Tag: RPO

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RTO Context Matters

RTO Context Matters

With RTO context matters similar to many things in and around Information Technology (IT) among other industries. Various three (or more) letter acronyms (TLAs) have different meanings based on their context. An example of a TLA is RTO which has different meanings. For  instance, RTO can mean:

    • Return To Office
    • Recovery Time Objective
    • Ready To Operate
    • Return To Operations
    • Among others…

From the data protection and cyber resilience context, RTO has traditionally been thought of as a Recovery Time Objective or the amount of time that something should be able to be restored, recovered, rebuilt, reset, or returned to service, aka being usable. Another way of looking at Recovery Time Objective is the goal or requirement that something is ready to operate, enabling an organization and its IT services apps, data, and information to return to operations.

Data Infrastructures and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)
Figure 1 Data Infrastructures and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)

RTO Recovery Time Object Context

Where context is needed is not just simply what RTO is being discussed, e.g., recovery time objective; also, what is the scope of the recovery time objective? Is it all-inclusive for a specific component, layer, or focus point? A holistic RTO is when everything in the stack, vertical up and down all layers of hardware, software, services, and, if applicable, also horizontal across different systems, platforms, and locations, is usable. For example, when a user can access an app from various places, and everything is functioning, perhaps not at full or regular speed, it is functioning.

Data Infrastructures and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) layers
Figure 2 Various Threats and Data Infrastructure Layers

Recovery Time Objective Focus

On the other hand, component RTO refers to a specific focus area, point, or location in the stack (figure 2). For example, a lower-level server, network, storage device, physical or virtual machine, container, file system, database repository, or application is restored or returned to readiness and operation. The individual components may be restored to operating; however, what about the sum of all the parts that make up the holistic solution or service the user sees and expects to be in working condition?

Additional Resources Where to learn more

The following links are additional resources to learn more about Recovery Time Objectives (RTO)  and related data infrastructures, tradecraft, and metrics that matter topics.

Various excerpts from Chapter 9 Software Defined Data Infrastructure book
Modernizing Data Protection (Blog Post)
Data Protection Diaries (Blog Post)
Availability and Accessibility (Article)

Additional learning experiences along with common questions (and answers), are found in my Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press) by Greg Schulz

What this all means

RTO context matters, not only for which RTO but also if it refers to a holistic compound aggregate scope or that of a component. While component RTOs are essential, so is the holistic focus of when things are usable.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers Gs

Greg Schulz – Nine time Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management and Azure Storage, along with previous ten-time VMware vExpert. 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 UnlimitedIO LLC.

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March 31st is world backup day; when is world recovery day

March 31st is world backup day; when is world recovery day

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day?

For several years, if not decades, March 31st has been world backup day, a reminder to protect and backup your apps and data. Data protection, including backup, recovery, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), and business resilience (BR), should be a 365-day-a-year focus. If you have regular data protection, including backup, that is great; when was the last time you tested restore?

Some related content

Upcoming and past events including webinars, tips and commentary
World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery
Data Infrastructure Overview, Its What’s Inside of a Data Center
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Protection Diaries Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips

Reminder to Protect your data and apps and settings

Thus, this is also a reminder to protect your data and apps and their settings regularly. What’s even better is evolving from none once a year to more frequent data protection, including backup of your critical and noncritical apps and data. Notice I keep mentioning apps and not just the usual focus of or on data. Program apps are considered broadly data; after all, apps and your settings and metadata are just data when stored and protected.

There is also often a focus on just the data, which can lead to problems when it comes time to recover an app program, settings, or metadata. Also, a reminder that data protection, including backup, is not just for large enterprises; it applies to organizations and entities of all sizes, including small and medium businesses (SMBs), non-profits, and homes (e.g., your photos, worksheets, and other documents).

What About Recovery

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? So far, I have been talking about backup as part of data protection or ensuring your apps, data, and settings are protected; what about recovery?

Sometimes with data protection, discussions can drift into what’s more critical, backup or recovery, which is a bit like a chicken and egg situation. In other words, what’s more important, the chicken or the egg? Similar to data protection, what’s more critical, backup or recovery?

Recovery is only as good as your backup (or snapshot, point-in-time copy, checkpoint, or consistency point), and your backup or protection copy is only as good as its recoverability. Recoverability means that not only is there something to restore from a point in time (e.g., recovery point objective or RPO) in a given amount of time (recovery time objective or RTO).

Recoverability also means that you can pull the data (e.g., bits, bytes, blocks, blobs, objects, files, tables) from the protection medium, media, or service and use it. Recovery means that the data is valid and consistent, has integrity, or is otherwise not bad, missing, damaged, or corrupted (e.g., usable).

What About Recovery Day?

For several years I have mentioned and will continue to do so that if March 31st is world backup day, then April 1st should be a world recovery day. So why April 1st for world recovery day? Simple, you don’t want to look like a fool the day after world backup day if you can’t restore and use data backed up the day before.

If you are not comfortable with April 1st for world recovery day? Then make your world recovery day (or test) a day or so later. The important message is to ensure your apps, data, and settings are protected (e.g., copied, backed up, snapshot, checkpoint, etc.), trust yet verify, and test your restorations.

Why do I mentation apps, data, and settings?

The important message here is that it is good if you are already protecting your data, your spreadsheets, worksheets, databases, files, photos, and the application programs that use them. However, also ensure that you are protecting application settings, configurations, metadata, encryption keys, the backup or protection mechanisms, and their data.

For example, when I accidentally delete a data file or configuration settings, I can restore those without recovering everything. Suppose, for instance, I accidentally or intentionally uninstall an application program. In that case, I can reinstall (assuming I have a copy of the program), then restore my settings and pick up where I resumed.

Who does this apply to?

From organizations of size and type to individuals. If you have or generate or save data, if it is worth having (or you have to keep it), then it should be protected. What how often to protect data (time interval) will be based on what your recovery point objective (RPO) is. Likewise how fast you need to recover with your recovery time objective (RTO).

Remember that it is not if you will need to restore, recover, reload, refresh, or repair your apps, data, and settings instead when. It might be because of accidental or planned deletion, accident, hardware, software, cloud service situation, ransomware, or malware, among other things that can and do happen.

What to do?

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? Ensure you have regular copies of your apps, data, and configuration settings, including encryption keys. Implement a variation of the old school three two one (e.g., 3 2 1) data protection, e.g., backup scheme (e.g., three or more copies, stored on two or more devices, systems, media or mediums, and at least one of them offsite preferably offline including at cloud).

A variation of the new school 4 3 2 1 data protection scheme has:
Have four or more versions of your protected data.
Three or more copies (feel free to swap the number of copies and versions).
Stored on two or more different systems (devices, media, or locations).
At least one copy offsite (preferably with one offline), including cloud.

The big difference between the old school 3 2 1 and the new school 4 3 2 1 is the emphasis and distinction of having multiple copies and various versions (e.g., points in time). For example, storing three copies on two systems with one offsite is good unless all copies are damaged. Having different versions (e.g., point in time) and multiple copies of those versions stored in different places including at least one offline (e.g., air-gapped), is essential.

Trust yet verify, test your backups and recovery

Test to verify your data protection is working and that data (apps, data, settings) can be restored. When testing restores, be careful not to overwrite your good data and cause a disaster. Also, ensure your data is encrypted in multiple locations and layers and that you protect your encryption keys. Finally, make sure your backup, protection software, catalog, and settings are encrypted, secured, and protected.

If you have questions, not sure, learn more here in my book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), Data Infrastructure Management Insight and Strategies (CRC Press), as well as check out these listed below, or reach out to me or others. If you are an individual consumer and just looking to protect some photos, valuable documents, and heirlooms, get in touch with professionals who specialize in these types of things.

What do I do?

Implement 4 3 2 1 type data protection with different granularities and frequencies. For example, my data protection includes regular point-in-time copies, including backups and snapshots, checkpoints, consistency points of systems, volumes, shares, apps, files, data, and settings at different intervals. Having different types of apps and data, some of which are more static vs. others that are changing, protection is also varied to avoid treating everything the same, reduce cost, and increase coverage.

I protect my Apps, data, and settings with multiple versions and copies locally on different systems, devices, mediums, and offsite, including offline and at cloud services. So why do I store data offsite vs. having it all in the cloud? Simple, speed of recovery, and flexibility.

If it’s a few files, perhaps a few GBs of data, it is usually faster for me if I don’t have a good copy locally to get it from Microsoft Azure. Otoh, if I need to restore TBs of data (something terrible happens), then it can be faster to bring an offline, offsite copy back, correct that, then only pull the more recent data I need from the cloud.

What are some of the tools and technologies that I use?

Locally I have multiple Microsoft Windows Servers (Server 2022) with various storage (HDDs and SSDs), including removable devices. In addition to on-prem, I have data stored offsite on removable media and cloud copies. For my cloud copies, I have a mix of files and blobs stored at Microsoft Azure.

A challenge moving from AWS to Azure was Retrospect did not support objects (Azure blobs). I realized, no worries, Retrospect supports storing data on local storage (SSD or HDD) on regular filesystems as files. The solution was set up an Azure file share for Retrospect, and everything has worked fantastic.

Are there things I need and want to improve? Yes, it’s an ongoing process and journey.

What should you do next?

Make sure you have a data backup; if not, march 31st is a good reminder. Trust yet verify your backups are working and you can recover and not be an April 1st fool.

Where to learn more

Learn more about world backup day, recovery and data protection along with other related topics via the following links:

Upcoming and past events including webinars, tips and commentary
Next Generation Hybrid Data Infrastructures Are In Your Future
Cloud File Data Storage Consolidation and Economic Comparison Model
New Book Data Infrastructure Management Insight Strategies
World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery
Virtual, Cloud and IT Availability, it’s a shared responsibility
Don’t Stop Learning Expand Your Skills Experiences Everyday
Data Infrastructure Overview, Its What’s Inside of a Data Center
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Protection Diaries Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O related Tradecraft Overview

Additional learning experiences can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book. Also check out Data Infrastructure Management Insight and Strategies.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC backup restore data protection cloud storage containers data footprint reduction

What this all means

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? Every day should be a backup day (e.g., some protection, backup, copy, snapshot, checkpoint, consistency point). Likewise, every day should be able to be a recovery day. World backup day and recovery apply to organizations of all sizes and individuals. Remember that If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day?

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, ten-time VMware vExpert. Author of Data Infrastructure Insights (CRC Press), Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC). Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier). Visit twitter @storageio as well as www.picturesoverstillwater.com to view various UAS/UAV e.g. drone based aerial content created by Greg Schulz. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com. Any reproduction without attribution 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. Visit our companion site https://picturesoverstillwater.com to view drone based aerial photography and video related topics. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC.

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Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary
This is part one of a five-part series about Dell Technology World 2018 announcement summary. Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw). There were several announcements along with plenty of other activity from sessions, meetings, hallway and event networking taking place at Dell Technology World DTW 2018.

Major data infrastructure technology announcements include:

  • PowerMax all-flash array (AFA) solid state device (SSD) NVMe storage system
  • PowerEdge four-socket 2U and 4U rack servers
  • XtremIO X2 AFA SSD storage system updates
  • PowerEdge MX preview of future composable servers
  • Desktop and thin client along with other VDI updates
  • Cloud and networking enhancements

Besides the above, additional data infrastructure related announcements were made in association with Dell Technology family members including VMware along with other partners, as well as customer awards. Other updates and announcements were tied to business updates from Dell Technology, Dell Technical Capital (venture capital), and, Dell Financial Services.

Dell Technology World Buzzword Bingo Lineup

Some of the buzzword bingo terms, topics, acronyms from Dell Technology World 2018 included AFA, AI, Autonomous, Azure, Bare Metal, Big Data, Blockchain, CI, Cloud, Composable, Compression, Containers, Core, Data Analytics, Dedupe, Dell, DFS (Dell Financial Services), DFR (Data Footprint Reduction), Distributed Ledger, DL, Durability, Fabric, FPGA, GDPR, Gen-Z, GPU, HCI, HDD, HPC, Hybrid, IOP, Kubernetes, Latency, MaaS (Metal as a Service), ML, NFV, NSX, NVMe, NVMeoF, PACE (Performance Availability Capacity Economics), PCIe, Pivotal, PMEM, RAID, RPO, RTO, SAS, SATA, SC, SCM, SDDC, SDS, Socket, SSD, Stamp, TBW (Terabytes Written per day), VDI, venture capital, VMware and VR among others.

Dell Technology World 2018 Venue
Dell Technology World DTW 2018 Event and Venue

Dell Technology World 2018 was located at the combined Palazzo and Venetian hotels along with adjacent Sands Expo center kicking off Monday, April 30th and wrapping up May 4th.

The theme for Dell Technology World DTW 2018 was make it real, which in some ways was interesting given the focus on virtual including virtual reality (VR), software-defined data center (SDDC) virtualization, data infrastructure topics, along with artificial intelligence (AI).

Virtual Sky Dell Technology World 2018
Make it real – Venetian Palazzo St. Mark’s Square on the way to Sands Expo Center

There was plenty of AI, VR, SDDC along with other technologies, tools as well as some fun stuff to do including VR games.

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area
Dell Technology World Village Area near Key Note and Expo Halls

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Drones
Dell Technology World Drone Flying Area

During a break from some meetings, I used a few minutes to fly a drone using VR which was interesting. I Have been operating drones (See some videos here) visually without dependence on first-person view (FPV) or relying on extensive autonomous operations instead flying heads up by hand for several years. Needless to say, the VR was interesting, granted encountered a bit of vertigo that I had to get used to.

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Virtual Village
More views of the Dell Technology World Village and Commons Area with VR activity

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Virtual Village
Dell Technology World Village and VR area

Dell Technology World 2018 Commons Area Virtual Village
Dell Technology World Bean Bag Area

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Ok, nuff with the AI, ML, DL, VR fun, time to move on to the business and technology topics of Dell Technologies World 2018.

What was announced at Dell Technology World 2018 included among others:

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

Subsequent posts in this series take a deeper look at the various announcements as well as what they mean.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 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

On the surface it may appear that there was not much announced at Dell Technology World 2018 particular compared to some of the recent Dell EMC Worlds and EMC Worlds. However turns out that there was a lot announced, granted without some of the entertainment and circus like atmosphere of previous events. Continue reading here Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details in this series, along with Part III here, Part IV here (including PowerEdge MX composable infrastructure leveraging Gen-Z) and Part V (servers and converged) here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Summary
This is Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details that is part of a five-post series (view part I here, part III here, part IV here and part V here). Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw).

Dell Technology World 2018 Venue
Dell Technology World DTW 2018 Event and Venue

What was announced at Dell Technology World 2018 included among others:

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Dell Technologies data infrastructure related announcements included new solutions competencies and expanded services deployment competencies with partners to boost deal size and revenues. An Internet of Things (IoT) solution competency was added with others planned including High-Performance Computing (HPC) / Super Computing (SC), Data Analytics, Business Applications and Security related topics. Dell Financial Services flexible consumption models announced at Dell EMC World 2017 provide flexible financing options for both partners as well as their clients.

Flexible Dell Financial Services cloud-like consumption model (e.g., pay for what you use) enhancements include reduced entry points for the Flex on Demand solutions across the Dell EMC storage portfolio. For example, Flex on Demand velocity pricing models for Dell EMC Unity All-Flash Array (AFA) solid state device (SSD) storage solution, and XtremIO X2 AFA systems with price points of less than USD 1,000.00 per month. The benefit is that Dell partners have a financial vehicle to help their midrange customers run consumption-based financing for all-flash storage without custom configurations resulting in faster deployment opportunities.

In other partner updates, Dell Technologies is enhancing the incentive program Dell EMC MyRewards program to help drive new business. Dell EMC MyRewards Program is an opt-in, points-based reward program for solution provider sales reps and systems engineers. MyRewards program is slated to replace the existing Partner Advantage and Sell & Earn programs with bigger and better promotions (up to 3x bonus payout, simplified global claiming).

What this means for partners is the ability to earn more while offering their clients new solutions with flexible financing and consumption-based pricing among other options. Other partner enhancements include update demo program, Proof of Concept (POC) program, and IT transformation campaigns.

Powering up the Modern Data Center and Future of Work

Powering up the modern data center along with future of work, part of the make it real theme of Dell Technologies world 2018 includes data infrastructure server, storage, I/O networking hardware, software and service solutions. These data infrastructure solutions include NVMe based storage, Converged Infrastructure (CI), hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), software-defined data center (SDDC), VMware based multi-clouds, along with modular infrastructure resources.

In addition to server and storage data infrastructure resources form desktop to data center, Dell also has a focus of enabling traditional as well as emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) as well as analytics applications. Besides providing data infrastructure resources to support AI, ML, DL, IoT and other applications along with their workloads, Dell is leveraging AI technology in some of their products for example PowerMax.

Other Dell Technologies announcements include Virtustream cloud risk management and compliance, along with Epic and SAP Digital Health healthcare software solutions. In addition to Virtustream, Dell Technologies cloud-related announcements also include VMware NSX network Virtual Cloud Network with Microsoft Azure support along with security enhancements. Refer here to recent April VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, vRealize and other Virtual announcements as well as here for March VMware cloud updates.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 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

The above set of announcements span business to technology along with partner activity. Continue reading here (Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details) of this series, and part I (general summary) here, along with Part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable) here and part V here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

This is Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details that is part of a five-post series (view part I here, part II here, part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable) here and part V here). Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw).

Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcements Include:

  • PowerMax – Enterprise class tier 0 and tier 1 all-flash array (AFA)
  • XtremIO X2 – Native replication and new entry-level pricing

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax back view
Back view of Dell PowerMax

Dell PowerMax Something Old, Something New, Something Fast Near You Soon

PowerMax is the new companion to VMAX. Positioned for traditional tier 0 and tier 1 enterprise-class applications and workloads, PowerMax is optimized for dense server virtualization and SDDC, SAP, Oracle, SQL Server along with other low-latency, high-performance database activity. Different target workloads include Mainframe as well as Open Systems, AI, ML, DL, Big Data, as well as consolidation.

The Dell PowerMax is an all-flash array (AFA) architecture with an end to end NVMe along with built-in AI and ML technology. Building on the architecture of Dell EMC VMAX (some models still available) with new faster processors, full end to end NVMe ready (e.g., front-end server attachment, back-end devices).

The AI and ML features of PowerMax PowerMaxOS include an engine (software) that learns and makes autonomous storage management decisions, as well as implementations including tiering. Other AI and ML enabled operations include performance optimizations based on I/O pattern recognition.

Other features of PowerMax besides increased speeds, feeds, performance includes data footprint reduction (DFR) inline deduplication along with enhanced compression. The DFR benefits include up to 5:1 data reduction for space efficiency, without performance impact to boost performance effectiveness. The DFR along with improved 2x rack density, along with up to 40% power savings (your results may vary) based on Dell claims to enable an impressive amount of performance, availability, capacity, economics (e.g., PACE) in a given number of cubic feet (or meters).

There are two PowerMax models including 2000 (scales from 1 to 2 redundant controllers) and 8000 (scales from 1 to 8 redundant controller nodes). Note that controller nodes are Intel Xeon multi-socket, multi-core processors enabling scale-up and scale-out performance, availability, and capacity. Competitors of the PowerMax include AFA solutions from HPE 3PAR, NetApp, and Pure Storage among others.

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax Front View
Front view of Dell PowerMax

Besides resiliency, data services along with data protection, Dell is claiming PowerMax is 2x faster than their nearest high-end storage system competitors with up to 150GB/sec (e.g., 1,200Gbps) of bandwidth, as well as up to 10 million IOPS with 50% lower latency compared to previous VMAX.

PowerMax is also a full end to end NVMe ready (both back-end and front-end). Back-end includes NVMe drives, devices, shelves, and enclosures) as well as front-end (future NVMe over Fabrics, e.g., NVMeoF). Being NVMeoF ready enables PowerMax to support future front-end server network connectivity options to traditional SAN Fibre Channel (FC), iSCSI among others.

PowerMax is also ready for new, emerging high speed, low-latency storage class memory (SCM).  SCM is the next generation of persistent memories (PMEM) having performance closer to traditional DRAM while persistence of flash SSD. Examples of SCM technologies entering the market include Intel Optane based on 3D XPoint, along with others such as those from Everspin among others.

IBM Z Zed Mainframe at Dell Technology World 2018
An IBM “Zed” Mainframe (in case you have never seen one)

Based on the performance claims, the Dell PowerMax has an interesting if not potentially industry leading power, performance, availability, capacity, economic footprint per cubic foot (or meter). It will be interesting to see some third-party validation or audits of Dell claims. Likewise, I look forward to seeing some real-world applied workloads of Dell PowerMax vs. other storage systems. Here are some additional perspectives Via SearchStorage: Dell EMC all-flash PowerMax replaces VMAX, injects NVMe


Dell PowerMax Visual Studio (Image via Dell.com)

To help with customer decision making, Dell has created an interactive VMAX and PowerMax configuration studio that you can use to try out as well as learn about different options here. View more Dell PowerMax speeds, feeds, slots, watts, features and functions here (PDF).

Dell Technology World 2018 XtremIO X2

XtremIO X2

Dell XtremIO X2 and XIOS 6.1 operating system (software-defined storage) enhanced with native replication across wide area networks (WAN). The new WAN replication is metadata-aware native to the XtremIO X2 that implements data footprint reduction (DFR) technology reducing the amount of data sent over network connections. The benefit is more data moved in a given amount of time along with better data protection requiring less time (and network) by only moving unique changed data.

Dell Technology World 2018 XtremIO X2 back view
Back View of XtremIO X2

Dell EMC claims to reduce WAN network bandwidth by up to 75% utilizing the new native XtremIO X2 native asynchronous replication. Also, Dell says XtremIO X2 requires up to 38% less storage space at disaster recovery and business resiliency locations while maintaining predictable recovery point objectives (RPO) of 30 seconds. Another XtremIO X2 announcement is a new entry model for customers at up to 55% lower cost than previous product generations. View more information about Dell XtremIO X2 here, along with speeds feeds here, here, as well as here.

What about Dell Midrange Storage Unity and SC?

Here are some perspectives Via SearchStorage: Dell EMC midrange storage keeps its overlapping arrays.

Dell Bulk and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)

One of the questions I had going into Dell Technology World 2018 was what is the status of ECS (and its predecessors Atmos as well as Centera) bulk object storage is given lack of messaging and news around it. Specifically, my concern was that if ECS is the platform for storing and managing data to be preserved for the future, what is the current status, state as well as future of ECS.

In conversations with the Dell ECS folks, ECS which has encompassed Centera functionality and it (ECS) is very much alive, stay tuned for more updates. Also, note that Centera has been EOL. However, its feature functionality has been absorbed by ECS meaning that data preserved can now be managed by ECS. While I can not divulge the details of some meeting discussions, I can say that I am comfortable (for now) with the future directions of ECS along with the data it manages, stay tuned for updates.

Dell Data Protection

What about Data Protection? Security was mentioned in several different contexts during Dell Technology World 2018, as was a strong physical security presence seen at the Palazzo and Sands venues. Likewise, there was a data protection presence at Dell Technologies World 2018 in the expo hall, as well as with various sessions.

What was heard was mainly around data protection management tools, hybrid, as well as data protection appliances and data domain-based solutions. Perhaps we will hear more from Dell Technologies World in the future about data protection related topics.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 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

If there was any doubt about would Dell keep EMC storage progressing forward, the above announcements help to show some examples of what they are doing. On the other hand, lets stay tuned to see what news and updates appear in the future pertaining to mid-range storage (e.g. Unity and SC) as well as Isilon, ScaleIO, Data Protection platforms as well as software among other technologies.

Continue reading part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable and Gen-Z) here in this series, as well as part I here, part II here, part IV (PowerEdge MX Composable) here, and, part V here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure

Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure

Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure
This is Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure that is part of a five-post series (view part I here, part II here, part III here and part V here). Last week (April 30-May 3) I traveled to Las Vegas Nevada (LAS) to attend Dell Technology World 2018 (e.g., DTW 2018) as a guest of Dell (that is a disclosure btw).

Introducing PowerEdge MX Composable Infrastructure (the other CI)

Dell announced at Dell Technology World 2018 a preview of the new PowerEdge MX (kinetic) family of data infrastructure resource servers. PowerEdge MX is being developed to meet the needs of resource-centric data infrastructures that require scalability, as well as performance availability, capacity, economic (PACE) flexibility for diverse workloads. Read more about Dell PowerEdge MX, Gen-Z and composable infrastructures (the other CI) here.

Some of the workloads being targeted by PowerEdge MX include large-scale dense SDDC virtualization (and containers), private (or public clouds by service providers). Other workloads include AI, ML, DL, data analytics, HPC, SC, big data, in-memory database, software-defined storage (SDS), software-defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV) among others.

The new PowerEdge MX previewed will be announced later in 2018 featuring a flexible, decomposable, as well as composable architecture that enables resources to be disaggregated and reassigned or aggregated to meet particular needs (e.g., defined or composed). Instead of traditional software defined virtualization carving up servers in smaller virtual machines or containers to meet workload needs, PowerEdge MX is part of a next-generation approach to enable server resources to be leveraged at a finer granularity.

For example, today an entire server including all of its sockets, cores, memory, PCIe devices among other resources get allocated and defined for use. A server gets defined for use by an operating system when bare metal (or Metal as a Service) or a hypervisor. PowerEdge MX (and other platforms expected to enter the market) have a finer granularity where with a proper upper layer (or higher altitude) software resources can be allocated and defined to meet different needs.

What this means is the potential to allocate resources to a given server with more granularity and flexibility, as well as combine multiple server’s resources to create what appears to be a more massive server. There are vendors in the market who have been working on and enabling this type of approach for several years ranging from ScaleMP to startup Liqid and Tidal among others. However, at the heart of the Dell PowerEdge MX is the new emerging Gen-Z technology.

If you are not familiar with Gen-Z, add it to your buzzword bingo lineup and learn about it as it is coming your way. A brief overview of Gen-Z consortium and Gen-Z material and primer information here. A common question is if Gen-Z is a replacement for PCIe which for now is that they will coexist and complement each other. Another common question is if Gen-Z will replace Ethernet and InfiniBand and the answer is for now they complement each other. Another question is if Gen-Z will replace Intel Quick Path and another CPU device and memory interconnects and the answer is potentially, and in my opinion, watch to see how long Intel drags its feet.

Note that composability is another way of saying defined without saying defined, something to pay attention too as well as have some vendor fun with. Also, note that Dell is referent to PowerEdge MX and Kinetic architecture which is not the same as the Seagate Kinetic Ethernet-based object key value accessed drive initiative from a few years ago (learn more about Seagate Kinetic here). Learn more about Gen-Z and what Dell is doing here.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 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

Dell has provided a glimpse of what they are working on pertaining composable infrastructure, the other CI, as well as Gen-Z and related next generation of servers with PowerEdge MX as well as Kinetic. Stay tuned for more about Gen-Z and composable infrastructures. Continue reading Part V (servers converged) in this series here, as well as part I here, part II here and part III here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Application Data Availability 4 3 2 1 Data Protection

Application Data Availability 4 3 2 1 Data Protection

4 3 2 1 data protection Application Data Availability Everything Is Not The Same

Application Data Availability 4 3 2 1 Data Protection

This is part two of a five-part mini-series looking at Application Data Value Characteristics everything is not the same as a companion excerpt from chapter 2 of my new book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials – Cloud, Converged and Virtual Fundamental Server Storage I/O Tradecraft (CRC Press 2017). available at Amazon.com and other global venues. In this post, we continue looking at application performance, availability, capacity, economic (PACE) attributes that have an impact on data value as well as availability.

4 3 2 1 data protection Book SDDC

Availability (Accessibility, Durability, Consistency)

Just as there are many different aspects and focus areas for performance, there are also several facets to availability. Note that applications performance requires availability and availability relies on some level of performance.

Availability is a broad and encompassing area that includes data protection to protect, preserve, and serve (backup/restore, archive, BC, BR, DR, HA) data and applications. There are logical and physical aspects of availability including data protection as well as security including key management (manage your keys or authentication and certificates) and permissions, among other things.

Availability = accessibility (can you get to your application and data) + durability (is the data intact and consistent). This includes basic Reliability, Availability, Serviceability (RAS), as well as high availability, accessibility, and durability. “Durable” has multiple meanings, so context is important. Durable means how data infrastructure resources hold up to, survive, and tolerate wear and tear from use (i.e., endurance), for example, Flash SSD or mechanical devices such as Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). Another context for durable refers to data, meaning how many copies in various places.

Server, storage, and I/O network availability topics include:

  • Resiliency and self-healing to tolerate failure or disruption
  • Hardware, software, and services configured for resiliency
  • Accessibility to reach or be reached for handling work
  • Durability and consistency of data to be available for access
  • Protection of data, applications, and assets including security

Additional server I/O and data infrastructure along with storage topics include:

  • Backup/restore, replication, snapshots, sync, and copies
  • Basic Reliability, Availability, Serviceability, HA, fail over, BC, BR, and DR
  • Alternative paths, redundant components, and associated software
  • Applications that are fault-tolerant, resilient, and self-healing
  • Non disruptive upgrades, code (application or software) loads, and activation
  • Immediate data consistency and integrity vs. eventual consistency
  • Virus, malware, and other data corruption or loss prevention

From a data protection standpoint, the fundamental rule or guideline is 4 3 2 1, which means having at least four copies consisting of at least three versions (different points in time), at least two of which are on different systems or storage devices and at least one of those is off-site (on-line, off-line, cloud, or other). There are many variations of the 4 3 2 1 rule shown in the following figure along with approaches on how to manage technology to use. We will go into deeper this subject in later chapters. For now, remember the following.

large version application server storage I/O
4 3 2 1 data protection (via Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials)

4    At least four copies of data (or more), Enables durability in case a copy goes bad, deleted, corrupted, failed device, or site.
3    The number (or more) versions of the data to retain, Enables various recovery points in time to restore, resume, restart from.
2    Data located on two or more systems (devices or media/mediums), Enables protection against device, system, server, file system, or other fault/failure.

1    With at least one of those copies being off-premise and not live (isolated from active primary copy), Enables resiliency across sites, as well as space, time, distance gap for protection.

Capacity and Space (What Gets Consumed and Occupied)

In addition to being available and accessible in a timely manner (performance), data (and applications) occupy space. That space is memory in servers, as well as using available consumable processor CPU time along with I/O (performance) including over networks.

Data and applications also consume storage space where they are stored. In addition to basic data space, there is also space consumed for metadata as well as protection copies (and overhead), application settings, logs, and other items. Another aspect of capacity includes network IP ports and addresses, software licenses, server, storage, and network bandwidth or service time.

Server, storage, and I/O network capacity topics include:

  • Consumable time-expiring resources (processor time, I/O, network bandwidth)
  • Network IP and other addresses
  • Physical resources of servers, storage, and I/O networking devices
  • Software licenses based on consumption or number of users
  • Primary and protection copies of data and applications
  • Active and standby data infrastructure resources and sites
  • Data footprint reduction (DFR) tools and techniques for space optimization
  • Policies, quotas, thresholds, limits, and capacity QoS
  • Application and database optimization

DFR includes various techniques, technologies, and tools to reduce the impact or overhead of protecting, preserving, and serving more data for longer periods of time. There are many different approaches to implementing a DFR strategy, since there are various applications and data.

Common DFR techniques and technologies include archiving, backup modernization, copy data management (CDM), clean up, compress, and consolidate, data management, deletion and dedupe, storage tiering, RAID (including parity-based, erasure codes , local reconstruction codes [LRC] , and Reed-Solomon , Ceph Shingled Erasure Code (SHEC ), among others), along with protection configurations along with thin-provisioning, among others.

DFR can be implemented in various complementary locations from row-level compression in database or email to normalized databases, to file systems, operating systems, appliances, and storage systems using various techniques.

Also, keep in mind that not all data is the same; some is sparse, some is dense, some can be compressed or deduped while others cannot. Likewise, some data may not be compressible or dedupable. However, identical copies can be identified with links created to a common copy.

Economics (People, Budgets, Energy and other Constraints)

If one thing in life and technology that is constant is change, then the other constant is concern about economics or costs. There is a cost to enable and maintain a data infrastructure on premise or in the cloud, which exists to protect, preserve, and serve data and information applications.

However, there should also be a benefit to having the data infrastructure to house data and support applications that provide information to users of the services. A common economic focus is what something costs, either as up-front capital expenditure (CapEx) or as an operating expenditure (OpEx) expense, along with recurring fees.

In general, economic considerations include:

  • Budgets (CapEx and OpEx), both up front and in recurring fees
  • Whether you buy, lease, rent, subscribe, or use free and open sources
  • People time needed to integrate and support even free open-source software
  • Costs including hardware, software, services, power, cooling, facilities, tools
  • People time includes base salary, benefits, training and education

Where to learn more

Learn more about Application Data Value, application characteristics, PACE along with data protection, software defined data center (SDDC), software defined data infrastructures (SDDI) and related topics via the following links:

SDDC Data Infrastructure

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 and wrap-up

Keep in mind that with Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same across various organizations, data centers, data infrastructures spanning legacy, cloud and other software defined data center (SDDC) environments. All applications have some element of performance, availability, capacity, economic (PACE) needs as well as resource demands. There is often a focus around data storage about storage efficiency and utilization which is where data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques, tools, trends and as well as technologies address capacity requirements. However with data storage there is also an expanding focus around storage effectiveness also known as productivity tied to performance, along with availability including 4 3 2 1 data protection. Continue reading the next post (Part III Application Data Characteristics Types Everything Is Not The Same) in this series here.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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VMware continues cloud construction with March announcements

VMware continues cloud construction with March announcements

VMware continues cloud construction sddc

VMware continues cloud construction with March announcements of new features and other enhancements.

VMware continues cloud construction SDDC data infrastructure strategy big picture
VMware Cloud Provides Consistent Operations and Infrastructure Via: VMware.com

With its recent announcements, VMware continues cloud construction adding new features, enhancements, partnerships along with services.

VMware continues cloud construction, like other vendors and service providers who tried and test the waters of having their own public cloud, VMware has moved beyond its vCloud Air initiative selling that to OVH. VMware which while being a public traded company (VMW) is by way of majority ownership part of the Dell Technologies family of company via the 2016 acquisition of EMC by Dell. What this means is that like Dell Technologies, VMware is focused on providing solutions and services to its cloud provider partners instead of building, deploying and running its own cloud in competition with partners.

VMware continues cloud construction SDDC data infrastructure strategy layers
VMware Cloud Data Infrastructure and SDDC layers Via: VMware.com

The VMware Cloud message and strategy is focused around providing software solutions to cloud and other data infrastructure partners (and customers) instead of competing with them (e.g. divesting of vCloud Air, partnering with AWS, IBM Softlayer). Part of the VMware cloud message and strategy is to provide consistent operations and management across clouds, containers, virtual machines (VM) as well as other software defined data center (SDDC) and software defined data infrastructures.

In other words, what this means is VMware providing consistent management to leverage common experiences of data infrastructure staff along with resources in a hybrid, cross cloud and software defined environment in support of existing as well as cloud native applications.

VMware continues cloud construction on AWS SDDC

VMware Cloud on AWS Image via: AWS.com

Note that VMware Cloud services run on top of AWS EC2 bare metal (BM) server instances, as well as on BM instances at IBM softlayer as well as OVH. Learn more about AWS EC2 BM compute instances aka Metal as a Service (MaaS) here. In addition to AWS, IBM and OVH, VMware claims over 4,000 regional cloud and managed service providers who have built their data infrastructures out using VMware based technologies.

VMware continues cloud construction updates

Building off of previous announcements, VMware continues cloud construction with enhancements to their Amazon Web Services (AWS) partnership along with services for IBM Softlayer cloud as well as OVH. As a refresher, OVH is what formerly was known as VMware vCloud air before it was sold off.

Besides expanding on existing cloud partner solution offerings, VMware also announced additional cloud, software defined data center (SDDC) and other software defined data infrastructure environment management capabilities. SDDC and Data infrastructure management tools include leveraging VMwares acquisition of Wavefront among others.

VMware Cloud Updates and New Features

  • VMware Cloud on AWS European regions (now in London, adding Frankfurt German)
  • Stretch Clusters with synchronous replication for cross geography location resiliency
  • Support for data intensive workloads including data footprint reduction (DFR) with vSAN based compression and data de duplication
  • Fujitsu services offering relationships
  • Expanded VMware Cloud Services enhancements

VMware Cloud Services enhancements include:

  • Hybrid Cloud Extension
  • Log intelligence
  • Cost insight
  • Wavefront

VMware Cloud in additional AWS Regions

As part of service expansion, VMware Cloud on AWS has been extended into European region (London) with plans to expand into Frankfurt and an Asian Pacific location. Previously VMware Cloud on AWS has been available in US West Oregon and US East Northern Virginia regions. Learn more about AWS Regions and availability zones (AZ) here.

VMware Cloud Stretch Cluster

VMware Cloud on AWS Stretch Clusters Source: VMware.com

VMware Cloud on AWS Stretch Clusters

In addition to expanding into additional regions, VMware Cloud on AWS is also being extended with stretch clusters for geography dispersed protection. Stretched clusters provide protection against an AZ failure (e.g. data center site) for mission critical applications. Build on vSphere HA and DRS  automated host failure technology, stretched clusters provide recovery point objective zero (RPO 0) for continuous protection, high availability across AZs at the data infrastructure layer.

The benefit of data infrastructure layer based HA and resiliency is not having to re architect or modify upper level, higher up layered applications or software. Synchronous replication between AZs enables RPO 0, if one AZ goes down, it is treated as a vSphere HA event with VMs restarted in another AZ.

vSAN based Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) aka Compression and De duplication

To support applications that leverage large amounts of data, aka data intensive applications in marketing speak, VMware is leveraging vSAN based data footprint reduction (DFR) techniques including compression as well as de duplication (dedupe). Leveraging DFR technologies like compression and dedupe integrated into vSAN, VMware Clouds have the ability to store more data in a given cubic density. Storing more data in a given cubic density storage efficiency (e.g. space saving utilization) as well as with performance acceleration, also facilitate storage effectiveness along with productivity.

With VMware vSAN technology as one of the core underlying technologies for enabling VMware Cloud on AWS (among other deployments), applications with large data needs can store more data at a lower cost point. Note that VMware Cloud can support 10 clusters per SDDC deployment, with each cluster having 32 nodes, with cluster wide and aware dedupe. Also note that for performance, VMware Cloud on AWS leverages NVMe attached Solid State Devices (SSD) to boost effectiveness and productivity.

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension

Extending VMware vSphere any to any migration across clouds Source: VMware.com

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension

VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension enables common management of common underlying data infrastructure as well as software defined environments including across public, private as well as hybrid clouds. Some of the capabilities include enabling warm VM migration across various software defined environments from local on-premises and private cloud to public clouds.

New enhancements leverages previously available technology now as a service for enterprises besides service providers to support data center to data center, or cloud centric AZ to AZ, as well as region to region migrations. Some of the use cases include small to large bulk migrations of hundreds to thousands of VM move and migrations, both scheduling as well as the actual move. Move and migrations can span hybrid deployments with mix of on-premises as well as various cloud services.

VMware Cloud Cost Insight

VMware Cost Insight enables analysis, compare cloud costs across public AWS, Azure and private VMware clouds) to avoid flying blind in and among clouds. VMware Cloud cost insight enables awareness of how resources are used, their cost and benefit to applications as well as IT budget impacts. Integrates vSAN sizer tool along with AWS metrics for improved situational awareness, cost modeling, analysis and what if comparisons.

With integration to Network insight, VMware Cloud Cost Insight also provides awareness into networking costs in support of migrations. What this means is that using VMware Cloud Cost insight you can take the guess-work out of what your expenses will be for public, private on-premisess or hybrid cloud will be having deeper insight awareness into your SDDC environment. Learn more about VVMware Cost Insight here.

VMware Log Intelligence

Log Intelligence is a new VMware cloud service that provides real-time data infrastructure insight along with application visibility from private, on-premises, to public along with hybrid clouds. As its name implies, Log Intelligence provides syslog and other log insight, analysis and intelligence with real-time visibility into VMware as well as AWS among other resources for faster troubleshooting, diagnostics, event correlation and other data infrastructure management tasks.

Log and telemetry input sources for VMware Log Intelligence include data infrastructure resources such as operating systems, servers, system statistics, security, applications among other syslog events. For those familiar with VMware Log Insight, this capability is an extension of that known experience expanding it to be a cloud based service.

VMware Wavefront SaaS analytics
Wavefront by VMware Source: VMware.com

VMware Wavefront

VMware Wavefront enables monitoring of cloud native high scale environments with custom metrics and analytics. As a reminder Wavefront was acquired by VMware to enable deep metrics and analytics for developers, DevOps, data infrastructure operations as well as SaaS application developers among others. Wavefront integrates with VMware vRealize along with enabling monitoring of AWS data infrastructure resources and services. With the ability to ingest, process, analyze various data feeds, the Wavefront engine enables the predictive understanding of mixed application, cloud native data and data infrastructure platforms including big data based.

Where to learn more

Learn more about VMware, vSphere, vRealize, VMware Cloud, AWS (and other clouds), along with data protection, software defined data center (SDDC), software defined data infrastructures (SDDI) and related topics via the following links:

SDDC Data Infrastructure

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 and wrap-up

VMware continues cloud construction. For now, it appears that VMware like Dell Technologies is content on being a technology provider partner to large as well as small public, private and hybrid cloud environments instead of building their own and competing. With these series of announcements, VMware continues cloud construction enabling its partners and customers on their various software defined data center (SDDC) and related data infrastructure journeys. Overall, this is a good set of enhancements, updates, new and evolving features for their partners as well as customers who leverage VMware based technologies. Meanwhile VMware continues cloud construction.

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.

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Benefits of Moving Hyper-V Disaster Recovery to the Cloud Webinar

Benefits of Moving Hyper-V Disaster Recovery to the Cloud Webinar

Hyper-V Disaster Recovery sddc server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Benefits of Moving Hyper-V Disaster Recovery to the Cloud and Achieve global cloud data availability from an Always-On approach with Veeam Cloud Connect webinar.

Feb. 28, 2018 at 11am PT / 2pm ET

Windows Server and Hyper-V software defined data center (SDDC) based applications need always on availability and access to data which means enabling cloud based data protection (including backup/recovery) for seamless disaster recovery (DR), business continuance (BC), business resiliency (BR) and high availability (HA). Key to an always on, available and accessible environment is having robust  RTO and RPO aligned to your application workload needs. In other words, time for data protection to work for you and your applications instead of you working for it (e.g. the data protection tools and technologies).

This free data protection webinar (registration required) sponsored by KeepItSafe produced by Virtualization & Cloud Review will be an interactive webinar discussion (not death by power point or Ui Gui product demo ;)) pertaining to enabling always on application (as well as data) availability for Windows Server and Hyper-V environments. Keep in mind with world backup day coming up on March 31 now is a good time to make sure your applications and data are protected as well as recoverable when something bad happens leveraging Hyper-V Disaster Recovery.

Hyper-V Disaster Recovery SDDC Data Infrastructure Data Protection

Join me along with representatives from Veeam and KeepItSafe for an informal conversation including strategies along with how to enable an always on, always available applications data infrastructure for Hyper-V based solutions.

Our conversation will include discussion around:

  • Data protection strategies for Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V applications
  • Enabling rapid recovery time objectives (RTO) and good recovery point objectives (RPO)
  • Evolving from VM disaster recovery to cloud-based DRaaS
  • Implement 4 3 2 1 data protection availability for Hyper-V with Veeam and KeepItSafe DRaaS

Register for the live event or catch the replay here.

Where to learn more

Learn more about data protection, software defined data center (SDDC), software defined data infrastructures (SDDI), Hyper-V, cloud and related topics via the following links:

SDDC Data Infrastructure

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 and wrap-up

You can not go forward if you can not go back to a particular point in time (e.g. recovery point objective or RPO). Likewise, if you can not go back to a given RPO, how can you go forward with your business as well as meet your recovery time objective (RTO)? Join us for the live conversation or replay by registering (free) here to learn how to enable robust Hyper-V Disaster Recovery and business resiliency.

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.

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World Backup Day 2018 Data Protection Readiness Reminder

World Backup Day 2018 Data Protection Readiness Reminder

server storage I/O trends

It’s that time of year again, World Backup Day 2018 Data Protection Readiness Reminder.

In case you have forgotten, or were not aware, this coming Saturday March 31 is World Backup (and recovery day). The annual day is a to remember to make sure you are protecting your applications, data, information, configuration settings as well as data infrastructures. While the emphasis is on Backup, that also means recovery as well as testing to make sure everything is working properly.

data infrastructure data protection

Its time that the focus of world backup day should expand from just a focus on backup to also broader data protection and things that start with R. Some data protection (and backup) related things, tools, tradecraft techniques, technologies and trends that start with R include readiness, recovery, reconstruct, restore, restart, resume, replication, rollback, roll forward, RAID and erasure codes, resiliency, recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), replication among others.

data protection threats ransomware software defined

Keep in mind that Data Protection is a broader focus than just backup and recovery. Data protection includes disaster recovery DR, business continuance BC, business resiliency BR, security (logical and physical), standard and high availability HA, as well as durability, archiving, data footprint reduction, copy data management CDM along with various technologies, tradecraft techniques, tools.

data protection 4 3 2 1 rule and 3 2 1 rule

Quick Data Protection, Backup and Recovery Checklist

  • Keep the 4 3 2 1 or shorter older 3 2 1 data protection rules in mind
  • Do you know what data, applications, configuration settings, meta data, keys, certificates are being protected?
  • Do you know how many versions, copies, where stored and what is on or off-site, on or off-line?
  • Implement data protection at different intervals and coverage of various layers (application, transaction, database, file system, operating system, hypervisors, device or volume among others)

    • data infrastructure backup data protection

  • Have you protected your data protection environment including software, configuration, catalogs, indexes, databases along with management tools?
  • Verify that data protection point in time copies (backups, snapshots, consistency points, checkpoints, version, replicas) are working as intended
  • Make sure that not only are the point in time protection copies running when scheduled, also that they are protected what’s intended

    • data infrastructure backup data protection

  • Test to see if the protection copies can actually be used, this means restoring as well as accessing the data via applications
  • Watch out to prevent a disaster in the course of testing, plan, prepare, practice, learn, refine, improve
  • In addition to verifying your data protection (backup, bc, dr) for work, also take time to see how your home or personal data is protected
  • View additional tips, techniques, checklist items in this Data Protection fundamentals series of posts here.

storageio data protection toolbox

Where To Learn More

View additional Data Infrastructure Data Protection and related tools, trends, technology and tradecraft skills 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

You can not go forward if you can not go back to a particular point in time (e.g. recovery point objective or RPO). Likewise, if you can not go back to a given RPO, how can you go forward with your business as well as meet your recovery time objective (RTO)?

data protection restore rto rpo

Backup is as important as restore, without a good backup or data protection point in time copy, how can you restore? Some will say backup is more important than recovery, however its the enablement that matters, in other words being able to provide data protection and recover, restart, resume or other things that start with R. World backup day should be a reminder to think about broader data protection which also means recovery, restore and realizing if your copies and versions are good. Keep the above in mind and this is your World Backup Day 2018 Data Protection Readiness Reminder.

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.

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How to Achieve Flexible Data Protection Availability with All Flash Storage Solutions

Achieve Flexible Data Protection Availability with All Flash Solutions

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Updated 1/21/2018

How to Achieve Flexible flash data protection and Availability with All-Flash Storage Solutions

Interactive webinar discussion (not death by power point or Ui Gui product demo ;) pertaining flash data protection )
Tuesday January 30 2018 11AM PT / 2PM ET
Via Redmond Magazine (Free with registration)

Everything is not the same across different organizations, environments, application workloads and the data infrastructures that support them. Fast application and workloads need fast protection, restoration, and resumption as well as fast flash storage. This applies across legacy, software-defined, virtual, container, cloud, hybrid, converged and HCI among other environments.

SDDC Data Infrastructure Data Protection

Join me along with representatives from Pure Storage along with Veeam for this interactive discussion as we explore how to boost the performance, availability, capacity, and economics (PACE) of your applications along with the data infrastructures that support them.

  • How all-flash storage enables faster protection and restoration of fast applications
  • Why data protection and availability should not be an afterthought
  • Ways to leverage your data protection storage to drive business change
  • How to simplify and reduce complexity to boost productivity while lowering costs
  • Why workload aggregation consolidation should not cause aggravation

Register for the live event or catch the replay here.

Where to learn more

Learn more about data protection, SSD, flash, data infrastructure and related topics via the following links:

SDDC Data Infrastructure

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 and wrap-up

Fast applications need fast and resilient data infrastructures that include server, storage, I/O networking along with data protection. Likewise performance depends on availability along with durability, likewise, availability and accessibility depend on performance, they go hand in hand. Join me and others from Pure Storage as well as Veeam for this conversational discussion about How to Achieve Flexible Data Protection and Availability with All-Flash Storage Solutions.

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.

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Preparing For World Backup Day 2017 Are You Prepared

Preparing For World Backup Day 2017 Are You Prepared

In case you have forgotten, or were not aware, this coming Friday March 31 is World Backup Day 2017 (and recovery day). The annual day is a to remember to make sure you are protecting your applications, data, information, configuration settings as well as data infrastructures. While the emphasis is on Backup, that also means recovery as well as testing to make sure everything is working properly as part of on-prem and cloud data protection.

What the Vendors Have To Say

Today I received the following from Kylle over at TOUCHDOWNPR on behalf of their clients providing their perspectives on what World Backup Day means, or how to be prepared. Keep in mind these are not Server StorageIO clients (granted some have been in the past, or I know them, that is a disclosure btw), and this is in no way an endorsement of what they are saying, or advocating. Instead, this is simply passing along to you what was given to me.

Not included in this list? No worries, add your perspectives (politely) to the comments, or, drop me a note, and perhaps I will do a follow-up or addition to this.

Kylle O’Sullivan
TOUCHDOWNPR
Email: Kosullivan@touchdownpr.com
Mobile: 508-826-4482
Skype: Kylle.OSullivan

“Data loss and disruption happens far too often in the enterprise. Research by Ponemon in 2016 estimates the average cost of an unplanned outage has spiralled to nearly $9,000 a minute, causing crippling downtime as well as financial and reputational damage. Legacy backups simply aren’t equipped to provide seamless operations, with zero Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) should a disaster strike. In order to guarantee the availability of applications, synchronous replication with real-time analytics needs to be simple to setup, monitor and manage for application owners and economical to the organization. That way, making zero data loss attainable suddenly becomes a reality.” – Chuck Dubuque, VP Product Marketing, Tintri

“With today’s “always-on” business environment, data loss can destroy a company’s brand and customer trust. A multiple software-based strategy with software-defined and hyperconverged storage infrastructure is the most effective route for a flexible backup plan.  With this tactic, snapshots, replication and stretched clusters can help protect data, whether in a local data center cluster, across data centers or across the cloud. IT teams rely on these software-based policies as the backbone of their disaster recovery implementations as the human element is removed. This is possible as the software-based strategy dictates that all virtual machines are accurately, automatically and consistently replicated to the DR sites. Through this automatic and transparent approach, no administrator action is required, saving employees time, money and providing peace of mind that business can carry on despite any outage.” – Patrick Brennan, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Atlantis Computing

“It’s only a matter of time before your datacenter experiences a significant outage, if it hasn’t already, due to a wide range of causes, from something as simple as human error or power failure to criminal activity like ransomware and cyberattacks, or even more catastrophic events like hurricanes. Shifting thinking to ‘when’ as opposed to ‘if’ something like this happens is crucial; crucial to building a more flexible and resilient IT infrastructure that can withstand any kind of disruption resulting in negative impact on business performance. World Backup Day reminds us of the importance of both having a backup plan in place and as well as conducting regular reviews of current and new technology to do everything possible to keep business running without interruption. Organizations today are highly aware that they are heavily dependent on data and critical applications, and that losing even just an hour of data can greatly harm revenues and brand reputation, sometimes beyond repair. Savvy businesses are taking an all-inclusive approach to this problem that incorporates cloud-based technologies into their disaster recovery plans. And with consistent testing and automation, they are ensuring that those plans are extremely simple to execute against in even the most challenging of situations, a key element of successfully avoiding damaging downtime.” Rob Strechay, VP Product, Zerto

“Data is one of the most valuable business assets and when it comes to data protection chief among its IT challenges is the ever-growing rate of data and the associated vulnerability. Backup needs to be reliable, fast and cost efficient. Organizations are on the defensive after a disaster and being able to recover critical data within minutes is crucial. Breakthroughs in disk technologies and pricing have led to very dense arrays that are power, cost and performance efficient. Backup has been revolutionized and organizations need to ensure they are safeguarding their most valuable commodity – not just now but for the long term. Secure archive platforms are complementary and create a complete recovery strategy.”  – Geoff Barrall, COO, Nexsan

Consider the DR Options that Object Storage Adds
“Data backup and disaster recovery used to be treated as separate processes, which added complexity. But with object storage as a backup target you now have multiple options to bring backup and DR together in a single flow. You can configure a hybrid cloud and tier a portion of your data to the public cloud, or you can locate object storage nodes at different locations and use replication to provide geographic separation. So, this World Backup Day, consider how object storage has increased your options for meeting this critical need.” – Jon Toor, Cloudian CMO

Whats In Your Data Protection Toolbox

What tools, technologies do you have in your data protection toolbox? Do you only have a hammer and thus answer to every situation is that it looks like a nail? Or, do you have multiple tools, technologies combined with your various tradecraft experiences to applice different techniques?

storageio data protection toolbox

Where To Learn More

Following these links to additional related material about backup, restore, availability, data protection, BC, BR, DR along with associated topics, trends, tools, technologies as well as techniques.

Time to restore from backup: Do you know where your data is?
February 2017 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter
Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O Tradecraft Trends
Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O related Tradecraft Overview
Data Infrastructure Primer and Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
What’s a data infrastructure?
Ensure your data infrastructure remains available and resilient
Part III Until the focus expands to data protection – Taking action
Welcome to the Data Protection Diaries
Backup, Big data, Big Data Protection, CMG & More with Tom Becchetti Podcast
Six plus data center software defined management dashboards
Cloud Storage Concerns, Considerations and Trends
Software Defined, Cloud, Bulk and Object Storage Fundamentals (www.objectstoragecenter.com)

Data Infrastructure Overview, Its Whats Inside of Data Centers
All You Need To Know about Remote Office/Branch Office Data Protection Backup (free webinar with registration)
Software Defined, Converged Infrastructure (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) resources
The SSD Place (SSD, NVM, PM, SCM, Flash, NVMe, 3D XPoint, MRAM and related topics)
The NVMe Place (NVMe related topics, trends, tools, technologies, tip resources)
Data Protection Diaries (Archive, Backup/Restore, BC, BR, DR, HA, RAID/EC/LRC, Replication, Security)
Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) including SDDC, Cloud, Container and more
Various Data Infrastructure related events, webinars and other activities

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

Backup of data is important, so to is recovery which also means testing. Testing means more than just if you can read the tape, disk, SSD, USB, cloud or other medium (or location). Go a step further and verify that not only you can read the data from the medium, also if your applications or software are able to use it. Have you protected your applications (e.g. not just the data), security keys, encryption, access, dedupe and other certificates along with metadata as well as other settings? Do you have a backup or protection copy of your protection including recovery tools? What granularity of protection and recovery do you have in place, when did you test or try it recently? In other words, what this all means is be prepared, find and fix issues, as well as in the course of testing, don’t cause a disaster.

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.

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Six plus data center software defined management dashboards tools

Software defined data infrastructure management insight tools

server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/17/2018

Managing data infrastructures involves using software defined management dashboards tools. Recently I found in my inbox a link to a piece 6 Dashboards for Managing Every Modern Data Center that caught my attention. I was hoping to see who the six different datacenter technologies, dashboard solutions tools were instead of finding list of dashboard considerations for modern data centers and data infrastructures.

Turns out the piece was nothing more than a list of six items featured as part of the vendors (Sunbird) piece about what to look for in a dashboard (e.g. their product). Sure there were some of the usual key performance indicator (KPI) associated with or related to IT Service Management (ITSM), Data Center Infrastructure (Insight/Information) Management (DCIM), Configuration and Change management databases (CMDB), availability, capacity and Performance Management Databases (PMDB) among others.

  • Space
  • Inventory
  • Connectivity
  • Change
  • Environment
  • Power

Dashboard Discussions

Keep in mind however that there are many different types of dashboards (and consoles), some are active along with analytics including correlation, others are passive simply displaying. The focus area also various from physical data center facilities, to applications, to data infrastructures or components such as servers, storage, I/O networks, clouds, virtual, containers among others modern data centers.

Data Infrastructures and SDDI, SDDC, SDI
Data Infrastructures (hardware, software, services, servers, storage, I/O and networks)

This is where some context comes into play as there are different types of dashboards for various audience, technology and focus areas (e.g. domains) across data infrastructure (and other entities). For example do a google search of “dashboard” and see what appears, or “IT dashboard”, “data center dashboard” vs. “datacenter dashboard” among others.

Additional KPIs include:

  • Performance, availability, Capacity and Economic (PACE) attributes
  • Service Level Objectives (SLO), Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
  • Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), Recovery Point Objectives (SLO)
  • IT Service Management (ITSM) and Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)
  • Configuration and Change Management (e.g. things part of CMDB)
  • Performance, availability and capacity (e.g. things part of PMDB)
  • Various focus and layers, cross domain functionality views
  • Costs management including subscriptions, licenses and others

IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Dashboard Options

For those of you who have made it this far, while not a comprehensive list, the following are some examples of vendors, services or solutions that either are, or have an association with data center, as well as data infrastructure management. Some dashboards or tools are homogenous in that they only work within a given area of focus such as particular cloud, service provider, vendor or solution set. Others are heterogeneous or federated working across different services, solutions, vendors and domain focus areas. Think of these as software defined management (SDM), or, software defined data infrastructure (SDDI) management, software defined data center (SDDC) management among other variations for the modern information factory.

There is a mix of tools that run on site (e.g. on premise) or via cloud services (e.g. manager your on site from the cloud). Likewise, some are for fee, others subscription and some are open source. In addition some of the tools are turnkey while others are do it yourself (DiY) or allow you to customize. Also keep in mind that depending on what your tradecraft (skills, experience, expertise) interest area is, these may or may not be applicable to you, while relevant to others. For example some such as Spiceworks tend to be more helpdesk focused while others on other data center or data infrastructure areas.

There are dashboards for or from AWS, Canonical (Ubuntu), Dell including EMC, Google, HPE, IBM, Microsoft System Center and Azure, NetApp, OpenStack, Oracle, Rackspace, Redhat, Rightscale, Servicenow, Softlayer, Suse and VMware among others.

Blue Medora (various data infrastructure monitoring)
Cloudkitty (open source cloud rating and chargeback)
Collectd (data infrastructure collection and monitoring)
cPanel and whm (web and hosting dashboards)
data infrastructure sddi cpanel

Dashbuilder (customize your dashboard)
Datadog (super easy to get access, download, install, configure and use)
Domo (various data infrastructure monitoring tools)
Extrahop (still waiting to be able to download and try their bits vs. watching a demo)
Firescope (data infrastructure insight and awareness)
Freezer (open source dashboard tools)
Komprise (interesting solution, would like try, however lots of gated material)
Nagios (data infrastructure monitoring)
Openit (data infrastructure tracking, report, monitoring)
Opvizor (data infrastructure monitoring and reporting)

storageio datadog dashboard

Panorama9 (various data infrastructure monitoring and reporting)
Quest (various tools)
Redhat Cloudforms (openstack and cloud management)
Rrdtools (data collection, logging and display)
Sisense (insight and awareness tools)
Solarwinds Server Application Monitor (SAM) among other tools
Teamquest (various monitoring, management, capacity planning tools)
Turbomomic (software defined data infrastructure insight tools)
Virtual Instruments (various monitoring and insight awareness along with analytics)

In addition to the above, there are tools such as Splunk among others that also provide insight and awareness to help avoid flying blind while managing your data center or data infrastructure.

Where to learn more

Learn more via the following links.

  • Data Infrastructure Primer and Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
  • E2E Awareness and insight for IT environments
  • Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking and Performance Resources
  • Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and IRM
  • The Value of Infrastructure Insight – Enabling Informed Decision Making
  • More storage and IO metrics that matter
  • Whats a data infrastructure?

    • 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

    Without insight and awareness you are flying blind, how can you make informed decisions about your information factory, data infrastructures, data center along with applications. There are different focus areas for various audiences up and down the stack layers in data infrastructures and data centers. Key is having insight and awareness including knowing what are some different tool options.

    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

    Modernizing Data Protection = Using new and old things in new ways

    Server Storage I/O trends

    Modernizing Data Protection = Using new and old things in new ways

    This is part of an ongoing series of posts that part of www.storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/ on data protection including archiving, backup/restore, business continuance (BC), business resiliency (BC), data footprint reduction (DFR), disaster recovery (DR), High Availability (HA) along with related themes, tools, technologies, techniques, trends and strategies.

    data protection trends

    Keep in mind that a fundamental goal of an Information Technology (IT) organization is to protect, preserve and serve data and information in a cost-effective as well as productive way when needed. There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated and processed. In addition to more of it, data is also getting larger, having more dependencies on it being available as well as living longer (e.g. retention).

    Proof Points, No Data or Information Recession

    A quick easy proof point of more data and it getting larger is your cell phone and the pictures it take. Compare the size of those photos today to what you had in your previous generation of smart phone or even digital camera as the Mega Pixels (e.g. resolution and size of data) increased, along with the size of media (e.g. storage) to save those to also grew. Another proof point is look at your presentations, documents, web sites and other mediums with how the amount of rich or unstructured content (e.g. photos, videos) exists on those now vs. a few years ago. Yet another proof-point is to look at your structured little data databases and how there are more rows and columns, as well as how some of those columns have gotten larger or are point to external "blobs" or "objects" that have also gotten larger.

    Industry trend and challenges

    There has been industry buzz the past several years around data protection modernizing, modernizing data protection or simply modernizing backup along with modernizing your data and information infrastructure. Many of these conversations focus around swapping out an older technology in favor of whatever the new industry buzzword trend is (e.g. swap tape for disk, disk for cloud) or perhaps from one data protection, backup, archive or copy tool for another. Some of these conversations also focus around swapping legacy for virtual, cloud or some other variation of software defined marketing.

    Data protection strategy

    The Opportunity to do new things

    What is common with all the above is basically swapping out one technology, tool, medium or technique for another new one yet using it in old ways. For example tape gets swapped for disk, yet the same approach to when, where, why, how often and what gets copied or protected is left the same. Sure some new tools and technologies get introduced.  However when was the last time you put the tools down, took a step back and revisited the fundamental questions of how and why you are doing data protection the way it is being done? When was the last time you thought about data protection as an asset or business enabler as opposed to a cost center, overhead or after thought?

    Data protection tool box
    What’s in your data protection toolbox, do you know what to use when?

    What about modernizing beyond the tools

    One of the challenges with modernizing is that there is a cost involved including people time, staff skills as well as budgets not to mention keeping things running, so how do you go about paying for any improvements? Sure you can go get a data infrastructure or habitat for technology aka data home improvement loan, however there are costs associated to that.

    Big data garbage in = big data garbage out

    What about reducing data protection costs?

    So why not self-fund the improvements and modernization activities by finding and removing costs, eliminating complexity vs. moving and masking issues? Part of this can be accomplished by simply revisiting if you are treating all your applications and data the same from a data protection perspective. Are you providing a data protection service ability to your organization that is based on business wants or business needs? For example, does the business want recovery time objective (RTO) 0 and recovery point objective (RPO) 0 for all applications, while it needs RTO 4 hours and RPO 15 minutes for application-a while application-b requires RTO 12 hours and RPO of 2 hours and application must have RTO 24 hours with RPO of 12 hours?

    As a reminder RTO is how much time, or how quickly you need your applications and data to be restored and made ready for use. RPO is the point in time to where data needs to be protected as of, or the amount of data or time frame data could be lost or missing. Thus RTO = 0 means instant recovery no downtime and RPO = 0 means no loss of data. RTO one day and RPO of ten (10) minutes means applications and their data are ready for use within 24 hours and no more than 10 minutes of data can be lost (e.g. the granularity of protection coverage)., Also keep in mind that you can have various RTO and RPO combinations to meet your specific application along with business needs as part of a tiered data protection strategy implementation.

    With RTO and RPO in mind, when was the last time you sat down with the business and applications people to revisit what they want vs. what they must have? From these conversation you can easily Transition into how long to keep, how many copies in what place among other things which in turn allows you to review data protection as well as start using both old and new technologies, tools and techniques in new ways.

    Where to learn more

    Learn more about data protection and related topics, themes, trends, tools and technologies via the following links:

    Server Storage I/O trends

    What this all means and wrap-up

    Data protection is a broad topic that spans from logical and physical security to HA, BC, BR, DR, archiving (including life beyond compliance) along with various tools, technologies, techniques. Key is aligning those to the needs of the business or organization for today’s as well as tomorrows requirements. Instead of doing things what has been done in the past that may have been based on what was known or possible due to technology capabilities, why not start using new and old things in new ways. Let’s start using all the tools in the data protection toolbox regardless of if they are new or old, cloud, virtual, physical, software defined product or service in new ways while keeping the requirements of the business in focus.

    Keeping with the theme of protect preserve and serve, data protection to be modernized needs to become and be seen as a business asset or enabler vs. an after thought or cost over-head topic. Also, keep in mind that only you can prevent data loss, are your restores ready for when you need them? as well as one of the fundamental goals of IT is to protect, preserve and serve information including its applications as well as data when, where needed in a cost-effective way.

    What say you?

    Ok, nuff said for now

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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