Tag: s2d

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Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview

Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview has been announced. Windows Server 2019 in the past might have been named 2016 R2 also known as a Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) release. Microsoft recommends LTSC Windows Server for workloads such as Microsoft SQL Server, Share Point and SDDC. The focus of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview is around hybrid cloud, security, application development as well as deployment including containers, software defined data center (SDDC) and software defined data infrastructure, as well as converged along with hyper-converged infrasture (HCI) management.

Windows Server 2019 Preview Features

Features and enhancements in the Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview span HCI management, security, hybrid cloud among others.

  • Hybrid cloud – Extending active directory, file server synchronize, cloud backup, applications spanning on-premises and cloud, management).
  • Security – Protect, detect and respond including shielded VMs, attested guarded fabric of host guarded machines, Windows and Linux VM (shielded), VMConnect for Windows and Linux troubleshooting of Shielded VM and encrypted networks, Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) among other enhancements.
  • Application platform – Developer and deployment tools for Windows Server containers and Windows Subsystem on Linux (WSL). Note that Microsoft has also been reducing the size of the Server image while extending feature functionality. The smaller images take up less storage space, plus load faster. As part of continued serverless and container support (Windows and Linux along with Docker), there are options for deployment orchestration including Kubernetes (in beta). Other enhancements include extending previous support for Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

Other enhancements part of Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview include cluster sets in support of software defined data center (SDDC). Cluster sets expand SDDC clusters of loosely coupled grouping of multiple failover clusters including compute, storage as well as hyper-converged configurations. Virtual machines have fluidity across member clusters within a cluster set and unified storage namespace. Existing failover cluster management experiences is preserved for member clusters, along with a new cluster set instance of the aggregate resources.

Management enhancements include S2D software defined storage performance history, project Honolulu support for storage updates, along with powershell cmdlet updates, as well as system center 2019. Learn more about project Honolulu hybrid management here and here.

Microsoft and Windows LTSC and SAC

As a refresher, Microsoft Windows (along with other software) is now being released on two paths including more frequent semi-annual channel (SAC), and less frequent LTSC releases. Some other things to keep in mind that SAC are focused around server core and nano server as container image while LTSC includes server with desktop experience as well as server core. For example, Windows Server 2016 released fall of 2016 is an LTSC, while the 1709 release was a SAC which had specific enhancements for container related environments.

There was some confusion fall of 2017 when 1709 was released as it was optimized for container and serverless environments and thus lacked storage spaces direct (S2D) leading some to speculate S2D was dead. S2D among other items that were not in the 1709 SAC are very much alive and enhanced in the LTSC preview for Windows Server 2019. Learn more about Microsoft LTSC and SAC here.

Test Driving Installing The Bits

One of the enhancements with LTSC preview candidate server 2019 is improved upgrades of existing environments. Granted not everybody will choose the upgrade in place keeping existing files however some may find the capability useful. I chose to give the upgrade keeping current files in place as an option to see how it worked. To do the upgrade I used a clean and up to date Windows Server 2016 data center edition with desktop. This test system is a VMware ESXi 6.5 guest running on flash SSD storage. Before the upgrade to Windows Server 2019, I made a VMware vSphere snapshot so I could quickly and easily restore the system to a good state should something not work.

To get the bits, go to Windows Insiders Preview Downloads (you will need to register)

Windows Server 2019 LTSC build 17623 is available in 18 languages in an ISO format and require a key.

The keys for the pre-release unlimited activations are:
Datacenter Edition         6XBNX-4JQGW-QX6QG-74P76-72V67
Standard Edition             MFY9F-XBN2F-TYFMP-CCV49-RMYVH

First step is downloading the bits from the Windows insiders preview page including select language for the image to use.

Getting the windows server 2019 preview bits
Select the language for the image to download

windows server 2019 select language

Starting the download

Once you have the image download, apply it to your bare metal server or hypervisors guest. In this example, I copied the windows server 2019 image to a VMware ESXi server for a Windows Server 2016 guest machine to access via its virtual CD/DVD.

pre upgrade check windows server version
Verify the Windows Server version before upgrade

After download, access the image, in this case, I attached the image to the virtual machine CD, then accessed it and ran the setup application.

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview download

Download updates now or later

license key

Entering license key for pre-release windows server 2019

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview datacenter desktop version

Selecting Windows Server Datacenter with Desktop

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview license

Accepting Software License for pre-release version.

Next up is determining to do a new install (keep nothing), or an in-place upgrade. I wanted to see how smooth the in-place upgrade was so selected that option.

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview inplace upgrade

What to keep, nothing, or existing files and data


Confirming your selections

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview install start

Ready to start the installation process

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview upgrade in progress
Installation underway of Windows Server 2019 preview

Once the installation is complete, verify that Windows Server 2019 is now installed.

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview upgrade completed
Completed upgrade from Windows Server 2016 to Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview

The above shows verifying the system build using Powershell, as well as the message in the lower right corner of the display. Granted the above does not show the new functionality, however you should get an idea of how quickly a Windows Server 2019 preview can be deployed to explore and try out the new features.

Where to learn more

Learn more Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview, Windows Server Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), Azure and related software defined data center (SDDC), software defined data infrastructures (SDDI) 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 and wrap-up

Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview gives a glimpse of some of the new features that are part of the next evolution of Windows Server as part of supporting hybrid IT environments. In addition to the new features and functionality that convey not only support for hybrid cloud, also hybrid applications development, deployment, devops and workloads, Microsoft is showing flexibility in management, ease of use, scalability, along with security as well as scale out stability. If you have not looked at Windows Server for a while, or involved with serverless, containers, Kubernetes among other initiatives, now is a good time to check out Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview.

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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Use Intel Optane NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 SSD drive in PCIe slot

Use NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 disk drive form factor SSD in PCIe slot

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Need to install or use an Intel Optane NVMe 900P or other Nonvolatile Memory (NVM) Express NVMe based U.2 SFF 8639 disk drive form factor Solid State Device (SSD) into PCIe a slot?

For example, I needed to connect an Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SFF 8639 drive form factor SSD into one of my servers using an available PCIe slot.

The solution I used was an carrier adapter card such as those from Ableconn (PEXU2-132 NVMe 2.5-inch U.2 [SFF-8639] via Amazon.com among other global venues.

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Top Intel 750 NVMe PCIe AiC SSD, bottom Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SSD with Ableconn carrier

The above image shows top an Intel 750 NVMe PCIe Add in Card (AiC) SSD and on the bottom an Intel Optane NVMe 900P 280GB U.2 (SFF 8639) drive form factor SSD mounted on an Ableconn carrier adapter.

NVMe server storage I/O sddc

NVMe Tradecraft Refresher

NVMe is the protocol that is implemented with different topologies including local via PCIe using U.2 aka SFF-8639 (aka disk drive form factor), M.2 aka Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) also known as "gum stick", along with PCIe Add in Card (AiC). NVMe accessed devices can be installed in laptops, ultra books, workstations, servers and storage systems using the various form factors. U.2 drives are also refereed to by some as PCIe drives in that the NVMe command set protocol is implemented using PCIe x4 physical connection to the devices. Jump ahead if you want to skip over the NVMe primer refresh material to learn more about U.2 8639 devices.

data infrastructure nvme u.2 8639 ssd
Various SSD device form factors and interfaces

In addition to form factor, NVMe devices can be direct attached and dedicated, rack and shared, as well as accessed via networks also known as fabrics such as NVMe over Fabrics.

NVMeoF FC-NVMe NVMe fabric SDDC
The many facets of NVMe as a front-end, back-end, direct attach and fabric

Context is important with NVMe in that fabric can mean NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe) where the NVMe command set protocol is used in place of SCSI Fibre Channel Protocol (e.g. SCSI_FCP) aka FCP or what many simply know and refer to as Fibre Channel. NVMe over Fabric can also mean NVMe command set implemented over an RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) based network.

NVM and NVMe accessed flash SCM SSD storage

Another point of context is not to confuse Nonvolatile Memory (NVM) which are the storage or memory media and NVMe which is the interface for accessing storage (e.g. similar to SAS, SATA and others). As a refresher, NVM or the media are the various persistent memories (PM) including NVRAM, NAND Flash, 3D XPoint along with other storage class memories (SCM) used in SSD (in various packaging).

Learn more about 3D XPoint with the following resources:

Learn more (or refresh) your NVMe server storage I/O knowledge, experience tradecraft skill set with this post here. View this piece here looking at NVM vs. NVMe and how one is the media where data is stored, while the other is an access protocol (e.g. NVMe). Also visit www.thenvmeplace.com to view additional NVMe tips, tools, technologies, and related resources.

NVMe U.2 SFF-8639 aka 8639 SSD

On quick glance, an NVMe U.2 SFF-8639 SSD may look like a SAS small form factor (SFF) 2.5" HDD or SSD. Also, keep in mind that HDD and SSD with SAS interface have a small tab to prevent inserting them into a SATA port. As a reminder, SATA devices can plug into SAS ports, however not the other way around which is what the key tab function does (prevents accidental insertion of SAS into SATA). Looking at the left-hand side of the following image you will see an NVMe SFF 8639 aka U.2 backplane connector which looks similar to a SAS port.

Note that depending on how implemented including its internal controller, flash translation layer (FTL), firmware and other considerations, an NVMe U.2 or 8639 x4 SSD should have similar performance to a comparable NVMe x4 PCIe AiC (e.g. card) device. By comparable device, I mean the same type of NVM media (e.g. flash or 3D XPoint), FTL and controller. Likewise generally an PCIe x8 should be faster than an x4, however more PCIe lanes does not mean more performance, its what’s inside and how those lanes are actually used that matter.

NVMe U.2 8639 2.5" 1.8" SSD driveNVMe U.2 8639 2.5 1.8 SSD drive slot pin
NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 Drive (Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials CRC Press)

With U.2 devices the key tab that prevents SAS drives from inserting into a SATA port is where four pins that support PCIe x4 are located. What this all means is that a U.2 8639 port or socket can accept an NVMe, SAS or SATA device depending on how the port is configured. Note that the U.2 8639 port is either connected to a SAS controller for SAS and SATA devices or a PCIe port, riser or adapter.

On the left of the above figure is a view towards the backplane of a storage enclosure in a server that supports SAS, SATA, and NVMe (e.g. 8639). On the right of the above figure is the connector end of an 8639 NVM SSD showing addition pin connectors compared to a SAS or SATA device. Those extra pins give PCIe x4 connectivity to the NVMe devices. The 8639 drive connectors enable a device such as an NVM, or NAND flash SSD to share a common physical storage enclosure with SAS and SATA devices, including optional dual-pathing.

More PCIe lanes may not mean faster performance, verify if those lanes (e.g. x4 x8 x16 etc) are present just for mechanical (e.g. physical) as well as electrical (they are also usable) and actually being used. Also, note that some PCIe storage devices or adapters might be for example an x8 for supporting two channels or devices each at x4. Likewise, some devices might be x16 yet only support four x4 devices.

NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 PCIe Drive SSD FAQ

Some common questions pertaining NVMe U.2 aka SFF 8639 interface and form factor based SSD include:

Why use U.2 type devices?

Compatibility with what’s available for server storage I/O slots in a server, appliance, storage enclosure. Ability to mix and match SAS, SATA and NVMe with some caveats in the same enclosure. Support higher density storage configurations maximizing available PCIe slots and enclosure density.

Is PCIe x4 with NVMe U.2 devices fast enough?

While not as fast as a PCIe AiC that fully supports x8 or x16 or higher, an x4 U.2 NVMe accessed SSD should be plenty fast for many applications. If you need more performance, then go with a faster AiC card.

Why not go with all PCIe AiC?

If you need the speed, simplicity, have available PCIe card slots, then put as many of those in your systems or appliances as possible. Otoh, some servers or appliances are PCIe slot constrained so U.2 devices can be used to increase the number of devices attached to a PCIe backplane while also supporting SAS, SATA based SSD or HDDs.

Why not use M.2 devices?

If your system or appliances supports NVMe M.2 those are good options. Some systems even support a combination of M.2 for local boot, staging, logs, work and other storage space while PCIe AiC are for performance along with U.2 devices.

Why not use NVMeoF?

Good question, why not, that is, if your shared storage system supports NVMeoF or FC-NVMe go ahead and use that, however, you might also need some local NVMe devices. Likewise, if yours is a software-defined storage platform that needs local storage, then NVMe U.2, M.2 and AiC or custom cards are an option. On the other hand, a shared fabric NVMe based solution may support a mixed pool of SAS, SATA along with NVMe U.2, M.2, AiC or custom cards as its back-end storage resources.

When not to use U.2?

If your system, appliance or enclosure does not support U.2 and you do not have a need for it. Or, if you need more performance such as from an x8 or x16 based AiC, or you need shared storage. Granted a shared storage system may have U.2 based SSD drives as back-end storage among other options.

How does the U.2 backplane connector attach to PCIe?

Via enclosures backplane, there is either a direct hardwire connection to the PCIe backplane, or, via a connector cable to a riser card or similar mechanism.

Does NVMe replace SAS, SATA or Fibre Channel as an interface?

The NVMe command set is an alternative to the traditional SCSI command set used in SAS and Fibre Channel. That means it can replace, or co-exist depending on your needs and preferences for access various storage devices.

Who supports U.2 devices?

Dell has supported U.2 aka PCIe drives in some of their servers for many years, as has Intel and many others. Likewise, U.2 8639 SSD drives including 3D Xpoint and NAND flash-based are available from Intel among others.

Can you have AiC, U.2 and M.2 devices in the same system?

If your server or appliance or storage system support them then yes. Likewise, there are M.2 to PCIe AiC, M.2 to SATA along with other adapters available for your servers, workstations or software-defined storage system platform.

NVMe U.2 carrier to PCIe adapter

The following images show examples of mounting an Intel Optane NVMe 900P accessed U.2 8639 SSD on an Ableconn PCIe AiC carrier. Once U.2 SSD is mounted, the Ableconn adapter inserts into an available PCIe slot similar to other AiC devices. From a server or storage appliances software perspective, the Ableconn is a pass-through device so your normal device drivers are used, for example VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 recognizes the Intel Optane device, similar with Windows and other operating systems.

intel optane 900p u.2 8639 nvme drive bottom view
Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SSD and Ableconn PCIe AiC carrier

The above image shows the Ableconn adapter carrier card along with NVMe U.2 8639 pins on the Intel Optane NVMe 900P.

intel optane 900p u.2 8639 nvme drive end view
Views of Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 8639 and Ableconn carrier connectors

The above image shows an edge view of the NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 Intel Optane NVMe 900P SSD along with those on the Ableconn adapter carrier. The following images show an Intel Optane NVMe 900P SSD installed in a PCIe AiC slot using an Ableconn carrier, along with how VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 sees the device using plug and play NVMe device drivers.

NVMe U.2 8639 installed in PCIe AiC Slot
Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SSD installed in PCIe AiC Slot

NVMe U.2 8639 and VMware vSphere ESXi
How VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5 sees NVMe U.2 device

Intel NVMe Optane NVMe 3D XPoint based and other SSDs

Here are some Amazon.com links to various Intel Optane NVMe 3D XPoint based SSDs in different packaging form factors:

Here are some Amazon.com links to various Intel and other vendor NAND flash based NVMe accessed SSDs including U.2, M.2 and AiC form factors:

Note in addition to carriers to adapt U.2 8639 devices to PCIe AiC form factor and interfaces, there are also M.2 NGFF to PCIe AiC among others. An example is the Ableconn M.2 NGFF PCIe SSD to PCI Express 3.0 x4 Host Adapter Card.

In addition to Amazon.com, Newegg.com, Ebay and many other venues carry NVMe related technologies.
The Intel Optane NVMe 900P are newer, however the Intel 750 Series along with other Intel NAND Flash based SSDs are still good price performers and as well as provide value. I have accumulated several Intel 750 NVMe devices over past few years as they are great price performers. Check out this related post Get in the NVMe SSD game (if you are not already).

Where To Learn More

View additional NVMe, SSD, NVM, SCM, Data Infrastructure 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

NVMe accessed storage is in your future, however there are various questions to address including exploring your options for type of devices, form factors, configurations among other topics. Some NVMe accessed storage is direct attached and dedicated in laptops, ultrabooks, workstations and servers including PCIe AiC, M.2 and U.2 SSDs, while others are shared networked aka fabric based. NVMe over fabric (e.g. NVMeoF) includes RDMA over converged Ethernet (RoCE) as well as NVMe over Fibre Channel (e.g. FC-NVMe). Networked fabric accessed NVMe access of pooled shared storage systems and appliances can also include internal NVMe attached devices (e.g. as part of back-end storage) as well as other SSDs (e.g. SAS, SATA).

General wrap-up (for now) NVMe U.2 8639 and related tips include:

  • Verify the performance of the device vs. how many PCIe lanes exist
  • Update any applicable BIOS/UEFI, device drivers and other software
  • Check the form factor and interface needed (e.g. U.2, M.2 / NGFF, AiC) for a given scenario
  • Look carefully at the NVMe devices being ordered for proper form factor and interface
  • With M.2 verify that it is an NVMe enabled device vs. SATA

Learn more about NVMe at www.thenvmeplace.com including how to use Intel Optane NVMe 900P U.2 SFF 8639 disk drive form factor SSDs in PCIe slots as well as for fabric among other scenarios.

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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Chelsio Storage over IP and other Networks Enable Data Infrastructures

Chelsio Storage over IP Enable Data Infrastructures

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Chelsio and Storage over IP (SoIP) continue to enable Data Infrastructures from legacy to software defined virtual, container, cloud as well as converged. This past week I had a chance to visit with Chelsio to discuss data infrastructures, server storage I/O networking along with other related topics. More on Chelsio later in this post, however, for now lets take a quick step back and refresh what is SoIP (Storage over IP) along with Storage over Ethernet (among other networks).

Data Infrastructures Protect Preserve Secure and Serve Information
Various IT and Cloud Infrastructure Layers including Data Infrastructures

Server Storage over IP Revisited

There are many variations of SoIP from network attached storage (NAS) file based processing including NFS, SAMBA/SMB (aka Windows File sharing) among others. In addition there is various block such as SCSI over IP (e.g. iSCSI), along with object via HTTP/HTTPS, not to mention the buzzword bingo list of RoCE, iSER, iWARP, RDMA, DDPK, FTP, FCoE, IFCP, and SMB3 direct to name a few.

Who is Chelsio

For those who are not aware or need a refresher, Chelsio is involved with enabling server storage I/O by creating ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) that do various functions offloading those from the host server processor. What this means for some is a throw back to the early 2000s of the TCP Offload Engine (TOE) era where various processing to handle regular along with iSCSI and other storage over Ethernet and IP could be accelerated.

Chelsio data infrastructure focus

Chelsio ecosystem across different data infrastructure focus areas and application workloads

As seen in the image above, certainly there is a server and storage I/O network play with Chelsio, along with traffic management, packet inspection, security (encryption, SSL and other offload), traditional, commercial, web, high performance compute (HPC) along with high profit or productivity compute (the other HPC). Chelsio also enables data infrastructures that are part of physical bare metal (BM), software defined virtual, container, cloud, serverless among others.

Chelsio server storage I/O focus

The above image shows how Chelsio enables initiators on server and storage appliances as well as targets via various storage over IP (or Ethernet) protocols.

Chelsio enabling various data center resources

Chelsio also plays in several different sectors from *NIX to Windows, Cloud to Containers, Various processor architectures and hypervisors.

Chelsio ecosystem

Besides diverse server storage I/O enabling capabilities across various data infrastructure environments, what caught my eye with Chelsio is how far they, and storage over IP have progressed over the past decade (or more). Granted there are faster underlying networks today, however the offload and specialized chip sets (e.g. ASICs) have also progressed as seen in the above and next series of images via Chelsio.

The above showing TCP and UDP acceleration, the following show Microsoft SMB 3.1.1 performance something important for doing Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) and Windows-based Converged Infrastructure (CI) along with Hyper Converged Infrastructures (HCI) deployments.

Chelsio software environments

Something else that caught my eye was iSCSI performance which in the following shows 4 initiators accessing a single target doing about 4 million IOPs (reads and writes), various size and configurations. Granted that is with a 100Gb network interface, however it also shows that potential bottlenecks are removed enabling that faster network to be more effectively used.

Chelsio server storage I/O performance

Moving on from TCP, UDP and iSCSI, NVMe and in particular NVMe over Fabric (NVMeoF) have become popular industry topics so check out the following. One of my comments to Chelsio is to add host or server CPU usage to the following chart to help show the story and value proposition of NVMe in general to do more I/O activity while consuming less server-side resources. Lets see what they put out in the future.

Chelsio

Ok, so Chelsio does storage over IP, storage over Ethernet and other interfaces accelerating performance, as well as regular TCP and UDP activity. One of the other benefits of what Chelsio and others are doing with their ASICs (or FPGA by some) is to also offload processing for security among other topics. Given the increased focus around server storage I/O and data infrastructure security from encryption to SSL and related usage that requires more resources, these new ASIC such as from Chelsio help to offload various specialized processing from the server.

The customer benefit is that more productive application work can be done by their servers (or storage appliances). For example, if you have a database server, that means more product ivy data base transactions per second per licensed software. Put another way, want to get more value out of your Oracle, Microsoft or other vendors software licenses, simple, get more work done per server that is licensed by offloading and eliminate waits or other bottlenecks.

Using offloads and removing server bottlenecks might seem like common sense however I’m still amazed that the number of organizations who are more focused on getting extra value out of their hardware vs. getting value out of their software licenses (which might be more expensive).

Chelsio

Where To Learn More

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

Data Infrastructures Protect Preserve Secure and Serve Information
Various IT and Cloud Infrastructure Layers including Data Infrastructures

What This All Means

Data Infrastructures exist to protect, preserve, secure and serve information along with the applications and data they depend on. With more data being created at a faster rate, along with the size of data becoming larger, increased application functionality to transform data into information means more demands on data infrastructures and their underlying resources.

This means more server I/O to storage system and other servers, along with increased use of SoIP as well as storage over Ethernet and other interfaces including NVMe. Chelsio (and others) are addressing the various application and workload demands by enabling more robust, productive, effective and efficient data infrastructures.

Check out Chelsio and how they are enabling storage over IPO (SoIP) to enable Data Infrastructures from legacy to software defined virtual, container, cloud as well as converged, oh, and thanks Chelsio for being able to use the above images.

Ok, nuff said, for now.
Gs

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

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

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

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Dell EMC Announce Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud Solution

server storage I/O trends

Dell EMC Azure Stack Hybrid Cloud Solution

Dell EMC have announced their Microsoft Azure Stack hybrid cloud platform solutions. This announcement builds upon earlier statements of support and intention by Dell EMC to be part of the Microsoft Azure Stack community. For those of you who are not familiar, Azure Stack is an on premise extension of Microsoft Azure public cloud.

What this means is that essentially you can have the Microsoft Azure experience (or a subset of it) in your own data center or data infrastructure, enabling cloud experiences and abilities at your own pace, your own way with control. Learn more about Microsoft Azure Stack including my experiences with and installing Technique Preview 3 (TP3) here.

software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

What Is Azure Stack

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

In summary, Microsoft Azure Stack and this announcement is about:

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

What Did Dell EMC Announce

Dell EMC announced their initial product, platform solutions, and services for Azure Stack. This includes a Proof of Concept (PoC) starter kit (PE R630) for doing evaluations, prototype, training, development test, DevOp and other initial activities with Azure Stack. Dell EMC also announced a larger for production deployment, or large-scale development, test DevOp activity turnkey solution. The initial production solution scales from 4 to 12 nodes, or from 80 to 336 cores that include hardware (server compute, memory, I/O and networking, top of rack (TOR) switches, management, Azure Stack software along with services. Other aspects of the announcement include initial services in support of Microsoft Azure Stack and Azure cloud offerings.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

The announcement builds on joint Dell EMC Microsoft experience, partnerships, technologies and services spanning hardware, software, on site data center and public cloud.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC along with Microsoft have engineered a hybrid cloud platform for organizations to modernize their data infrastructures enabling faster innovate, accelerate deployment of resources. Includes hardware (server compute, memory, I/O networking, storage devices), software, services, and support.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

The value proposition of Dell EMC hybrid cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack includes consistent experience for developers and IT data infrastructure professionals. Common experience across Azure public cloud and Azure Stack on-premises in your data center for private or hybrid. This includes common portal, Powershell, DevOps tools, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure and associated experiences (management, provisioning, services).
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Secure, protect, preserve and serve applications VMs hosted on Azure Stack with Dell EMC services along with Microsoft technologies. Dell EMC data protection including backup and restore, Encryption as a Service, host guard and protected VMs, AD integration among other features.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC services for Microsoft Azure Stack include single contact support for prepare, assessment, planning; deploy with rack integration, delivery, configuration; extend the platform with applicable migration, integration with Office 365 and other applications, build new services.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC Hyper-converged scale out solutions range from minimum of 4 x PowerEdge R730XD (total raw specs include 80 cores (4 x 20), 1TB RAM (4 x 256GB), 12.8TB SSD Cache, 192TB Storage, plus two top of row network switches (Dell EMC) and 1U management server node. Initial maximum configuration raw specification includes 12 x R730XD (total 336 cores), 6TB memory, 86TB SSD cache, 900TB storage along with TOR network switch and management server.

The above configurations initially enable HCI nodes of small (low) 20 cores, 256GB memory, 5.7TB SSD cache, 40TB storage; mid size 24 cores, 384GB memory, 11.5TB cache and 60TB storage; high-capacity with 28 cores, 512GB memory, 11.5TB cache and 80TB storage per node.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Dell EMC Evaluator program for Microsoft Azure Stack including the PE R630 for PoCs, development, test and training environments. The solution combines Microsoft Azure Stack software, Dell EMC server with Intel E5-2630 (10 cores, 20 threads / logical processors or LPs), or Intel E5-2650 (12 cores, 24 threads / LPs). Memory is 128GB or 256GB, storage includes flash SSD (2 x 480GB SAS) and HDD (6 x 1TB SAS).
and networking.
server storage I/O trends
Image via Dell EMC

Collaborative support single contact between Microsoft and Dell EMC

Who Is This For

This announcement is for any organization that is looking for an on-premises, in your data center private or hybrid cloud turnkey solution stack. This initial set of announcements can be for those looking to do a proof of concept (PoC), advanced prototype, support development test, DevOp or gain cloud-like elasticity, ease of use, rapid procurement and other experiences of public cloud, on your terms and timeline. Naturally, there is a strong affinity and seamless experience for those already using, or planning to use Azure Public Cloud for Windows, Linux, Containers and other workloads, applications, and services.

What Does This Cost

Check with your Dell EMC representative or partner for exact pricing which varies for the size and configurations. There are also various licensing models to take into consideration if you have Microsoft Enterprise License Agreements (ELAs) that your Dell EMC representative or business partner can address for you. Likewise being cloud based, there is also time usage-based options to explore.

Where to learn more

What this all means

The dust is starting to settle on last falls Dell EMC integration, both of whom have long histories working with, and partnering along with Microsoft on legacy, as well as virtual software-defined data centers (SDDC), software-defined data infrastructures (SDDI), native, and hybrid clouds. Some may view the Dell EMC VMware relationship as a primary focus, however, keep in mind that both Dell and EMC had worked with Microsoft long before VMware came into being. Likewise, Microsoft remains one of the most commonly deployed operating systems on VMware-based environments. Granted Dell EMC have a significant focus on VMware, they both also sell, service and support many services for Microsoft-based solutions.

What about Cisco, HPE, Lenovo among others who have to announce or discussed their Microsoft Azure Stack intentions? Good question, until we hear more about what those and others are doing or planning, there is not much more to do or discuss beyond speculating for now. Another common question is if there is demand for private and hybrid cloud, in fact, some industry expert pundits have even said private, or hybrid are dead which is interesting, how can something be dead if it is just getting started. Likewise, it is early to tell if Azure Stack will gain traction with various organizations, some of whom may have tried or struggled with OpenStack among others.

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

Overall, this is an excellent and exciting move for both Microsoft extending their public cloud software stack to be deployed within data centers in a hybrid way, something that those customers are familiar with doing. This is a good example of hybrid being spanning public and private clouds, remote and on-premises, as well as familiarity and control of traditional procurement with the flexibility, elasticity experience of clouds.

software defined data infrastructures SDDI and SDDC

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

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

Overall this is a good announcement from Dell EMC for those who are interested in, or should become more aware about Microsoft Azure Stack, Cloud along with hybrid clouds. Likewise look forward to hearing more about the solutions from others who will be supporting Azure Stack as well as other hybrid (and Virtual Private Clouds).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

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Broadcom aka Avago aka LSI announces SAS SATA NVMe Adapters with RAID

server storage I/O trends

Broadcom aka Avago aka LSI announces SAS SATA NVMe Adapters with RAID

In case you missed it, Broadcom formerly known as Avago who bought the LSI adapter and RAID card business announced shipping new SAS, SATA and NVMe devices.

While SAS and SATA are well established continuing to be deployed for both HDD as well as flash SSD, NVMe continues to evolve with a bright future. Likewise, while there is a focus on software-defined storage (SDS), software defined data centers (SDDC) and software defined data infrastructures (SDDI) along with advanced parity RAID including erasure codes, object storage among other technologies, there is still a need for adapter cards including traditional RAID.

Keep in mind that while probably not meeting the definition of some software-defined aficionados, the many different variations, permutations along with derivatives of RAID from mirror and replication to basic parity to advanced erasure codes (some based on Reed Solomon aka RAID 2) rely on software. Granted, some of that software is run on regular primary server processors, some on packaged in silicon via ASICs or FPGAs, or System on Chips (SOC), RAID on Chip (RoC) as well as BIOS, firmware, drivers as well as management tools.

SAS, SATA and NVMe adapters

For some environments cards such as those announced by Broadcom are used in passthru mode effectively as adapters for attaching SAS, SATA and NVMe storage devices to servers. Those servers may be deployed as converged infrastructures (CI), hyper-converged infrastructures (HCI), Cluster or Cloud in Box (CiB) among other variations. To name names you might find the above (or in the not so distant future) in VMware vSAN or regular vSphere based environments, Microsoft Windows Server, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) or Azure Stack, OpenStack among other deployments (check your vendors Hardware Compatibility Lists aka HCLs). In some cases these cards may be adapters in passthru mode, or using their RAID (support various by different software stacks). Meanwhile in other environments, the more traditional RAID features are still used spanning Windows to Linux among others.

Who Is Broadcom?

Some of you may know of Broadcom having been around for many years with a focus on networking related technologies. However some may not realize that Avago bought Broadcom and changed their name to Broadcom. Here is a history that includes more recent acquisitions such as Brocade, PLX, Emulex as well as LSI. Some of you may recall Avago buying LSI (the SAS, SATA, PCIe HBA, RAID and components) business not sold to NetApp as part of Engenio. Also recall that Avago sold the LSI flash SSD business unit to Seagate a couple of years ago as part of its streamlining. That’s how we get to where we are at today with Broadcom aka formerly known as Avago who bought the LSI adapter and RAID business announcing new SAS, SATA, NVMe cards.

What Was Announced?

Broadcom has announced cards that are multi-protocol supporting Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), SATA/AHCI as well as NVM Express (NVMe) as basic adapters for attaching storage (HDD, SSD, storage systems) along with optional RAID as well as cache support. These cards can be used in application servers for traditional, as well as virtualized SDDC environments, as well as storage systems or appliances for software-defined storage among other uses. The basic functionality of these cards is to provide high performance (IOPs and other activity, as well as bandwidth) along with low latency combined with data protection as well as dense connectivity.

Specific features include:

  • Broadcom’s Tri-Mode SerDes Technology enables the operation of NVMe, SAS or SATA devices in a single drive bay, allowing for endless design flexibility.
  • Management software including LSI Storage Authority (LSA), StorCLI, HII (UEFI)
  • Optional CacheVault(R) flash cache protection
  • Physical dimension Low Profile 6.127” x 2.712”
  • Host bus type x8 lane PCIe Express 3.1
  • Data transfer rates SAS-3 12Gbs; NVMe up to 8 GT/s PCIe Gen 3
  • Various OS and hypervisors host platform support
  • Warranty 3 yrs, free 5×8 phone support, advanced replacement option
  • RAID levels 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60

Note that some of the specific feature functionality may be available at a later date, check with your preferred vendors HCL

Specification

9480 8i8e

9440 8i

9460 8i

9460 16i

Image

Internal Ports

8

 

8

16

Internal Connectors

2 x Mini-SAS HD x4 SFF-8643

2 x Mini-SAS HD x4 SFF-8643

2 x Mini-SAS HD x4 SFF-8643

4 Mini-SAS HD x4
SFF-8643

External Ports

8

 

 

 

External Connectors

2 x Mini-SAS HD SFF8644

 

 

 

Cache Protection

CacheVault CVPM05

 

CacheVault CVPM05

CacheVault CVPM05

Cache Memory

2GB 2133 MHz DDR4 SDRAM

 

2GB 2133 MHz DDR4 SDRAM

4GB 2133 MHz DDR4 SDRAM

Devices Supported

SAS/SATA: 255, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

SAS/SATA: 63, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

SAS/SATA: 255, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

SAS/SATA: 255, NVMe: 4 x4, up to 24 x2 or x4*

I/O Processors (SAS Controller)

SAS3516 dual-core RAID-on-Chip (ROC)

SAS3408 I/O controller (IOC)

SAS3508 dual-core RAID-on-Chip (ROC)

SAS3516 dual-core RAID-on-Chip (ROC)

In case you need a refresher on SFF cable types, click on the following two images which take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more, as well as order various cable options. PC Pit Stop has a good selection of cables (See other SFF types), connectors and other accessories that I have used, along with those from Amazon.com and others.

Available via Amazon.com sff 8644 8643 sas mini hd cable
Left: SFF 8644 Mini SAS HD (External), Right SFF-8643 Mini SAS HD (internal) Image via Amazon.com

Available via Amazon.com sff 8644 8642 sas mini hd cable
Left: SFF 8643 Mini SAS HD (Internal), Right SFF-8642 SATA with power (internal) Image via Amazon.com

Wait, Doesnt NVMe use PCIe

For those who are not familiar with NVMe and in particular U.2 aka SFF 8639 based devices, physically they look the same (almost) as a SAS device connector. The slight variation is if you look at a SAS drive, there is a small tab to prevent plugging into a SATA port (recall you can plug SATA into SAS. For SAS drives that tab is blank, however on the NVMe 8639 aka U.2 drives (below left) that tab has several connectors which are PCIe x4 (single or dual path).

What this means is that the PCIe x4 bus electrical signals are transferred via a connector, to backplane chassis to 8639 drive slot to the drive. Those same 8639 drive slots can also have a SAS SATA connection using their traditional connectors enabling a converged or hybrid drive slot so to speak. Learn more about NVMe here (If the Answer is NVMe, then what were and are the questions?) as well as at www.thenvmeplace.com.

NVMe U.2 8639 driveNVMe U.2 8639 sas sata nvme drive
Left NVMe U.2 drive showing PCIe x4 connectors, right, NVMe U.2 8639 connector

Who Is This For?

These cards are applicable for general purpose IT and other data infrastructure environments in traditional servers among others uses. They are also applicable for systems builders, integrators and OEMs whom you may be buying your current systems from, or future ones.

Where to Learn More

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

What this all means

Even as the industry continues to talk and move towards more software-defined focus, even for environments that are serverless, there is still need for hardware somewhere. These adapters are a good sign of the continued maturing cycle of NVMe to be well positioned into the next decade and beyond, while also being relevant today. Likewise, even though the future involves NVMe, there is a still a place for SAS along with SATA to coexist in many environments. For some environment there is a need for traditional RAID while for others simply the need for attachment of SAS, SATA and NVMe devices. Overall, a good set of updates, enhancements and new technology for today and tomorrow, now, when do I get some to play with? ;).

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

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

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

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

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SSD, flash, Non-volatile memory (NVM) storage Trends, Tips & Topics

SSD, flash, Non-volatile memory (NVM) storage Trends, Tips & Topics

Updated 2/2/2018

server storage I/O trends

Will 2017 be there year of solid state device (SSD), all flash, or all Non-volatile memory (NVM) based storage data centers and data infrastructures?

Recently I did a piece over at InfoStor looking at SSD trends, tips and related topics. SSDs of some type, shape and form are in your future, if they are not already. In my InfoStor piece, I look at some non-volatile memory (NVM) and SSD trends, technologies, tools and tips that you can leverage today to help prepare for tomorrow. This also includes NVM Express (NVMe) based components and solutions.

By way of background, SSD can refer to solid state drive or solid state device (e.g. more generic). The latter is what I am using in this post. NVM refers to different types of persistent memories, including NAND flash and its variants most commonly used today in SSDs. Other NVM mediums include NVRAM along with storage class memories (SCMs) such as 3D XPoint and phase change memory (PCM) among others. Let’s focus on NAND flash as that is what is primarily available and shipping for production enterprise environments today.

Continue reading about SSD, flash, NVM and related trends, topics and tips over at InfoStor by clicking here.

Where To Learn More

Additional related content can be found at:

What This All Means

Will 2017 finally be the year of all flash, all SSD and all NVM including emerging storage class memories (SCM)? Or as we have seen over the past decade increasing adoption as well as deployment in most environments, some of which have gone all SSD or NVM. In the meantime it is safe to say that NVMe, NVM, SSD, flash and other related technologies are in your future in some shape or form as well as quantity. Check out my piece over at InfoStor SSD trends, tips and related topics.

What say you, are you going all flash, SSD or NVM in 2017, if not, what are your concerns or constraints and plans?

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and <a “https://storageioblog.com/book1”>Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book “Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials” (CRC Press).

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

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Overview Review of Microsoft ReFS (Reliable File System) and resource links

server storage I/O trends

This is an overview review of Microsoft ReFS (Resilient File System) along with some resource links. ReFS is part of some Windows operating system platforms including Server 2016.

Some context here is that review can mean an in-depth deep dive product or technology review, while another meaning is to simply to refresh what you may already know about ReFS. For this post, the focus is on the latter, that is a bit of overview that also functions as a refresh review of what you may already know. However click here to see how ReFS and NTFS compare.

Click here to read more about Windows Server 2016, Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), Storage Replica (SR) and other related topics (or click on the image below).

Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Windows Server 2016 Welcome Screen – Source Server StorageIOlab.com

What Is Microsoft ReFS and Why It Matters

Microsoft ReFS (Resilient File System) is part of Windows Servers 2012, 2012 R2, 2016 as well as Windows 8.1 and 10 platforms as an alternative to NTFS file system. ReFS is designed not only for resiliency, also for scaling volumes beyond 256 TBytes (NTFS) to 4.7 Zettabytes (ZB). Note files size for both NTFS and ReFS is 18 Exabytes (EB). Click here to view various ReFS and NTFS data services, feature functionality along with limits. Part of being resilient means that ReFS is able to provide more data integrity protection to guard against logical data corruption.

Note while ReFS is the future for Windows-based platforms, NTFS is not going away anytime soon, after all, FAT (File Allocation Table) volumes are still supported after how many decades of being around? ReFS has been around for several years having existed in earlier WIndows operating systems as an option, however with Server 2016, its status is promoted to a more prominent role with more features, data services and functionality.

ReFS data services, features and functionality include:

  • Resiliency – Automatic detection and online repair of data corruption issues
  • Online repair – Isolate faults to localized area of data corruption for repair enabling volumes to stay online
  • Storage Spaces integration – Leverage mirror or parity spaces for automatic detect and repair via alternate data copies. Note that with Windows Server 2016 Microsoft also has introduced Storage Spaces Direct (S2D).
  • Data salvage – Should a volume become corrupt with no alternate copy (you should still have a backup), ReFS removes corrupt data from name space on a live volume. This capability enables surviving data to stay accessible while isolating the fault to the corrupted or damaged data.
  • Integrity streams – Checksums for metadata and optionally file data that enable ReFS to detect corruptions in a reliable way.
  • Proactive error correction – Besides validating data before reads and writes, ReFS also has a background scrubber data integrity check of volumes. This capability enables ReFS to proactively detect latent or silent data corruption so that corrective repair of damaged data can occur.
  • Real-time tiering – When combined with S2D maximizes performance and space capacity across performance and capacity tiers using NVMe, flash SSD and HDDs devices. Writes occur to the performance tier, with large chunks de-staged to capacity tier. Read acceleration enabled via cache. Can support all flash (e.g. performance NVMe and capacity TLC or other flash SSD) as well as hybrid mix of HDD and SSD configurations.
  • Block cloning for dynamic workloads including server virtualization such as accelerating checkpoint merge operations.
  • Sparse VDL (Valid Data Length) improves virtual machine (VM) operations reducing time needed to create fixed size VHDs from 10s of minutes to seconds.
  • Variable storage allocation cluster size of 4KB (for most environments) and 64KB (for environments with larger sequential file processing needs).

ReFS Deployment Options

Microsoft ReFS deployment options include:

  • Basic disk (HDD, and SSD) – Leverage applications or other resiliency and protection solutions.
  • SAS drive enclosures with storage spaces provides more data protection including availability as well as integrity and accessibility. Leverages classic storage spaces mirroring and parity protection for increased resiliency and availability.
  • Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) – Increased scalability, real-time tiering and cache server storage I/O performance (effectiveness) and capacity (efficiency) optimization. For increased resiliency adds block clone and sparse Valid Data Length (VDL) to boost VHDX file performance operations (create, merge, expand). For resiliency, built-in checksums, online repair as well as leverage alternate data copies combined with S2D to detect as well as correct both metadata as well as primary data corruption issues. Optimized for large-scale and virtualized application workloads.

Where To Learn More

For those of you not as familiar with Microsoft Windows Server and related topics, or that simply need a refresh, here are several handy links as well as resources.

  • Benchmarking Microsoft Hyper-V server, VMware ESXi and Xen Hypervisors (Via cisjournal PDF)
  • BrightTalk Webinar – Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) are in your Future (if not already here)
  • BrightTalk Weibniar – Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Enabling Software-Defined Data Centers
  • Choosing drives and resiliency types in Storage Spaces Direct to meet performance and capacity requirements (Via TechNet)
  • Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
  • Deep Dive: Volumes in Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet Blogs)
  • Discover Storage Spaces Direct, the ultimate software-defined storage for Hyper-V (YouTube Video)
  • DUPLICATE_EXTENTS_DATA structure (Via MSDN)
  • Block cloning on ReFS (Via TechNet)
  • DISKSPD now on GitHub, and the mysterious VMFLEET released (Via TechNet)
  • Erasure Coding in Windows azure storage (Via Microsoft)
  • Fault domain awareness in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Fault tolerance and storage efficiency in Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet)
  • FSCTL_DUPLICATE_EXTENTS_TO_FILE control code (Via MSDN)
  • Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (StorageIOblog)
  • General information about SSD at www.thessdplace.com and NVMe at www.thenvmeplace.com
  • Get the Windows Server 2016 evaluation bits here
  • Happy 20th Birthday Windows Server, ready for Server 2016?
  • How to run nested Hyper-V and Windows Server 2016 (Via Altaro and via MSDN)
  • How to run Nested Windows Server and Hyper-V on VMware vSphere ESXi (Via Nokitel)
  • Hyper-converged solution using Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Hyper-V large-scale VM performance for in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
  • Introducing Windows Server 2016 (Free ebook from Microsoft Press)
  • Large scale VM performance with Hyper-V and in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
  • Microsoft Resilient File System (ReFS) overview (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft S2D Software Storage Bus (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft Storage Replica (SR) (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft Windows S2D Software Defined Storage (Via TechNet)
  • NVMe, SSD and HDD storage configurations in Storage Spaces Direct TP5 (Via TechNet)
  • Microsoft Azure Stack overview and related material via Microsoft
  • ReFS integrity streams (Via TechNet)
  • ReFS and NTFS feature, data services and functionality comparisons (Via TechNet)
  • ReFS and NTFS limits (speeds and feeds via TechNet)
  • Resilient File System aka ReFS (Via TechNet)
  • Server 2016 Impact on VDI User Experience (Via LoginVSI)
  • Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I
  • Setting up S2D with a 4 node configuration (Via StarWind blog)
  • Setting up testing Windows Server 2016 and S2D using virtual machines (Via MSDN blogs)
  • SQL Server workload (benchmark) Order Processing Benchmark using In-Memory OLTP (Via Github)
  • Storage IOPS update with Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet)
  • Storage throughput with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D TP5 (Via TechNet)
  • Storage Spaces Direct hardware requirements (Via TechNet)
  • Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet with Video)
  • Storage Spaces Direct – Lab Environment Setup (Via Argon Systems)
  • Understanding Software Defined Storage with S2D in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Understanding the cache in Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet)
  • Various Windows Server and S2D lab scripts (Via Github)
  • Volume resiliency and efficiency in Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet Blogs)
  • What’s New in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
  • Windows Server 2016 Getting Started (Via TechNet)
  • Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
  • Server StorageIO resources including added links, tools, reports, events and more

What This All Means

Now is as good of time as any to refresh (or enhance) your knowledge of ReFS and its current capabilities particular if you are involved with Microsoft environments. On the other hand, if you are not involved with Microsoft, take a few moments to update your insight and awareness of ReFS, storage spaces, S2D and other related capabilities including Windows Servers converged (desegregated) and hyper-converged (aggregated) options to avoid working off of or with stale data.

Ok, nuff said, for now…

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and 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.

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

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September and October 2016 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter

Volume 16, Issue IX

Hello and welcome to this September and October 2016 Server StorageIO update newsletter.

In This Issue

  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Events and Webinars
  • Industry Activity Trends
  • Resources and Links
  • Connect and Converse With Us
  • About Us

    • Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Cheers GS

    Industry Activity Trends

    Recent Industry Activates and Trends

    EMC is now Dell EMC – What this means is that EMC is no longer a publicly traded company instead now being privately held under the Dell Technologies umbrella. In case you did not know or had forgotten, one of the principal owners of Dell Technologies is Michael Dell aka the founder of Dell Computers which itself went private a few years ago. Read more in this Server StoageIOblog update post.

    While Michael Dell and Dell Technologies continues to expand by acquiring companies (granted also shedding some assets to support that growth), HP Enterprise (HPE) is taking a different approach. Similar to Dell, HPE has been offloading some of its divisions and assets since its split into two separate companies about a year ago.

    More recently HPE has announced it is selling off some of its software assets to which follows other deals where HPE created a new partnership with CSC to offload or park some of its services assets. What’s not clear is HPE CEO Meg Whitman leveraging the trend that some Private Equity (PE) firms are interested in acquiring under performing companies or assets to prepare them as part of a pivot to profit scenario, or something else?

    • HPE selling off business units including software group here, here, here and here
    • HPE looking to boost its HPC and super compute business with $275B acquisition of SGI
    • Announced new shared storage for SMB and mid-size environments including for sub $10K price points. These include HPE StoreVirtual 3200 and HPE MSA 2042.
    • HPE and Dropbox partnership
    • Various other HPE news and updates

    Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) startup vendor Nutanix finally IPO (NTNX) after a not so consolidated IPO cycle. Prior to the IPO NTNX acquired other startup Pernix (VMware cache software solution) and calmio to beef up their product portfolio. Congratulations to NTNX and best wishes, hopefully the public markets will provide risk vs. reward, on the other hand, now being public, the spotlight will be on them.

    Nutanix Stock via Yahoo 10/31/16
    NTNX Stock Trading via Yahoo Finance 10/31/16 (Click to see current status)


    Microsoft has extended its software defined storage (SDS) along with software defined data center (SDDC) as well as software defined networking (SDN) capabilities by formerly announcing Windows Server 2016. A month or so ago Microsoft announced the 20th birthday or anniversary of Windows Server as well as having previously released Tech Previews (TP).
    See what’s new in Server 2016 here. For those not aware, With Windows Server 2016, you can configure it to be CI, HCI, legacy or various hybrid ways to meet your needs, along with your choice of hardware from your preferred vendor or solution provider. Read more about Microsoft Windows Server 2016 and related topics in this Server StorageIOblog post.

    Needless to say there is a lot of other activity in the works including VMware enhancements with vSphere 6.5 as well as VMware vSphere (and related tools) being announced as hosted on bare metal (BM) dedicated private servers (DPS) via AWS among other updates.

     

    StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

     

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

    Via InfoStor Top Ten Data Storage Performance Tips: Improving Data Storage
    Via ChannelProNetwork Your Time Will Come, All-Flash Storage
    Via FutureReadyOEM When to implement ultra-dense CI or HCI storage
    Via EnterpriseStorageForum Top 10 Enterprise SSD Market Trends
    Via EnterpriseStorageForum Storage Hyperconvergence: When Does It Make Sense?
    SearchCloudStorage: EMC VxRack Neutrino Nodes launched for OpenStack cloud storage
    EnterpriseStorageForum: Looking Beyond the Hype at Hyperconvergence in Storage
    CDW Digital: Transitioning Data Centers To Hybrid Environment
    SearchDataCenter: EMC, VCE, CI and Hyperconverged vs. Hyper-small
    InfoStor: Docker and Containerization Storage Buying Guide
    NetworkComputing: Dell-EMC: The Storage Ramifications
    EnterpriseTech: VMware Targets Synergies in Dell-EMC Deal 
    HPCwire: Dell to Buy EMC Focus on Large Enterprises and High-End Computing
    EnterpriseStorageForum: Storage Futures: Do We Really Need to Store Everything?

    View more Server, Storage and I/O hardware as well as software trends comments here

     

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Recent and past Server StorageIO articles appearing in different venues include:

    Via Iron Mountain  Is Your Data Infrastructure Prepared for Storm Season?
    Via Iron Mountain  Preventing Unexpected Disasters: IT and Data Infrastructure
    Via FutureReadyOEM  When to implement ultra-dense storage
    Via Micron Blog (Guest Post)  Whats next for NVMe and your Data Center
    Redmond Magazine  Data Protection Trends – Evolving Data Protection and Resiliency
    Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs)  EVO:RAIL Part III – When And Where To Use It?
    Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs)  EVO:RAIL Part II – Why And When To Use It?
    Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs)  EVO:RAIL Part I – What Is It And Why Does It Matter?

    Check out these resources techniques, trends as well as tools. View more tips and articles here

     

    Events and Activities

    Recent and upcoming event activities.

    December 7, 2016 11AM PT – BrightTalk Webinar: Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

    November 29-30, 2016 – Nijkerk Netherlands Workshop Seminar (Presenting)
    Organized by Brouwer Storage Consultancy
    Converged and Other Server Storage Decision Making

    November 28, 2016 – Nijkerk Netherlands Workshop Seminar (Presenting)
    Organized by Brouwer Storage Consultancy     – Industry Trends Update

    November 23, 2016 10AM PT – BrightTalk Webinar: BCDR and Cloud Backup
    Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Data Protection

    November 23, 2016 9AM PT – BrightTalk Webinar: Cloud Storage
    Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

    November 22, 2016 10AM PT – BrightTalk Webinar: Cloud Infrastructure
    Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

    November 15, 2016 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and SolarWinds
    Presenting – The O.A.R. of Virtualization Scaling

    November 3, 2016 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and Dell Software
    Presenting – Backup, Data Protection and Security Management

    October 27, 2016 10AM PT – Virtual Instruments Webinar
    The Value of Infrastructure Insight

    October 20, 2016 9AM PT – BrightTalk Webinar: Next-Gen Data Centers
    Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) – Servers, Storage and Virtualization

    September 20, 2016 8AM PT – BrightTalk Webinar
    Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)
    Enabling Software Defined Data Centers

    September 13, 2016 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and Dell Software
    Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory
    What’s New and How to Plan for Migration

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

     

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

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

    Ok, nuff said, for now…

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio

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

    Posted on

    Gaining Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016

    Server Storage I/O Insight into Microsoft Windows Server 2016

    server storage I/O trends
    Updated 12/8/16

    In case you had not heard, Microsoft announced the general availability (GA, also known as Release To Manufacturing (RTM) ) of the newest version of its Windows server operating system aka Windows Server 2016 along with System Center 2016. Note that as well as being released to traditional manufacturing distribution mediums as well as MSDN, the Windows Server 2016 bits are also available on Azure.

    Microsoft Windows Server 2016
    Windows Server 2016 Welcome Screen – Source Server StorageIOlab.com

    For some this might be new news, or a refresh of what Microsoft announced a few weeks ago (e.g. the formal announcement). Likewise, some of you may not be aware that Microsoft is celebrating WIndows Server 20th Birthday (read more here).

    Yet for others who have participated in the public beta aka public technical previews (TP) over the past year or two or simply after the information coming out of Microsoft and other venues, there should not be a lot of surprises.

    Whats New With Windows Server 2016

    Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Desktop
    Windows Server 2016 Desktop and tools – Source Server StorageIOlab.com

    Besides a new user interface including visual GUI and Powershell among others, there are many new feature functionalities summarized below:

    • Enhanced time-server with 1ms accuracy
    • Nano and Windows Containers (Linux via Hyper-V)
    • Hyper-V enhanced Linux services including shielded VMs
    • Simplified management (on-premisess and cloud)
    • Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) and Storage Replica (SR) – view more here and here


    Storage Replica (SR) Scenarios including synchronous and asynchronous – Via Microsoft.com

    • Resilient File System aka ReFS (now default file system) storage tiering (cache)
    • Hot-swap virtual networking device support
    • Reliable Change Tracking (RCT) for faster Hyper-V backups
    • RCT improves resiliency vs. VSS change tracking
    • PowerShell and other management enhancements
    • Including subordinated / delegated management roles
    • Compliment Azure AD with on premise AD
    • Resilient/HA RDS using Azure SQL DB for connection broker
    • Encrypted VMs (at rest and during live migration)
    • AD Federation Services (FS) authenticate users in LDAP dir.
    • vTPM for securing and encrypting Hyper-V VMs
    • AD Certificate Services (CS) increase support for TPM
    • Enhanced TPM support for smart card access management
    • AD Domain Services (DS) security resiliency for hybrid and mobile devices

    Here is a Microsoft TechNet post that goes into more detail of what is new in WIndows Server 2016.

    Free ebook: Introducing Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview (Via Microsoft Press)

    Check out the above free ebook, after looking through it, I recommend adding it to your bookshelf. There are lots of good intro and overview material for Windows Server 2016 to get you up to speed quickly, or as a refresh.

    Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) CI and HCI

    Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) builds on Storage Spaces that appeared in earlier Windows and Windows Server editions. Some of the major changes and enhancements include ability to leverage local direct attached storage (DAS) such as internal (or external) dedicated NVMe, SAS and SATA HDDs as well as flash SSDs that used for creating software defined storage for various scenarios.

    Scenarios include converged infrastructure (CI) disaggregated as well as aggregated hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) for Hyper-V among other workloads. Windows Server 2016 S2D nodes communicate (from a storage perspective) via a software storage bus. Data Protection and availability is enabled between S2D nodes via Storage Replica (SR) that can do software based synchronous and asynchronous replication.


    Aggregated – Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) – Source Microsoft.com


    Desegregated – Converged Infrastructure (CI) – Source Microsoft.com

    The following is a Microsoft produced YouTube video providing a nice overview and insight into Windows Server 2016 and Microsoft Software Defined Storage aka S2D.




    YouTube Video Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) via Microsoft.com

    Server storage I/O performance

    What About Performance?

    A common question that comes up with servers, storage, I/O and software defined data infrastructure is what about performance?

    Following are some various links to different workloads showing performance for Hyper-V, S2D and Windows Server. Note as with any benchmark, workload or simulation take them for what they are, something to compare that may or might not be applicable to your own workload and environments.

    • Large scale VM performance with Hyper-V and in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
    • Benchmarking Microsoft Hyper-V server, VMware ESXi and Xen Hypervisors (Via cisjournal PDF)
    • Server 2016 Impact on VDI User Experience (Via LoginVSI)
    • Storage IOPS update with Storage Spaces Direct (Via TechNet)
    • SQL Server workload (benchmark) Order Processing Benchmark using In-Memory OLTP (Via Github)
    • Setting up testing Windows Server 2016 and S2D using virtual machines (Via MSDN blogs)
    • Storage throughput with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D TP5 (Via TechNet)
    • Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)

    Where To Learn More

    For those of you not as familiar with Microsoft Windows Server and related topics, or that simply need a refresh, here are several handy links as well as resources.

    • Introducing Windows Server 2016 (Free ebook from Microsoft Press)
    • What’s New in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
    • Microsoft S2D Software Storage Bus (Via TechNet)
    • Understanding Software Defined Storage with S2D in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
    • Microsoft Storage Replica (SR) (Via TechNet)
    • Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)
    • Microsoft Windows S2D Software Defined Storage (Via TechNet)
    • Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
    • Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments (Redmond Magazine Webinar)
    • Resilient File System aka ReFS (Via TechNet)
    • DISKSPD now on GitHub, and the mysterious VMFLEET released (Via TechNet)
    • Hyper-converged solution using Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016 (Via TechNet)
    • NVMe, SSD and HDD storage configurations in Storage Spaces Direct TP5 (Via TechNet)
    • General information about SSD at www.thessdplace.com and NVMe at www.thenvmeplace.com
    • How to run nested Hyper-V and Windows Server 2016 (Via Altaro and via MSDN)
    • How to run Nested Windows Server and Hyper-V on VMware vSphere ESXi (Via Nokitel)
    • Get the Windows Server 2016 evaluation bits here
    • Microsoft Azure Stack overview and related material via Microsoft
    • Introducing Windows Server 2016 (Via MicrosoftPress)
    • Various WIndows Server and S2D lab scripts (Via Github)
    • Storage Spaces Direct – Lab Environment Setup (Via Argon Systems)
    • Setting up S2D with a 4 node configuration (Via StarWind blog)
    • SQL Server workload (benchmark) Order Processing Benchmark using In-Memory OLTP (Via Github)
    • Setting up testing Windows Server 2016 and S2D here using virtual machines (Via MSDN blogs)
    • Hyper-V large-scale VM performance for in-memory transaction processing (Via Technet)
    • BrightTalk Webinar – Software-Defined Data Centers (SDDC) are in your Future (if not already here)
    • Microsoft TechNet: Understand the cache in Storage Spaces Direct
    • BrightTalk Weibniar – Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Enabling Software-Defined Data Centers
    • Happy 20th Birthday Windows Server, ready for Server 2016?
    • Server StorageIO resources including added links, tools, reports, events and more.

    What This All Means

    While Microsoft Windows Server recently celebrated its 20th birthday (or anniversary), a lot has changed as well as evolved. This includes Windows Servers 2016 supporting new deployment and consumption models (e.g. lightweight Nano, full data center with desktop interface, on-premises, bare metal, virtualized (Hyper-V, VMware, etc) as well as cloud). Besides how consumed and configured, which can also be for CI and HCI modes, Windows Server 2016 along with Hyper-V extend the virtualization and container capabilities into non-Microsoft environments specifically around Linux and Docker. Not only are the support for those environments and platforms enhanced, so to are the management capabilities and interfaces from Powershell to Bash Linux shell being part of WIndows 10 and Server 2016.

    What this all means is that if you have not looked at Windows Server in some time, its time you do, even if you are not a WIndows or Microsoft fan, you will want to know what it is that has been updated (perhaps even update your fud if that is the case) to stay current. Get your hands on the bits and try Windows Server 2016 on a bare metal server, or as a VM guest, or via cloud including Azure, or simply leverage the above resources to learn more and stay informed.

    Ok, nuff said, for now…

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio

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

    Posted on

    Happy 20th Birthday Microsoft Windows Server, get ready for Windows Server 2016

    Happy 20th Birthday Windows Server, ready for Server 2016?

    server storage I/O trends

    In case you have not heard, Microsoft is celebrating the 20th birthday (or anniversary) of Windows Server.

    Microsoft has a nice site with info graphics and timelines of where Windows Server has been and accomplished over the past 20 years (view here).

    Some of you may remember from 20 years ago Windows Server with a different name aka Windows NT Server. Back in the day, if you recall (or read), server requirements were more in the 33 MHz vs. 3.3GHz range, 32MB of RAM Memory vs. 32GB to 320GB, 150MB HDD vs. 150GB SSD or 1.5TB HDD.

    Keep in mind that 20 years ago Linux was a relative new thing with Red Hat not yet quite household or more specific enterprise name. The various Unix (e.g. IBM AIX, HP HP-UX, Sun Solaris, DEC Unix and Ultrix among many others) were still dominate, OS2 had peaked or close to, among others. Virtual Machines were Logical Partitions (LPAR) on Mainframes along with virtual PCs software and hardware assist boards.

    IMHO there is no coincidence of Microsoft celebrating 20 years of WIndows Server going into the fall of 2016 and the upcoming release of Server 2016.

    What’s New in Server 2016 (TP5)?

    If you have not done so, check out the latest Tech Preview 5 (TP5) of Windows Server 2016 (get the bits e.g. software here to try) which includes Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) that leverages internal PCIe and drive format SSD (NVMe, SAS, SATA) along with HDDs (SAS, SATA) for creating local and scale-out converged (desegregated) and hyper-converged (aggregated) solutions. In addition to S2D there is Storage Replica (SR) which is replication of local storage part of S2D (not to be confused with DFS or other replication).

    Other enhancements include ReFS as the default file system instead of NTFS (don’t worry, NTFS like FAT does not go away yet). There are enhancements to Hyper-V including VM shielding, hot-plug virtual network adapters, enhanced Linux support and fail over priorities among others. Other enhancements include updates for AD including improved integration with on-premises as well as Azure AD for hybrid environments, PowerShell updates, Docker management including Linux (via Hyper-V) and Windows via Nano) container engines.

    Microsoft Windows Server 2016 TP5

    Speaking of Nano, if you had not heard, this is a new very light weight Windows Kernel that removes 32 bit WOW and GUI support. The result is that Nano is a very small physical (under 1GB image instance size) using less disk, less memory and less CPU to do a given amount of work, oh, and boots super fast, even without SSD. By not having all the 32 bit and GUI overhead, the intent with Nano is there should be fewer updates and maintenance tasks to do, while enabling Windows containers for SQL Server and other applications.

    In addition to PowerShell, AD and other management enhancements, Windows Server 2016 (TP5) also enables bridging two worlds e.g. traditional on-premises (or cloud) based Windows Server and Public Cloud (e.g. Azure) and Private or Hybrid including Azure Stack. Note that if you have not heard of Azure Stack and are looking at cloud stacks such as OpenStack, do your due diligence and at least familiarize yourself with Azure Stack.

    View more about WIndows 2016 TP5 enhancements here.

    Where To Learn More

    What This All Means

    Congratulations Microsoft and Windows Server on 20th birthday (anniversary) you have come a long way.

    With the new features and functionality in Windows Server 2016, looks like there is still a good future for the software defined server.

    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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Server StorageIO January 2016 Update Newsletter

    Volume 16, Issue I – beginning of Year (BoY) Edition

    Hello and welcome to the January 2016 Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Is it just me, or did January disappear in a flash like data stored in non-persistent volatile DRAM memory when the power is turned off? It seems like just the other day that it was the first day of the new year and now we are about to welcome in February. Needless to say, like many of you I have been busy with various projects, many of which are behind the scenes, some of which will start appearing publicly sooner while others later.

    In terms of what have I been working on, it includes the usual of performance, availability, capacity and economics (e.g. PACE) related to servers, storage, I/O networks, hardware, software, cloud, virtual and containers. This includes NVM as well as NVMe based SSD’s, HDD’s, cache and tiering technologies, as well as data protection among other things with Hyper-V, VMware as well as various cloud services.

    Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and podcast’s along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

    Cheers GS

    In This Issue

  • Feature Topic
  • Industry Trends News
  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Videos and Podcasts
  • Events and Webinars
  • Recommended Reading List
  • Industry Activity Trends
  • Server StorageIO Lab reports
  • New and Old Vendor Update
  • Resources and Links

    • Feature Topic – Microsoft Nano, Server 2016 TP4 and VMware

    This months feature topic is virtual servers and software defined storage including those from VMware and Microsoft. Back in November I mentioned the 2016 Technical Preview 4 (e.g. TP4) along with Storage Spaces Direct and Nano. As a reminder you can download your free trial copy of Windows Server 2016 TP4 from this Microsoft site here.

    Three good Microsoft Blog posts about storage spaces to check out include:

    • Storage Spaces Direct in Technical Preview 4 (here)
    • Hardware options for evaluating Storage Spaces Direct in Technical Preview 4 (here)
    • Storage Spaces Direct – Under the hood with the Software Storage Bus (here)

    As for Microsoft Nano, for those not familiar, it’s not a new tablet or mobile device, instead, it is a very light weight streamlined version of the Windows Server 2016 server. How streamlined? Much more so then the earlier Windows Server versions that simply disabled the GUI and desktop interfaces. Nano is smaller from a memory and disk storage space perspective meaning it uses less RAM, boots faster, has fewer moving parts (e.g. software modules) to break (or need patching).

    Specifically Nano removes 32 bit support and anything related to the desktop and GUI interfaces as well as removing the console interface. That’s right, no console or virtual console to log into, Wow is gone, access is via Powershell or Windows Management Interface tools from remote systems. How small is it? I have a Nano instance built on a VHDX that is under a GB in size, granted, its only for testing. The goal of Nano is to have a very light weight streamlined version of Windows Server that can run hundreds (or more) VMs in a small memory footprint, not to mention supports lots of containers. Nano is part of WIndows TP4, learn more about Nano here in this Microsoft post including how to get started using it.

    Speaking of VMware, if you have not received an invite yet to their Digital Enterprise February 6, 2016 announcement event, click here to register.

    StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past blog posts here

    Server Storage I/O Industry Activity Trends (Cloud, Virtual, Physical)

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)

    Some new Products Technology Services Announcements (PTSA) include:

    • EMC announced Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS) V2.2. A main theme of V2.2 is that besides being the 3rd generation of EMC object storage (dating back to Centera, then Atmos), is that ECS is also where the functionality of Centera, Atmos and other functionality converge. ECS provides object storage access along with HDFS (Hadoop and Hortonworks certified) and traditional NFS file access.

      Object storage access includes Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, ATMOS and CAS (Centera). In addition to the access, added Centera functionality for regulatory compliance has been folded into the ECS software stack. For example, ECS is now compatible with SEC 17 a-4(f) and CFTC 1.3(b)-(c) regulations protecting data from being overwritten or erased for a specified retention period. Other enhancements besides scalability, resiliency and ease of use include meta data and search capabilities. You can download and try ECS for non-production workloads with no capacity or functionality limitations from EMC here.

    View other recent news and industry trends here

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)
    Recent Server StorageIO commentary and industry trends perspectives about news, activities tips, and announcements. In case you missed them from last month:

    • TheFibreChannel.com: Industry Analyst Interview: Greg Schulz, StorageIO

    • EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments Handling Virtual Storage Challenges

    • PowerMore (Dell): Q&A: When to implement ultra-dense storage

    View more Server, Storage and I/O hardware as well as software trends comments here

    Vendors you may not have heard of

    Various vendors (and service providers) you may not know or heard about recently.

    • Datrium – DVX and NetShelf server software defined flash storage and converged infrastructure

    • DataDynamics – StorageX is the software solution for enabling intelligent data migration, including from NetApp OnTap 7 to Clustered OnTap, as well as to and from EMC among other NAS file serving solutions.

    • Paxata – Little and Big Data management solutions

    Check out more vendors you may know, have heard of, or that are perhaps new on the Server StorageIO Industry Links page here (over 1,000 entries and growing).

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Recent Server StorageIO articles appearing in different venues include:

    • InfoStor:  Data Protection Gaps, Some Good, Some Not So Good

    And in case you missed them from last month

    • IronMountain:  5 Noteworthy Data Privacy Trends From 2015

    • Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs):  Part III EVO:RAIL – When And Where To Use It?

    • InfoStor:  Object Storage Is In Your Future

    • InfoStor:  Water, Data and Storage Analogy

    Check out these resources and links technology, techniques, trends as well as tools. View more tips and articles here

    StorageIO Videos and Podcasts

    StorageIO podcasts are also available via and at StorageIO.tv

    StorageIO Webinars and Industry Events

    EMCworld (Las Vegas) May 2-4, 2016

    Interop (Las Vegas) May 4-6 2016

    NAB (Las Vegas) April 19-20, 2016

    TBA – March 31, 2016

    Redmond Magazine Gridstore (How to Migrate from VMware to Hyper-V) February 25, 2016 Webinar (11AM PT)

    TBA – February 23, 2016

    Redmond Magazine and Dell Foglight – Manage and Solve Virtualization Performance Issues Like a Pro (Webinar 9AM PT) – January 19, 2016

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

    From StorageIO Labs

    Research, Reviews and Reports

    Quick Look: What’s the Best Enterprise HDD for a Content Server?
    Which enterprise HDD for content servers

    Insight for Effective Server Storage I/O decision-making
    This StorageIO® Industry Trends Perspectives Solution Brief and Lab Review (compliments of Seagate and Servers Direct) looks at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate (www.seagate.com) Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDDs).

    I was given the opportunity to do some hands-on testing running different application workloads with a 2U content solution platform along with various Seagate Enterprise 2.5” HDDs handle different application workloads. This includes Seagate’s Enterprise Performance HDDs with the enhanced caching feature.

    Read more in this Server StorageIO industry Trends Perspective white paper and lab review.

    Looking for NVM including SSD information? Visit the Server StorageIO www.thessdplace.com and www.thenvmeplace.com micro sites. View other StorageIO lab review and test drive reports here.

    Server StorageIO Recommended Reading List

    The following are various recommended reading including books, blogs and videos. If you have not done so recently, also check out the Intel Recommended Reading List (here) where you will also find a couple of mine as well as books from others. For this months recommended reading, it’s a blog site. If you have not visited Duncan Eppings (@DuncanYB) Yellow-Bricks site, you should, particular if you are interested in virtualization, high availability and related topical themes.

    Seven Databases in Seven Weeks guide to no SQL via Amazon.com

    Granted Duncan being a member of the VMware CTO office covers a lot of VMware related themes, however being the author of several books, he also covers non VMware related topics. Duncan recently did a really good and simple post about rebuilding a failed disk in a VMware VSAN vs. in a legacy RAID or erasure code based storage solution.

    One of the things that struck me as being important with what Duncan wrote about is avoiding apples to oranges comparisons. What I mean by this is that it is easy to compare traditional parity based or mirror type solutions that chunk or shard data on KByte basis spread over disks, vs. data that is chunk or sharded on GByte (or larger) basis over multiple servers and their disks. Anyway, check out Duncan’s site and recent post by clicking here.

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Check out these useful links and pages:

    storageio.com/links
    objectstoragecenter.com
    storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/
    storageperformance.us
    thenvmeplace
    thessdplace.com
    storageio.com/performance.com
    storageio.com/raid
    storageio.com/ssd

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    Server StorageIO November 2015 Update Newsletter


    Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

    Volume 15, Issue XI – November 2015

    Hello and welcome to this November 2015 Server StorageIO update newsletter. Winter has arrived here in the northern hemisphere, although technically its still fall until the winter solstice in December. Regardless of if summer or winter depending on which hemisphere you are, 2015 is about to wrap up meaning end of year (EOY) activities.

    EOY activities can mean final shopping or acquisitions for technology and services or simply for home and fun. This is also that time of year where predictions for 2016 will start streaming out as well as reflections looking back at 2015 appear (lets save those for December ;). Another EOY activity is planning for 2016 as well as getting items ready for roll-out or launch in the new year. Needless to say there is a lot going on so with that, enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and podcast’s along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

    Cheers GS

    In This Issue

  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Events and Webinars
  • Recommended Reading List
  • Resources and Links

    • StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past blog posts here

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)
    Recent Server StorageIO commentary and industry trends perspectives about news, activities tips, and announcements.

    • TheFibreChannel.com: Industry Analyst Interview: Greg Schulz, StorageIO
    • EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments Handling Virtual Storage Challenges
    • PowerMore (Dell): Q&A: When to implement ultra-dense storage

    View more Server, Storage and I/O hardware as well as software trends comments here

     

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Recent Server StorageIO articles appearing in different venues include:

    • Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs):  EVO:RAIL Part II – Why And When To Use It?
      This is the second of a multi-part series looking at Converged Infrastructures (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructures (HCI), Cluster in Box (CiB) and other unified solution bundles. There is a trend of industry adoption talking about CI, HCI, CiB and other bundled solutions, along with growing IT customer adoption and deployment. Different sized organizations are looking at various types of CI solutions to meet various application and workloads needs. Read more here and part I here.
    • TheFibreChannel.com:  Industry Analyst Interview: Greg Schulz, StorageIO
      In part one of a two part article series, Frank Berry, storage industry analyst and Founder of IT Brand Pulse and editor of TheFibreChannel.com, recently spoke with StorageIO Founder Greg Schulz about Fibre Channel SAN integration with OpenStack, why Rackspace is using Fibre Channel and more. Read more here
    • CloudComputingAdmin.com:  Cloud Storage Decision Making – Using Microsoft Azure for cloud storage
      Let’s say that you have been tasked with, or decided that it is time to use (or try) public cloud storage such as Microsoft Azure. Ok, now what do you do and what decisions need to be made? Keep in mind that Microsoft Azure like many other popular public clouds provides many different services available for fee (subscription) along with free trials. These services include applications, compute, networking, storage along with development and management platform tools. Read more here.

    Check out these resources and links technology, techniques, trends as well as tools. View more tips and articles here

    StorageIO Videos and Podcasts

    StorageIO podcasts are also available via and at StorageIO.tv

    StorageIO Webinars and Industry Events

    Deltaware Emerging Technology Summit November 10, 2015

    Dell Data Protection Summit Nov 4, 2015 7AM PT

    Microsoft MVP Summit Nov 2-5, 2015

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

    Server StorageIO Recommended Reading List

    The following are various recommended reading including books, blogs and videos. If you have not done so recently, also check out the Intel Recommended Reading List (here) where you will also find a couple of my books.

    In case you had not heard, Microsoft recently released the bits (e.g. software download) for Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 4 (TP4). TP4 is the successor to Technical Preview 3 (TP3) that was released this past August and is the most recent public preview version of the next Windows Server. TP4 adds a new tiering capability where Windows and storage spaces can cache and migrate data between Hard Disk Drives (HDD) and Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) including flash SSD. The new tiering feature supports a mixed HDD and NVM with flash SSD (including NVM Express or NVMe), as well as an all NVM scenario. Yes, that is correct, tiering with all NVM is not a type, instead enables using lower latency faster NVM along with lower cost higher capacity flash SSD. Learn more about what’s in TP4 from a server and storage I/O perspective in this Microsoft post, as well as more about S2D in this Microsoft Technet post here and here. You can get the Windows Server 2016 TP4 bits here which are already running in the Server StorageIO lab.

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Check out these useful links and pages:

    storageio.com/links
    objectstoragecenter.com
    storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/
    storageperformance.us
    thenvmeplace.com
    thessdplace.com
    storageio.com/raid
    storageio.com/ssd

    Ok, nuff said

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    NVMe Place NVM Non Volatile Memory Express Resources

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

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

    Disclaimer

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    NVMe features

    Main features of NVMe include among others:

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

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

    NVMe related content and links

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

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

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

    NVMe and SATA flash SSD performance

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

    Additional NVMe Resources

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

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    Disclaimer

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

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

    Wrap Up

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

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    Cheers
    Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    Server Storage I/O Benchmark Performance Resource Tools

    Server Storage I/O Benchmarking Performance Resource Tools

    server storage I/O trends

    Updated 1/23/2018

    Server storage I/O benchmark performance resource tools, various articles and tips. These include tools for legacy, virtual, cloud and software defined environments.

    benchmark performance resource tools server storage I/O performance

    The best server and storage I/O (input/output operation) is the one that you do not have to do, the second best is the one with the least impact.

    server storage I/O locality of reference

    This is where the idea of locality of reference (e.g. how close is the data to where your application is running) comes into play which is implemented via tiered memory, storage and caching shown in the figure above.

    Cloud virtual software defined storage I/O

    Server storage I/O performance applies to cloud, virtual, software defined and legacy environments

    What this has to do with server storage I/O (and networking) performance benchmarking is keeping the idea of locality of reference, context and the application workload in perspective regardless of if cloud, virtual, software defined or legacy physical environments.

    StorageIOblog: I/O, I/O how well do you know about good or bad server and storage I/Os?
    StorageIOblog: Server and Storage I/O benchmarking 101 for smarties
    StorageIOblog: Which Enterprise HDDs to use for a Content Server Platform (7 part series with using benchmark tools)
    StorageIO.com: Enmotus FuzeDrive MicroTiering lab test using various tools
    StorageIOblog: Some server storage I/O benchmark tools, workload scripts and examples (Part I) and (Part II)
    StorageIOblog: Get in the NVMe SSD game (if you are not already)
    Doridmen.com: Transcend SSD360S Review with tips on using ATTO and Crystal benchmark tools
    ComputerWeekly: Storage performance metrics: How suppliers spin performance specifications

    Via StorageIO Podcast: Kevin Closson discusses SLOB Server CPU I/O Database Performance benchmarks
    Via @KevinClosson: SLOB Use Cases By Industry Vendors. Learn SLOB, Speak The Experts’ Language
    Via BeyondTheBlocks (Reduxio): 8 Useful Tools for Storage I/O Benchmarking
    Via CCSIObench: Cold-cache Sequential I/O Benchmark
    Doridmen.com: Transcend SSD360S Review with tips on using ATTO and Crystal benchmark tools
    CISJournal: Benchmarking the Performance of Microsoft Hyper-V server, VMware ESXi and Xen Hypervisors (PDF)
    Microsoft TechNet:Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V large-scale VM performance for in-memory transaction processing
    InfoStor: What’s The Best Storage Benchmark?
    StorageIOblog: How to test your HDD, SSD or all flash array (AFA) storage fundamentals
    Via ATTO: Atto V3.05 free storage test tool available
    Via StorageIOblog: Big Files and Lots of Little File Processing and Benchmarking with Vdbench

    Via StorageIO.com: Which Enterprise Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) to use with a Content Server Platform (White Paper)
    Via VMware Blogs: A Free Storage Performance Testing Tool For Hyperconverged
    Microsoft Technet: Test Storage Spaces Performance Using Synthetic Workloads in Windows Server
    Microsoft Technet: Microsoft Windows Server Storage Spaces – Designing for Performance
    BizTech: 4 Ways to Performance-Test Your New HDD or SSD
    EnterpriseStorageForum: Data Storage Benchmarking Guide
    StorageSearch.com: How fast can your SSD run backwards?
    OpenStack: How to calculate IOPS for Cinder Storage ?
    StorageAcceleration: Tips for Measuring Your Storage Acceleration

    server storage I/O STI and SUT

    Spiceworks: Determining HDD SSD SSHD IOP Performance
    Spiceworks: Calculating IOPS from Perfmon data
    Spiceworks: profiling IOPs

    vdbench server storage I/O benchmark
    Vdbench example via StorageIOblog.com

    StorageIOblog: What does server storage I/O scaling mean to you?
    StorageIOblog: What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
    Testmyworkload.com: Collect and report various OS workloads
    Whoishostingthis: Various SQL resources
    StorageAcceleration: What, When, Why & How to Accelerate Storage
    Filesystems.org: Various tools and links
    StorageIOblog: Can we get a side of context with them IOPS and other storage metrics?

    flash ssd and hdd

    BrightTalk Webinar: Data Center Monitoring – Metrics that Matter for Effective Management
    StorageIOblog: Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy
    StorageIOblog: Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDD’s) On Endangered Species List?

    server storage I/O bottlenecks and I/O blender

    Microsoft TechNet: Measuring Disk Latency with Windows Performance Monitor (Perfmon)
    Via Scalegrid.io: How to benchmark MongoDB with YCSB? (Perfmon)
    Microsoft MSDN: List of Perfmon counters for sql server
    Microsoft TechNet: Taking Your Server’s Pulse
    StorageIOblog: Part II: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do with VMware?
    CMG: I/O Performance Issues and Impacts on Time-Sensitive Applications

    flash ssd and hdd

    Virtualization Practice: IO IO it is off to Storage and IO metrics we go
    InfoStor: Is HP Short Stroking for Performance and Capacity Gains?
    StorageIOblog: Is Computer Data Storage Complex? It Depends
    StorageIOblog: More storage and IO metrics that matter
    StorageIOblog: Moving Beyond the Benchmark Brouhaha
    Yellow-Bricks: VSAN VDI Benchmarking and Beta refresh!

    server storage I/O benchmark example

    YellowBricks: VSAN performance: many SAS low capacity VS some SATA high capacity?
    YellowBricsk: VSAN VDI Benchmarking and Beta refresh!
    StorageIOblog: Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD StorgeIO lab review
    StorageIOblog: Part II: Seagate 1200 12Gbs Enterprise SAS SSD StorgeIO lab review
    StorageIOblog: Server Storage I/O Network Benchmark Winter Olympic Games

    flash ssd and hdd

    VMware VDImark aka View Planner (also here, here and here) as well as VMmark here
    StorageIOblog: SPC and Storage Benchmarking Games
    StorageIOblog: Speaking of speeding up business with SSD storage
    StorageIOblog: SSD and Storage System Performance

    Hadoop server storage I/O performance
    Various Server Storage I/O tools in a hadoop environment

    Michael-noll.com: Benchmarking and Stress Testing an Hadoop Cluster With TeraSort, TestDFSIO
    Virtualization Practice: SSD options for Virtual (and Physical) Environments Part I: Spinning up to speed on SSD
    StorageIOblog: Storage and IO metrics that matter
    InfoStor: Storage Metrics and Measurements That Matter: Getting Started
    SilvertonConsulting: Storage throughput vs. IO response time and why it matters
    Splunk: The percentage of Read / Write utilization to get to 800 IOPS?

    flash ssd and hdd
    Various server storage I/O benchmarking tools

    Spiceworks: What is the best IO IOPs testing tool out there
    StorageIOblog: How many IOPS can a HDD, HHDD or SSD do?
    StorageIOblog: Some Windows Server Storage I/O related commands
    Openmaniak: Iperf overview and Iperf.fr: Iperf overview
    StorageIOblog: Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I and Part II)
    Quest: SQL Server Perfmon Poster (PDF)
    Server and Storage I/O Networking Performance Management (webinar)
    Data Center Monitoring – Metrics that Matter for Effective Management (webinar)
    Flash back to reality – Flash SSD Myths and Realities (Industry trends & benchmarking tips), (MSP CMG presentation)
    DBAstackexchange: How can I determine how many IOPs I need for my AWS RDS database?
    ITToolbox: Benchmarking the Performance of SANs

    server storage IO labs

    StorageIOblog: Dell Inspiron 660 i660, Virtual Server Diamond in the rough (Server review)
    StorageIOblog: Part II: Lenovo TS140 Server and Storage I/O Review (Server review)
    StorageIOblog: DIY converged server software defined storage on a budget using Lenovo TS140
    StorageIOblog: Server storage I/O Intel NUC nick knack notes First impressions (Server review)
    StorageIOblog & ITKE: Storage performance needs availability, availability needs performance
    StorageIOblog: Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea (Part I)
    StorageIOblog: Revisiting RAID storage remains relevant and resources

    Interested in cloud and object storage visit our objectstoragecenter.com page, for flash SSD checkout storageio.com/ssd page, along with data protection, RAID, various industry links and more here.

    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

    Watch for additional links to be added above in addition to those that appear via comments.

    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.