The following are a collection of on-going industry trends and perspectives poll’s pertaining to server, storage, IO, networking, cloud, virtualization, data protection (backup, archive, BC and DR) among other related themes and topics.
In addition to those listed below, check out the comments section where additional poll’s are added over time.
I just received an email in my inbox from Voltaire along with a pile of other advertisements, advisories, alerts and announcements from other folks.
What caught my eye on the email was that it is announcing a new survey results that you can read here as well as below.
The question that this survey announcements prompts for me and hence why I am posting it here is how dominant will InfiniBand be on a go forward basis, the answer I think is it depends…
It depends on the target market or audience, what their applications and technology preferences are along with other service requirements.
I think that there is and will remain a place for Infiniband, the question is where and for what types of environments as well as why have both InfiniBand and Ethernet including Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) in support of unified or converged I/O and data networking.
So here is the note that I received from Voltaire:
Hello,
A new survey by Voltaire (NASDAQ: VOLT) reveals that IT executives plan to use InfiniBand and Ethernet technologies together as they refresh or build new data centers. They’re choosing a converged network strategy to improve fabric performance which in turn furthers their infrastructure consolidation and efficiency objectives.
The full press release is below. Please contact me if you would like to speak with a Voltaire executive for further commentary.
Regards, Christy
____________________________________________________________ Christy Lynch| 978.439.5407(o) |617.794.1362(m) Director, Corporate Communications Voltaire – The Leader in Scale-Out Data Center Fabrics christyl@voltaire.com |www.voltaire.com Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/voltaireltd
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
IT Survey Finds Executives Planning Converged Network Strategy: Using Both InfiniBand and Ethernet
Fabric Performance Key to Making Data Centers Operate More Efficiently
CHELMSFORD, Mass. and ANANA, Israel January 12, 2010 – A new survey by Voltaire (NASDAQ: VOLT) reveals that IT executives plan to use InfiniBand and Ethernet technologies together as they refresh or build new data centers. They’re choosing a converged network strategy to improve fabric performance which in turn furthers their infrastructure consolidation and efficiency objectives.
Voltaire queried more than 120 members of the Global CIO & Executive IT Group, which includes CIOs, senior IT executives, and others in the field that attended the 2009 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. The survey explored their data center networking needs, their choice of interconnect technologies (fabrics) for the enterprise, and criteria for making technology purchasing decisions.
“Increasingly, InfiniBand and Ethernet share the ability to address key networking requirements of virtualized, scale-out data centers, such as performance, efficiency, and scalability,” noted Asaf Somekh, vice president of marketing, Voltaire. “By adopting a converged network strategy, IT executives can build on their pre-existing investments, and leverage the best of both technologies.”
When asked about their fabric choices, 45 percent of the respondents said they planned to implement both InfiniBand with Ethernet as they made future data center enhancements. Another 54 percent intended to rely on Ethernet alone.
Among additional survey results:
When asked to rank the most important characteristics for their data center fabric, the largest number (31 percent) cited high bandwidth. Twenty-two percent cited low latency, and 17 percent said scalability.
When asked about their top data center networking priorities for the next two years, 34 percent again cited performance. Twenty-seven percent mentioned reducing costs, and 16 percent cited improving service levels.
A majority (nearly 60 percent) favored a fabric/network that is supported or backed by a global server manufacturer.
InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect technologies are widely used in today’s data centers to speed up and make the most of computing applications, and to enable faster sharing of data among storage and server networks. Voltaire’s server and storage fabric switches leverage both technologies for optimum efficiency. The company provides InfiniBand products used in supercomputers, high-performance computing, and enterprise environments, as well as its Ethernet products to help a broad array of enterprise data centers meet their performance requirements and consolidation plans.
About Voltaire Voltaire (NASDAQ: VOLT) is a leading provider of scale-out computing fabrics for data centers, high performance computing and cloud environments. Voltaire’s family of server and storage fabric switches and advanced management software improve performance of mission-critical applications, increase efficiency and reduce costs through infrastructure consolidation and lower power consumption. Used by more than 30 percent of the Fortune 100 and other premier organizations across many industries, including many of the TOP500 supercomputers, Voltaire products are included in server and blade offerings from Bull, HP, IBM, NEC and Sun. Founded in 1997, Voltaire is headquartered in Ra’anana, Israel and Chelmsford, Massachusetts. More information is available at www.voltaire.com or by calling 1-800-865-8247.
Forward Looking Statements Information provided in this press release may contain statements relating to current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about future events that are "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally relate to Voltaire’s plans, objectives and expectations for future operations and are based upon management’s current estimates and projections of future results or trends. They also include third-party projections regarding expected industry growth rates. Actual future results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These factors include, but are not limited to, those discussed under the heading "Risk Factors" in Voltaire’s annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2008. These forward-looking statements are made only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
###
All product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
End of Voltaire transmission:
I/O, storage and networking interface wars come and go similar to other technology debates of what is the best or that will be supreme.
Some recent debates have been around Fibre Channel vs. iSCSI or iSCSI vs. Fibre Channel (depends on your perspective), SAN vs. NAS, NAS vs. SAS, SAS vs. iSCSI or Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel vs. Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) vs. iSCSI vs. InfiniBand, xWDM vs. SONET or MPLS, IP vs UDP or other IP based services, not to mention the whole LAN, SAN, MAN, WAN POTS and PAN speed games of 1G, 2G, 4G, 8G, 10G, 40G or 100G. Of course there are also the I/O virtualization (IOV) discussions including PCIe Single Root (SR) and Multi Root (MR) for attachment of SAS/SATA, Ethernet, Fibre Channel or other adapters vs. other approaches.
Thus when I routinely get asked about what is the best, my answer usually is a qualified it depends based on what you are doing, trying to accomplish, your environment, preferences among others. In other words, Im not hung up or tied to anyone particular networking transport, protocol, network or interface, rather, the ones that work and are most applicable to the task at hand
Now getting back to Voltaire and InfiniBand which I think has a future for some environments, however I dont see it being the be all end all it was once promoted to be. And outside of the InfiniBand faithful (there are also iSCSI, SAS, Fibre Channel, FCoE, CEE and DCE among other devotees), I suspect that the results would be mixed.
I suspect that the Voltaire survey reflects that as well as if I surveyed an Ethernet dominate environment I can take a pretty good guess at the results, likewise for a Fibre Channel, or FCoE influenced environment. Not to mention the composition of the environment, focus and business or applications being supported. One would also expect a slightly different survey results from the likes of Aprius, Broadcom, Brocade, Cisco, Emulex, Mellanox (they also are involved with InfiniBand), NextIO, Qlogic (they actually do some Infiniband activity as well), Virtensys or Xsigo (actually, they support convergence of Fibre Channel and Ethernet via Infiniband) among others.
Ok, so what is your take?
Whats your preffered network interface for convergence?
For additional reading, here are some related links:
Also check out what others including Scott Lowe have to say about IOV here or, Stuart Miniman about FCoE here, or of Greg Ferro here.
Oh, and for what its worth for those concerned about FTC disclosure, Voltaire is not nor have they been a client of StorageIO, however, I did used to work for a Fibre Channel, iSCSI, IP storage, LAN, SAN, MAN, WAN vendor and wrote a book on the topics :).
Realizing that some preferblogs to webs to twitter to other venues, here are some recent links to articles, tips, videos, webcasts and other content that have appeared in different venues since August 2009.
i365 Guest Interview: Experts Corner: Q&A with Greg Schulz December 2009
SearchStorage AU: Is tape the right backup medium for smaller businesses? August 2009
ITworld: The new green data center: From energy avoidance to energy efficiency August 2009
Video and podcasts include: December 2009 Video: Green Storage: Metrics and measurement for management insight Discussion between Greg Schulz and Mark Lewis of TechTarget the importance of metrics and measurement to gauge productivity and efficiency for Green IT and enabling virtual information factories. Click here to watch the Video.
December 2009 Podcast: iSCSI SANs can be a good fit for SMB storage Discussion between Greg Schulz and Andrew Burton of TechTarget about iSCSI and other related technologies for SMB storage. Click here to listen to the podcast.
December 2009 Podcast: RAID Data Protection Discussion Discussion between Greg Schulz and Andrew Burton of TechTarget about RAID data proteciton, techniques and technologies. Click here to listen to the podcast.
December 2009 Podcast: Green IT, Effiency and Productivity Discussion Discussion between Greg Schulz and Jon Flower of Adaptec about data Green IT, energy effiency, inteligent power management (IPM) also known as MAID 2.0 and other forms of optimization techniques including SSD. Click here to listen to the podcast sponsored by Adaptec.
November 2009 Podcast: Reducing your data footprint impact Even though many enterprise data storage environments are coping with tightened budgets and reduced spending, overall net storage capacity is increasing. In this interview, Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst at StorageIO Group, discusses how storage managers can reduce their data footprint. Schulz touches on the importance of managing your data footprint on both online and offline storage, as well as the various tools for doing so, including data archiving, thin provisioning and data deduplication. Click here to listen to the podcast.
October 2009 Podcast: Enterprise data storage technologies rise from the dead In this interview, Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst of the Storage I/O group, classifies popular technologies such as solid-state drives (SSDs), RAID and Fibre Channel (FC) as “zombie” technologies. Why? These are already set to become part of standard storage infrastructures, says Schulz, and are too old to be considered fresh. But while some consider these technologies to be stale, users should expect to see them in their everyday lives. Click here to listen to the podcast.
Not to mention those over at Storage Monkeys and the customer collective among others
Before jumping to what will be hot or a flop in 2010, what do you think were the successful as well as disappointing technologies, trends, events, products or vendors of 2009?
Cast your including adding in your own nominations in the two polls below.
What technologies, events, products or vendors did not live up to 2009 predictions?
What do you think were top 2009 technologies, events or vendors?
Note:
Feel free to vote early and often, however be advised, you will have to be creative in doing so as single balloting per IP and cookies are enabled to keep things on the down low.
EMC and Cisco recently announced their new Acadia VCE coalition along with Intel and VMware.
As part of the VCE the collation or joint venture is also providing to market pre-acted vblocks that include Cisco servers power by Intel and network switches, EMC storage and management tools (Inonx and RSA for security), VMware vsphere virtualization along with pre-post sales services.
How does this move from a technology, packaging, integration as well as business or alliance perspective change the server, storage, networking, hardware, software and services game?
Whats your take?
Cheers gs
Greg Schulz – StorageIO, Author “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC)
If you have not heard or read yet, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week released new guidelines pertaining to blogger (or other social media) disclosure of if they are being paid, receiving free products or services, or simply had their costs covered to attend an event that they will be writing, posting or blogging about.
Not surprisingly, there are those who are up in arms, those that are cheering that its about time, and everyone else trying to figure out what the new rules mean, who they apply to and when. For some I expect to see a rash of disclosures by those not sure what it means or being safe while others continue to do what they have been doing, business or blogging or both as usual. As with many things, all bloggers do not get paid or receive renumeration (compensation in some shape or form) for what they write or blog, however there are some that do and is often the case, a few bad apples turn a good thing into a problem or black-eye for everyone else.
Here’s a couple of links for some background: Discussion over at StorageMonkeys.com pertaining to IT/Storage Analysts Discussion at Blogher.com what the FTC guides mean to you FTC blogger guidelines
I interpret the new FTC guidelines as pertaining to me or anyone else who has a blog regardless of if they are a social media elite professional or just for fun blogger, blog on their own time for work our their own other purposes, for profit, as a media or journalist, reporter or freelance writer, consultant or contractor, vendor or customer. My view and its just that, a view is that blogs, along with other forms of social media are tools for communication, collaborating and conversation. Thus, I have a blog, twitter, website, facebook, linkedin along with having material appear in print, on-line as well as in person, all are simply different means for interacting and communications.
As with any new communication venue, there is an era of wide open and what some might call the wide open use such as we are seeing with social media mediums today, the web in general in the past, not to mention print, TV or radio in the past.
I’m reading into these guidelines as a maturing process and acknowledgement that social media including blogs have now emerged into a viable and full fledged communication medium that consumers utilize for making decisions, thus guides need to be in place.
I like other bloggers are wondering abut the details including when to disclose something, how the guidelines will be enforced among other questions, that is unless you are one that does not believe the guidelines apply to yourself.
With all of this in mind, here’s a new poll, what’s your take on the FTC guidelines?
As for my own disclosures, look for them in white papers, articles, blogs and other venues as applicable.
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