XT the HDD, SLC flash (SSD functionality) and RAM cache and their management are all integrated within the disk drive enclosure.

Do I use SSDs and HDDs or just HHDDs?
I have HHDDs installed internally in my laptops. I also have HDDs which are installed in servers, NAS and disk to disk (D2D) backup devices and Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) along with external SSD and Removable Hard Disk Drives (RHDDs). The RHDDs are used for archive and master or gold copy data protection that go offsite complimenting how I also use cloud backup services as part of my data protection strategy.

What are the technical specifications of a HHDD such as the Seagate Momentus XT?
3Gbs SATA interface, 2.5 inch 500GB 7,200 RPM HDD with 32MB RAM cache and integrated 4GByte SLC flash all managed via internal drive processor. Power consumption varies depending what the device is doing such as initial power up, idle, normal or other operating modes. You can view the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB (ST95005620AS which is what I have) specifications here as well as the product manual here.


One of my HHDDs on a note pad (paper) and other accessories

Do you need a special controller or management software?
Generally speaking no, the HHDD that I have been using plugged and played into my existing laptops internal bay replacing the HDD that came with those systems. No extra software was needed for Windows, no data movement or migration tools needed other than when initially copying from the source HDD to the new HHDD. The HHDD do their own caching, read ahead and write behind independent of the operating system or controller. Now the reason I say generally speaking is that like many devices, some operating systems or controllers may be able to leverage advanced features so check your particular system capabilities.

How come the storage system vendors are not talking about these HHDDs?
Good question which I assume it has a lot to do with the investment (people, time, engineering, money and marketing) that they have or are making in controller and storage system software functionality to effectively create hybrid tiered storage systems using SSD and HDDs on different scales. There have been some packaged HHDD systems or solutions brought to market by different vendors that combine HDD and SSD into a single physical package glued together with some software and controllers or processors to appear as a single system. I would not be surprised to see discrete HHDDs (where the HDD and flash SSD and RAM are all one integrated product) appear in lower end NAS or multifunction storage systems as well as for backup, dedupe or other system that requires large amounts of capacity space and performance boost now and then.

Why do I think this? Simple, say you have five HHDDs each with 500GB of capacity configured as a RAID5 set resulting in 2TByte of capacity. Using as a hypothetical example the Momentus XT yields 5 x 4GByte or 20GByte of flash cache helps accelerate write operations during data dumps, backup or other updates. Granted that is an overly simplified example and storage systems can be found with hundreds of GByte of cache, however think in terms of value or low cost balancing performance and capacity to cost for different usage scenarios. For example, applications such as bulk or scale out file and object storage including cloud or big data, entertainment, Server (Citrix/Xen, Microsoft/HyperV, VMware/vSphere) and Desktop virtualization or VDI, Disk to Disk (D2D) backup, business analytics among others. The common tenets of those applications and usage scenario is a combination of I/O and storage consolidation in a cost effective manner addressing the continuing storage capacity to I/O performance gap.

Data Center and I/O Bottlenecks

Storage and I/O performance gap

Do you have to backup HHDDs?
Yes, just as you would want to backup or protect any SSD or HHD device or system.

How does data get moved between the SSD and the HDD?
Other than the initial data migration from the old HDD (or SSD) to the HHDD, unless you are starting with a new system, once your data and applications exist on the HHDD, it automatically via the internal process of the device manages the RAM, flash and HDD activity. Unlike in a tiered storage system where data blocks or files may be moved between different types of storage devices, inside the HHDD, all data gets written to the HDD, however the flash and RAM are used as buffers for caching depending on activity needs. If you have sat through or listened to a NetApp or HDS use of cache for tiering discussion what the HHDDs do is similar in concept however on a smaller scale at the device level, potentially even in a complimentary mode in the future? Other functions performed inside the HHDD by its processor includes reading and writing, managing the caches, bad block replacement or re vectoring on the HDD, wear leveling of the SLC flash and other routine tasks such as integrity checks and diagnostics. Unlike paired storage solutions where data gets moved between tiers or types of devices, once data is stored in the HHDD, it is managed by the device similar to how a SSD or HDD would move blocks of data to and from the specific media along with leveraging RAM cache as a buffer.

Where is the controller that manages the SSD and HDD?
The HHDD itself is the controller per say in that the internal processor that manages the HDD also directly access the RAM and flash.

What type of flash is used and will it wear out?
The XT uses SLC (single level cell) flash which with wear leveling has a good duty cycle (life span) and is what is typically found in higher end flash SSD solutions vs. lower cost MLC (multi level cell)

Have I lost any data from it yet?
No, at least nothing that was not my own fault from saving the wrong file in the wrong place and having to recover from one of my recent D2D copies or the cloud. Oh, regarding what have I done with the HDDs that were replaced by the HHDDs? They are now an extra gold master backup copy as of a particular point in time and are being kept in a safe secure facility, encrypted of course.

Have you noticed a performance improvement?
Yes, performance will vary however in many cases I have seen performance comparable to SSD on both reads and writes as long as the HDDs keep up with the flash and RAM cache. Even as larger amounts of data are written, I have seen better performance than compared to HDDs. The caveat however is that initially you may see little to marginal performance improvement however over time, particularly on the same files, performance tends to improve. Working on large tens to hundreds of MByte size documents I noticed good performance when doing saves compared to working with them on a HDD.

What do the HHDDs cost?
Amazon.com has the 500GB model for about $100 which is about $40 to $50 less than when I bought my most recent one last fall. I have heard from other people that you can find them at even lower prices at other venues. In the theme of disclosures, I bought one of my HHDDs from Amazon and Seagate gave me one to test.

Will I buy more HHDDs or switch to SSDs?
Where applicable I will add SSDs as well as HDDs, however where possible and practical, I will also add HHDDs perhaps even replacing the HDDs in my NAS system with HHDDs at some time or maybe trying them in a DVR.

What is the down side to the HHDDs?
Im generating and saving more data on the devices at a faster rate which means that when I installed them I was wondering if I would ever fill up a 500GB drive. I still have hundreds of GBytes free or available for use, however I also am able to cary more reference data or information than in the past. In addition to more reference data including videos, audio, images, slide decks and other content, I have also been able to keep more versions or copies of documents which has been handy on the book project. Data that changes gets backed up D2D as well as to my cloud provider including while traveling. Leveraging compression and dedupe, given that many chapters or other content are similar, not as much data actually gets transmitted when doing cloud backups which has been handy when doing a backup from a airplane flying over the clouds. A wish for the XT type of HHDD that I have is for vendors such as Seagate to add Self Encrypting Disk (SED) capabilities to them along with applying continued intelligent power management (IPM) enhancements.

Why do I like the HHDD?
Simple, it solves both business and technology challenges while being an enabler, it gives me a balance of performance for productivity and capacity in a cost effective manner while being transparent to the systems it works with.

Here are some related links to additional material:
Data Center I/O Bottlenecks Performance Issues and Impacts
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?
Seagate Momentus XT SD 25 firmware
Seagate Momentus XT SD25 firmware update coming this week
A Storage I/O Momentus Moment
Another StorageIO Hybrid Momentus Moment
As the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) continues to spin
Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?
Funeral for a Friend
As the Hard Disk Drive (HDD) continues to spin
Seagate Momentus XT product specifications
Seagate Momentus XT product manual
Technology Tiering, Servers Storage and Snow Removal
Self Encrypting Disks (SEDs)

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

Posted on

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

The new Green IT: Efficient, Effective, Smart and Productive

Given the buzz about big data and conversations or confusion around clouds along with virtualizing virtually anything possible, Green IT has fallen off the Buzzword Bingo Bandwagon.

Green IT like so many other buzzwords and trends typically go through a hype cycle before getting tired, worn out, or disillusioned (see here and here). Often these buzzwords will go to Some Day Isle for some rest and recuperation before reappearing later as part of a second or third buzzword wave either making it to broad adoption which means the plateau of profitability (for vendors or vars) and productivity (for customers) or disappearing.

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.

Keep in mind that industry adoption (e.g. everybody is talking about it) can differ from industry deployment (e.g. some people have actually paid for, deployed and using the technology) to broad customer adoption (e.g. many people are actually paying for, deploying and using the technology on a routine basis).

Confusion still reigns around Green IT not surprising given the heavy dose of Green Washing that has occurred.

Consequently Green IT themes or pitches often fall on deaf ears as people have either become numb or ignore the Green washing hype or FUD. For example many people will skip reading this post because the word Green is in the title assuming that it is another CO2 or related themed piece missing out on the other themes or messages here. Unfortunately as I have discussed in the past, there remains a Green Gap that results in missed opportunities for vendors, vars, service providers, IT organizations along with those who would like to see environmental benefits or change.

Another example of a Green gap is messaging around energy avoidance as being efficient vs. using energy in a more productive or effective manner (doing more work with the same or fewer resources) shown in the figure below.

Tiered Storage
Expanding focus from energy avoidance to energy usage effectiveness

In routine conversations with IT professionals it is clear that the Green Gap and thus missed opportunities will continue for some time until the business and economic values of efficient, effective, smart and productive IT are understood to have environmental benefits as a by product and thus being Green. Watch for more missed messaging around CO2 and related themes popular with so called Greenies (or if you prefer environmentalists) that miss the mark with most business and IT organizations.

Business and thus IT are driven by economics and as such will invest where they can reduce complexity and costs, become more efficient and effective while increasing productivity and reducing waste by working smarter. In other words, by changing how information services are delivered in a smarter more effective efficient manner maximizes what resources are used enabling more to be done in a denser footprint (budget, people staffing, management, power, cooling, floor space) that have positive environmental benefits. Put another way, a benefit for IT organizations to remove complexity results in lower costs, by becoming more efficient and effective reducing waste results in better productivity and fewer missed opportunities meaning enhanced profits. The net result is that environmental concerns get a free ride or being funded as a result of IT organizations improving their productivity which of course should have a business benefit.

Efficient and Optimized IT Wheel of Oppourtunity
Wheel of Opportunity: Various techniques and technologies for infrastructure optimization

Efficient and effective IT (aka the other Green IT) that links to common technology and business issues with the benefit of helping the environment can be accomplished using a combination approaches. The approaches for enabling an efficient, effective, smarter and productive IT environment includes from a generic perspective various technologies, techniques and best practices shown in the wheel of opportunity figure.

For example:

Here are some related links for additional reading:

Also check out my book for enabling efficient, effective and smart IT The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) including a free sample chapter download here.

Ok, nuff said for now, go hug a tree, your computer, hybrid car, droid, ipad or whatever suits your needs.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), 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

Posted on

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 2006-2026 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Posted on

E2E Awareness and insight for IT environments

I recently did a couple of Industry Trends and Perspectives webcast events around the topic and themes of End to End (E2E) awareness and cross domain (or technology) management insight for cloud, virtual and other abstracted as well as physical IT environments.

The importance of E2E awareness of IT resources across different technology domains (or focus areas) is that you can not effectively manage what you do not have timely access or visibility into. Hence the theme of session being You cannot effectively manage what you do not know about in a timely manner.

Here is the abstract for the webcast:

Virtualization, clouds and other forms of abstraction help IT organizations enable flexible and scalable services delivery. While abstraction of underlying resources simplifies services delivery from an IT customers perspective, additional layers of technology along with interdependencies still need to be tracked as well as managed.  A key enabler for IT organizations is having end to end (E2E) situational awareness of available resources and how they are being used. By having timely situational awareness across various technology domains, IT organizations gain insight into how resources can be more effectively deployed in an efficient manner.

Join independent IT industry analyst, author and blogger Greg Schulz as he looks at common challenges as well as opportunities for leveraging E2E situational awareness to remove blind spots from efficient effective IT services delivery. Greg will look several scenarios including among others cost reduction, maximize resource usage, shrink migration and data consolidation times for cloud, virtual and traditional IT environments while maintaining or enhancing IT services delivery.

If you are interested in IT Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) of servers, storage, IO networking, virtualization, cloud, backup or restore, optimization as well as cloud or legacy environments and metrics, I invite you to view the following web cast.

E2E cross domain awareness webcast

Click on the above image to access the BrightTalk web cast from their recent Virtualization Summit series (may require registration)

If you are interested, here is a link to a previous post I did on E2E management, SRA (systems or storage resource analysis) and management insight along with a recent related white paper sponsored by SANpulse that you can access here.

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 2006-2026 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

Posted on

End to End (E2E) Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) for Cloud and Virtual Environments

A new StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper titled “End to End (E2E) Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) for Cloud, Virtual and Abstracted Environments” is now available at www.storageioblog.com/reports compliments of SANpulse technologies.

End to End (E2E) Systems Resource Analysis (SRA) for Virtual, Cloud and abstracted environments: Importance of Situational Awareness for Virtual and Abstracted Environments

Abstract:
Many organizations are in the planning phase or already executing initiatives moving their IT applications and data to abstracted, cloud (public or private) virtualized or other forms of efficient, effective dynamic operating environments. Others are in the process of exploring where, when, why and how to use various forms of abstraction techniques and technologies to address various issues. Issues include opportunities to leverage virtualization and abstraction techniques that enable IT agility, flexibility, resiliency and salability in a cost effective yet productive manner.

An important need when moving to a cloud or virtualized dynamic environment is to have situational awareness of IT resources. This means having insight into how IT resources are being deployed to support business applications and to meet service objectives in a cost effective manner.

Awareness of IT resource usage provides insight necessary for both tactical and strategic planning as well as decision making. Effective management requires insight into not only what resources are at hand but also how they are being used to decide where different applications and data should be placed to effectively meet business requirements.

Learn more about the importance and opportunities associated with gaining situational awareness using E2E SRA for virtual, cloud and abstracted environments in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of SANpulse technologies by clicking here.

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 2006-2026 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved