Tag: S3

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What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do

What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do

data infrastructure server storage I/O trends

Updated 2/10/2018

What is the best kind of IO? If no IO (input/output) operation is the best IO, than the second best IO is the one that can be done as close to the application and processor with best locality of reference. Then the third best IO is the one that can be done in less time, or at least cost or impact to the requesting application which means moving further down the memory and storage stack (figure 1).

Storage and IO or I/O locality of reference and storage hirearchy
Figure 1 memory and storage hierarchy

The problem with IO is that they are basic operation to get data into and out of a computer or processor so they are required; however, they also have an impact on performance, response or wait time (latency). IO require CPU or processor time and memory to set up and then process the results as well as IO and networking resources to move data to their destination or retrieve from where stored. While IOs cannot be eliminated, their impact can be greatly improved or optimized by doing fewer of them via caching, grouped reads or writes (pre-fetch, write behind) among other techniques and technologies.

Think of it this way, instead of going on multiple errands, sometimes you can group multiple destinations together making for a shorter, more efficient trip; however, that optimization may also take longer. Hence sometimes it makes sense to go on a couple of quick, short low latency trips vs. one single larger one that takes half a day however accomplishes many things. Of course, how far you have to go on those trips (e.g. locality) makes a difference of how many you can do in a given amount of time.

What is locality of reference?

Locality of reference refers to how close (e.g location) data exists for where it is needed (being referenced) for use. For example, the best locality of reference in a computer would be registers in the processor core, then level 1 (L1), level 2 (L2) or level 3 (L3) onboard cache, followed by dynamic random access memory (DRAM). Then would come memory also known as storage on PCIe cards such as nand flash solid state device (SSD) or accessible via an adapter on a direct attached storage (DAS), SAN or NAS device. In the case of a PCIe nand flash SSD card, even though physically the nand flash SSD is closer to the processor, there is still the overhead of traversing the PCIe bus and associated drivers. To help offset that impact, PCIe cards use DRAM as cache or buffers for data along with Meta or control information to further optimize and improve locality of reference. In other words, help with cache hits, cache use and cache effectiveness vs. simply boosting cache utilization.

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

What can you do the cut the impact of IO

  • Establish baseline performance and availability metrics for comparison
  • Realize that IOs are a fact of IT virtual, physical and cloud life
  • Understand what is a bad IO along with its impact
  • Identify why an IO is bad, expensive or causing an impact
  • Find and fix the problem, either with software, application or database changes
  • Throw more software caching tools, hyper visors or hardware at the problem
  • Hardware includes faster processors with more DRAM and fast internal busses
  • Leveraging local PCIe flash SSD cards for caching or as targets
  • Utilize storage systems or appliances that have intelligent caching and storage optimization capabilities (performance, availability, capacity).
  • Compare changes and improvements to baseline, quantify improvement

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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As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

As the Hard Disk Drive HDD continues to spin

server storage data infrastructure i/o iop hdd ssd trends

Updated 2/10/2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

Updated 10/9/2018

What is DFR or Data Footprint Reduction?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to learn more

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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What do NAS NASA NASCAR have in common?

What do NAS NASA NASCAR have in common?

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Updated 2/10/2018

The other day it dawned on me what do NAS, NASA NASCAR have in common?

Several things in addition to all starting with the letters NAS it turns out.

For example, they all deal with round objects, NAS or Network Attached storage involved with circular spinning disk drives, NASA or National Aeronautical Space Administration besides involved with aircraft that have tires that go round and round, or airplanes circling waiting for landing.

In the case of NASA they are also involved with sending craft or devices to circle other planets or moons and land or crash into them. Sometimes NAS along with other storage systems have disk drives that crash, similar to how NASCAR events see accidents.
NAS

Ceder Lake 3M NASCAR at dirt track - Photo (C) 2008 Karen Schulz all rights reserved

Ceder Lake dirt track 3M NASCAR night (Photo (C) 2008 Karen Schulz)

NASCAR is also involved with vehicles that dont or at least should not fly, however they do go round and round on a track, often paved however sometimes mud or dirt tracks plus high tech exists with computers and various data models, not to mention the NASCAR air force.

In addition to being involved with round objects and activities, all three are also involved in computing, generating, processing, storing and retrieving for analysis of data, not to mention high performance requirements.

NAS based storage can also be relied upon for serving the needs of NASA and NASCAR data and informational needs.

And FWIW, just for fun, look at what you get when you spell NAS, NASA or NASCAR backwards:

RACSAN
ASAN
SAN

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Not much actually other than to stimulate some thought, discussion as well as perhaps have some fun with technology during the holiday season.

Im sure if I put some more thought to it, more similarities would or will come to mind.

However, for now, thats it for a quick thought, what similarities do you see or know about with NAS, NASA and NASCAR?

Ok, nuf fun for now, time to work on some other posts, content and projects.

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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Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?

Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Updated 9/28/18

There are many faces and thus functionalities of virtualization beyond the one most commonly discussed which is consolidation or aggregation. Other common forms of virtualization include emulation (which is part of enabling consolidation) which can be in the form of a virtual tape library for storage to bridge new disk technology to old software technology, processes, procedures and skill sets. Other forms of virtualization functionality for life beyond consolidation include abstraction for transparent movement of applications or operating systems on servers, or data on storage to support planned and un-planned maintenance, upgrades, BC/DR and other activities.

So the gist is that there are many forms of virtualization technologies and techniques for servers, storage and even I/O networks to address different issues including life beyond consolidation. However the next wave of consolidation could and should be that of reducing the number of logical images, or, the impact of the multiple operating systems and application images, along with their associated management costs.

This may be easier said than done, however, for those looking to cut costs even further than from what can be realized by reducing physical footprints (e.g. going from 10 to 1 or from 250 to 25 physical servers), there could be upside however it will come at a cost. The cost is like that of reducing data and storage footprint impacts with such as data management and archiving.

Savings can be realized by archiving and deleting data via data management however that is easier said than done given the cost in terms of people time and ability to decide what to archive, even for non-compliance data along with associated business rules and policies to be defined (for automation) along with hardware, software and services (managed services, consulting and/or cloud and SaaS).

Where To Learn More

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

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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