Tag: SCM

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Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash.

Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash
Image via Dell Technologies

Summary of Dell transaction announcement includes:

  • VMware declares an $11 Billion USD cash dividend pro rata to all VMware stock holders.
  • Given ownership percentage of VMware, Dell Technologies will receive approximately $9 Billion USD cash dividend.
  • Dell plans to list its Class C common stock shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
  • Dell plans to use the VMware dividend proceeds to fund cash consideration to be paid to Class V (tracking stock) shareholders.
  • For each Class V share (e.g. VMware tracking stock) shareholders can choose to receive:

    1.3665 shares of Dell Technologies Class C common stock, or
    $109 in cash per DVMT (Class V share) a 29% premium per share

Dell Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash
Image via Dell Technologies

Additional interest points of this transaction include:

  • Transaction expected to close Q4 CY2018, subject to Class V shareholder approval.
  • VMware maintains its independence as a separate publicly traded company.
  • Dell Technologies maintains its 81% ownership of VMware common stock
    Dell Technologies Class V (DVMT) shareholders will own 20.8% to 31.0% of Dell Class C (depending on cash election amounts).
  • Streamline Dell capital and ownership structure.
  • Establishes a public security (stock) in global end to end data infrastructure provider (e.g. Dell Technologies Stock on NYSE).
  • Enables financial flexibility for future strategic initiatives

Dell Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash
Image via Dell Technologies

Michael Dell and Silver Lake Continued Ownership

As part of this transaction, both Michael Dell and Silver Lake partners announce commitment to Dell Technologies. Michael Dell will continue to serve as Chairman and CEO, along with a committed stockholder beneficially owning between about 47% to 54% of Dell Technologies on a fully diluted basis. Silver Lake equity partners, an investor in Dell will continue its long-term partnership with Michael Dell beneficially owning between about 16%-18% of Dell Technologies on a fully diluted basis.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technologies, VMware, Data Infrastructures 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

This announcement enables Dell to streamline its financial structure, while providing VMware shareholder with a dividend value. In addition, this Dell Technologies announcement puts to rest industry discussions of what will Michael Dell along with Dell Technologies and VMware do in the future. Speaking of the future, this transaction could also page the wave for future investment or acquisitions by Dell and/or VMware. Now the question is if you are a DVMT tracking stock shareholder, do you take the $109 USD cash, or, new Class C Dell Technologies stock? Now lets see how Dell Technologies Announces Class V VMware Tracking Stock exchange for stock or cash plays out during the rest of summer and into the fall.

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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June 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

June 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

June 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 18, Issue 6 (June 2018)

Hello and welcome to the June 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter.

In cased you missed it, the May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter can be viewed here (HTML and PDF).

In this issue buzzwords topics include AI, All Flash, HPC, Lustre, Multi Cloud, NVMe, NVMeoF, SAS, and SSD among others:

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

June data infrastructure, server, storage, I/O network, hardware, software, cloud, converged, and container as well as data protection industry activity includes among others:

Check out what’s new at Amazon Web Services (AWS) here, as well as Microsoft Azure here, Google Cloud Compute here, IBM Softlayer here, and OVH here. CTERA announced new cloud storage gateways (HC Series) for enterprise environments that include all flash SSD options, capacity up to 96TB (raw), Petabyte scale tiering to public and private cloud, 10 Gbe Ethernet connectivity, virtual machine deployment, along with high availability configuration.

Cray announced enhancements to its Lustre (parallel file system) based ClusterStor storage system for high performance compute (HPC) along with it previously acquired from Seagate (Who had acquired it as part of the Xyratex acquisition). New enhancements for ClusterStor include all flash SSD solution that will integrate and work with our existing hard disk drive (HDD) based systems.

In related Lustre based activity, DataDirect Network (DDN) has acquired from Intel, their Lustre File system capability. Intel acquired its Lustre capabilities via its purchase of Whamcloud back in 2012, and in 2017 announced that it was getting out of the Lustre business (here and here). DDN also announced new storage solutions for enabling HPC environment workloads along with Artificial Intelligence (AI) centric applications.

HPE which held its Discover event announced a $4 Billion USD investment over four years pertaining to development of edge technologies and services including software defined WAN (SD-WAN) and security among others.

Microsoft held its first virtual Windows Server Summit in June that outlined current and future plans for the operating system along with its hybrid cloud future.

Penguin computing has announced the Accelion solution for accessing geographically dispersed data enabling faster file transfer or other data movement functions.

SwiftStack has added multi cloud features (enhanced search, universal access, policy management, automation, data migration) and making them available via 1space open source project. 1space enables a single object namespace across different object storage locations including integration with OpenStack Swift.

Vexata announced a new version of its Vexata operating system (VX-OS) for its storage solution including NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF) support.

Speaking of NVMe and fabrics, the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) announced that the International Committee on Information Technology Standards (INCITS) has published T11 technical committee developed  Fibre Channel over NVMe (FC-NVMe) standard.

NVMe frontend NVMeoF
Various NVMe front-end including NVMeoF along with NVMe back-end devices (U.2, M.2, AiC)

Keep in mind that there are many different facets to NVMe including direct attached (M.2, U.2/8639, PCIe AiC) along with fabrics. Likewise, there are various fabric options for the NVMe protocol including over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe), along with other NVMe over Fabrics including RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) as well as IP based among others. NVMe can be used as a front-end on storage systems supporting server attachment (e.g. competes with Fibre Channel, iSCSI, SAS among others).

Another variation of NVMe is as a back-end for attachment of drives or other NVMe based devices in storage systems, as well as servers. There is also end to end NVMe (e.g. both front-end and back-end) options. Keep context in mind when you hear or talk about NVMe and in particular, NVMe over fabrics, learn more about NVMe at https://storageioblog.com/nvme-place-volatile-memory-express/.

Toshiba announced new RM5 series of high capacity SAS SSDs for replacement of SATA devices in servers. The RM5 series being added to the Toshiba portfolio combine capacity and economics traditional associated with SATA SSDs along with performance as well as connectivity of SAS.

Check out other industry news, comments, trends perspectives here.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Comments Content

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news, tips and articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via SearchStorage: Comments The storage administrator skills you need to keep up today
Via SearchStorage: Comments Managing storage for IoT data at the enterprise edge
Via SearchCloudComputing: Comments Hybrid cloud deployment demands a change in security mindset

View more Server, Storage and I/O trends and perspectives comments here.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIOblog posts

Server StorageIOblog Data Infrastructure Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event
May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter
Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar
Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?
Data Protection Recovery Life Post World Backup Day Pre GDPR
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview
Which Enterprise HDD for Content Server Platform
Server Storage I/O Benchmark Performance Resource Tools
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview
Data Infrastructure Primer Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

In addition to my own books including Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) available at Amazon.com (check out special sale price), the following are Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading, watching and listening list items. The Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading list includes various IT, Data Infrastructure and related topics including Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out. Speaking of my books, Didier Van Hoye (@WorkingHardInIt) has a good review over on his site you can view here, also check out the rest of his great content while there.

Watch for more items to be added to the recommended reading list book shelf soon.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO event activities

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

July 25, 2018 – Webinar – Data Protect & Storage

June 27, 2018 – Webinar – App Server Performance

June 26, 2018 – Webinar – Cloud App Optimize

May 29, 2018 – Webinar – Microsoft Windows as a Service

April 24, 2018 – Webinar – AWS and on-site, on-premises hybrid data protection

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Various useful links and resources:

Data Infrastructure Recommend Reading and watching list
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/downloads – Various presentations and other download material
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/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

What this all means and wrap-up

Data Infrastructures are what exists inside physical data centers as well as spanning cloud, converged, hyper-converged, virtual, serverless and other software defined as well as legacy environments. NVMe continues to gain in industry adoption as well as customer deployment. Cloud adoption also continues along with multi-cloud deployments. Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter and watch for more NVMe,cloud, data protection among other topics in future posts, articles, events, and newsletters.

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.

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Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar

The best I/O is the one you do not have to do, the second best is the one with least server I/O and storage overhead along with application performance bottleneck impact.

Fast applications need fast servers, storage, I/O networking hardware, and software. Merely throwing more hardware as a cache at application performance bottlenecks can help. However, throwing more hardware at performance problems can also cost much cash. On the other hand, a little fast memory and storage in the right place, with robust software performance acceleration can have significant application productivity benefits. Fast hardware also needs fast software to help boost application and user productivity.

As application workloads activity increases, by implementing server software, performance acceleration along with additional fast memory and storage including flash, Storage Class Memories (SCM) among other SSD along with NVMe accessed devices, even more, work can be done boosting productivity while reducing cost.

Join me on June 27 at 1 PM Pacific Time (PT) when I host a free webinar (registration required) sponsored by DataCore and produced by Redmond Magazine/1105 Media as we discuss Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks including what you can do today.

I will be joined by guest presenters Augie Gonzalez, Director Technical Product Marketing and Tim Warden, Director Engineering Product Management both from DataCore. During the interactive webinar discussions, we invite you to participate with your questions, as we look at issues, challenges, various approaches, and what you can do today to boost different application performance and productivity.

This webinar is for those whose applications have the need for speed including database, VDI, SharePoint, Exchange, AI, ML and other I/O intensive workloads. Topics that we will be discussing in addition to your questions include:

  • Boosting application performance without breaking the bank
  • Improving application productivity and reducing user wait time
  • Gaining insight and awareness into bottlenecks and what to do
  • Unlocking value in your existing hardware and software licenses
  • What you can do today, literally right after or even during this webinar

Where to learn more

Learn more about Windows Server Summit and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

The best I/O is the one you do not have to do, the second best is the one that has the least impact on your applications, while boosting user productivity. There are many differ net approaches to addressing various server storage I/O performance bottlenecks across applications. Join me on June 27, 2018 at 1 PM PT for the free webinar Solving Application Server Storage I/O Performance Bottlenecks Webinar and learn what you can do today to boost your uses productivity.

 

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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Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event

Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Announcing Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event

Microsoft will be hosting a free (no registration required) half day virtual (e.g. online) Windows Server Summit Virtual Online Event June 26, 2018 starting at 9AM PT. As part of its continued focus on supporting hybrid strategy spanning on-premises Windows Server to Azure (among others including AWS) cloud based, Microsoft is preparing for the launch later this year of Windows Server 2019.

There is no registration required, you can just show up without concern of getting email or other spam, however you can also click here to save the date, as well as here to get updates on the event.

Microsoft Windows Server LTSC and SAC release

Windows Server 2019 is now in insider preview (get it here) and is the next Long Term Service Channel (LTSC) release following Windows Server 2016. In the past, Microsoft would have called Windows Server 2019 something such as Windows Server 2016 R2, however that has changed with the new Semiannual Channel (SAC) and LTSC release cycles.

Keynote kick off presentations will be from Erin Chapple, Director of Program Management, Cloud + AI (which includes Windows Kernel, Hypervisors, Containers and Storage), Arpan Shah, General Manager of Azure Infrastructure marketing (Windows Server, Azure IaaS, Azure Stack, Azure Management and Security), and, Jeff Woosley Principal PM, Windows Server. In addition to the kick off presentations with current state and status of Windows Servers available for on-premises bare metal, virtual, container as well as cloud, there will be demos, Q&A, roadmap’s and much more. Topics will include new and recent functionalities such as Windows Server 2019, Windows Admin Center (formerly known as Honolulu), IoT, roadmap’s and much more.

Windows Server Summit HybridWindows Server Summit SecurityWindows Server Summit HCIWindows Server Summit Application Development
Images Via Microsoft Windows Server Summit Page

Windows Server Summit Break Out Tracks

During the Windows Server Summit, there will be four technology focused tracks including:

  • Hybrid – From on-premisess to Azure, how Windows Server supports different workloads in various configurations, along with associated management tools (including Windows Admin Center aka Honolulu)
  • Security – New and recent security enhancements for Windows Server along with Hyper-V and other related topics.
  • Application Platform – Containers and Linux support along with associated management tools for on-premisess and Azure.
  • Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) – Leveraging software defined storage (SDS) with Storage Spaces Direct (S2D) in Windows Server 2016, along with Hyper-V and other technologies, learn how Microsoft supports HCI and beyond.

Where to learn more

Learn more about Windows Server Summit 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

Windows Server remains relevant today for traditional, on site, on-premises, as well as on-premisess along with cloud, container among other deployments. Remember to click here to save the date, click here to sign up for Windows Server Summit updates and learn more about the Windows Server Summit Virtual Online event here, see there, or at least virtually.

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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May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 18, Issue 5 (May 2018)

Hello and welcome to the May 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter.

In cased you missed it, the April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter can be viewed here (HTML and PDF).

May has been a busy month with a lot of data infrastructure related activity from software-defined virtual, cloud, container, converged, serverless to legacy, hardware, software, services, server, storage, I/O and networking along with data protection topics among others.

In this issue buzzwords topics include GDPR, NVMe, NVMeoF, Composable, Serverless, Data Protection, SCM, Gen-Z, MaaS:

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

May has been a busy month, some data infrastructure, server, storage, I/O network, hardware, software, cloud, converged, and container as well as data protection activity includes among others:

Depending on when you read this, the new global data protection regulations (GDPR) are either days away, or already in effect. For those who are not aware of GDPR other than seeing many inbox items in your email pertaining to it, here are some resources as a refresher or primer:

May Buzzword, Buzz Topic and Trends

Besides data protection and GDPR, other recent data infrastructure related news, trends, technologies and topics to keep an eye on (besides AI, ML, DL, AR/VR, IoT, Blockchain, Serverless) include Metal as a Service (MaaS) that might be familiar to some, for others, something new. Canonical has been busy for sometime now with MaaS including in Ubuntu and they are not alone with variations appearing with various managed service providers, hosting and cloud providers as well. NVMe has become a more common topic, technology, trend including for use in servers as well as over fabrics (e.g. NVMe over Fabrics) as a language for server, storage, I/O communication.

A new emerging companion to NVMe is Gen-Z which initially is a companion to PCIe. Longer term, Gen-Z could maybe possibly be a replacement, as well as for use accessing direct random access memory (DRAM) among other uses. Storage Class Memory (SCM) has been an industry conversation topic for several years now with new persistent memories (PMEM) that combine the best of traditional DRAM (Speed and write endurance) as well as persistent, higher capacity, lower cost of traditional NAND flash SSDs.

Another trend topic is that for some, ASIC, FPGA and GPU are new companions to standard commodity compute processors along with servers, yet for others it may be Dejavu as they have been being used for years (ok, decades) in some solutions. For now, two other buzzwords, buzz terms to add or refresh your data infrastructure vocabulary include distributed ledgers (aka blockchains), composable resources and ephemeral instance storage (storage on a cloud instance).

May NVMe Momentum Movement Activity

May saw a lot of NVMe related activity, from chips and components (adapters, devices) to systems spanning direct attached to NVMe over Fabric (NVMeoF). Here is a primer (or refresh) for NVMe along with various deployment options. NVMeoF includes RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) based, along with NVMe over Fibre Channel (FC-NVMe), as well as emerging NVMe over IP.

NVMe options
NVMe being used for front-end accessed via shared PCIe along with back-end devices

There are many different facets of NVMe including for use as a front-end on storage systems supporting server attachment (e.g. competes with Fibre Channel, iSCSI, SAS among others). Another variation of NVMe is as a back-end for attachment of drives or other NVMe based devices in storage systems, as well as servers.

NVMe backend
Front-end using traditional block SAN access with back-end NVMe, SAS and SATA devices

Read more about the many different options and variations of NVMe including key questions to ask or understand, deployment topology along with other related topics at thenvmeplace.com.

NVMe frontend NVMeoF
Various NVMe front-end including NVMeoF along with NVMe back-end devices (U.2, M.2, AiC)

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Activity

Amazon Web Services (AWS) continues to add new features, functionality as well as extending those as along with existing capabilities into various regions. Some recent updates include new Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) Microsoft Windows Servers versions 1709 and 1803 Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). Other AWS updates include spot instances support for Red Hat BYOL (Bring Your Own License), VPN enhancements, X1e instances available in Frankfurt, H1 instance price reduction, as well as LightSail now in Canada, Paris, and Seoul regions.

For those who are not familiar with LightSail, they are virtual private servers (VPS) which are different from traditional EC2 instances. LightSail can be a cost-effective way for those who need to move out of general population shared hosting, yet cannot justify a full EC2 instance while requiring more than a container.

The LightSail instance also is available with various software pre-installed such as for WordPress websites among others. For example, I have used LightSail as a backup and standby WordPress site for StorageIOblog using Updraft Plus  Pro for data protection.

In other news, AWS C5d EC2 instances are available in various regions. C5d instances are available with 2, 4, 8, 16, 36 and 72 vCPUs along with up to 1800GB of NVMe based ephemeral storage for on-demand reserved or spot instances.

Note that instance-based storage is temporary meaning that it persists for the life of the instance. What this means is that if you stop and restart the instance, the data is not persistence. Instance-based storage is useful for data that can be protected or persisted to other storage including EBS (Elastic Block Storage). Usage includes batch, log and analytics processing, burst buffers, cache or workspace.

AWS also announced a new Simple Storage Service (S3) storage class a month or so ago called One Zone Availability Infrequent Access. This new storage class primarily provides a lower cost of storage with lower durability (e.g., data spread across one zone vs. multiple). Over the past couple of months, I have been migrating from S3 Infrequent Access (IA) as well as standard into One Zone Availability. Some of my active data remains in S3 Standard storage class, while cold archives are in Glacier.

A tip about migrating to One Zone Availability, as well as between other S3 storage classes is paid attention to your API calls and monthly budget. You might see an increase in S3 costs during the migration time, that then settles into the lower prices once data has been moved due to API calls (gets, puts, lists, dir). In other words, pay attention to how many API calls you are allowed per storage class per month, along with other fees beyond focusing only on cost per TByte. Read about other recent AWS news updates here.

Software-defined storage startup Cloudian announced their technology available for test drive on Google Cloud Platform as part of a continued industry trend. That trend is for storage vendors to make their storage software technology available on different cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, Google, Softlayer among others.

Dell Technology World 2018

Dell Technologies made several announcements as part of Dell Technologies World that are covered in a series of posts here. Announcements included PowerMax the successor to VMAX, XtremIO X2 updates, new servers, workstations among many other items, read more here.

Besides the data infrastructure, cloud service providers and systems vendors, component suppliers including Cavium announced NVMe over Fibre Channel updates (here and here), along with Marvel NVMe updates here. HPE announced new thin clients and software (t430 Thin Client, HP mt44 Mobile Thin Client, HP ThinPro software), as well as updates to 3PAR and other storage solutions.

IBM announced various storage enhancements (and here) as well as a Happy 30th anniversary to the IBM Power9 based i systems. In other news, Kaseya bought backup data protection vendor Unitrends.

NVMe NAND flash Intel Optane

Micron announced the first quad layer cell (QLC) nand flash solid state device (SSD) named 52100 has begun shipping to select customers (and vendors). QLC packs or stacks 4 bits per cell. The 5200 is optimized for read-intensive workloads with up to 33% higher densities compared to previous generation TLC (triple layer cell) NAND flash. Broader market availability is expected to occur later fall 2018, 5210 form factor is 2.5” as a standard SSD or HDD, with capacities from 1.92TB to 7.68TB.

In other news, Micron also announced a $10 Billion (USD) stock repurchase plan, along with an extension of Intel 3D NAND flash memory partnership involving 3D NAND flash, as well as 96 layer 3D NAND. Meanwhile, various vendors are increasingly talking about how their systems are or will be storage class memory (SCM) ready including for use such as Micron 3D XPoint also known as Intel Optane among others.

Microsoft has placed into public preview Azure Active Directory (AAD) Storage authentication for Azure Blobs and Queues. Azure Storage Explorer is now released as version 1.0. AAD storage authentication enables organizations to implement role-based access control of Azure storage resources. Speaking of Azure, Microsoft has published several architectures, reference and other content at the Azure Virtual Datacenter portal here.

If you have not done so, check out Azure File Sync which is currently in public preview. Having been involved and using it for over a year including during private preview, Azure File Sync is an exciting, useful technology for creating a hybrid distributed file sharing with cloud tiering solutions. Learn more Azure File Sync here and here. In other news, Microsoft has announced a preview as part of the April 2018 Windows 10 build for a Hyper-V Google Android emulator support.

NetApp has had Azure based NAS storage in preview for a while now, and also announced Cloud Volumes on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In addition to Cloud Volumes on AWS, Azure, and GCP, NetApp also announced enhanced NVMe based storage systems among other updates.

Two companies that have similar names are Opendrives (video workflow acceleration) and Opendrive (cloud storage, backup, and data protection). Meanwhile, data infrastructure startup Pavilion has received new funding as well as begun talking about their NVMe including NVMe over Fabric (NVMeOF) hardware storage system. Long-time data infrastructure converged server storage startup Pivot3 announced additional cloud workload mobility.

Pure storage made a couple of announcements including  FlashArray//X NVMe based shared accelerated storage system as well as NVIDIA (GPU powered) based AIRI Mini for AI/DL/ML.

Have you heard about Snowflake computing, aka, the cloud data warehouse solution? If not, check them out here. Another cloud-related data infrastructure vendor to look into is Upbound.io who have received additional funding for their multi-cloud management solutions.

Building off of recent VMware vSphere updates (here), and Dell Technology World here, the following is an excellent post about Instant Clone in vSphere 6.7, and VMware vSAN HCI assessment tool here.

Check out other industry news, comments, trends perspectives here.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Comments Content

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news, tips and articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via SearchStorage: Comments Managing storage for IoT data at the enterprise edge
Via SearchCloudComputing: Comments Hybrid cloud deployment demands a change in security mindset
Via SearchStorage: Comments Dell EMC storage IPO, VMware merger plans still unclear
Via SearchStorage: Comments Dell EMC midrange storage keeps its overlapping arrays
Via SearchStorage: Comments Dell EMC all-flash PowerMax replaces VMAX, injects NVMe
Via IronMountain InfoGoto:  The growing Trend of Secondary Data Storage

View more Server, Storage and I/O trends and perspectives comments here.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIOblog posts

Server StorageIOblog Data Infrastructure Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary
Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details
Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details
Part IV Dell Technology World 2018 PowerEdge MX Gen-Z Composable Infrastructure
Part V Dell Technology World 2018 Server Converged Announcement Details
April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter
VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary
PCIe Fundamentals Server Storage I/O Network Essentials
Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?
Data Protection Recovery Life Post World Backup Day Pre GDPR
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Infrastructure Resource Links cloud data protection tradecraft trends
IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps Podcast
Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview
Data Infrastructure Primer Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
If NVMe is the answer, what are the questions?

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

In addition to my own books including Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) available at Amazon.com (check out special sale price), the following are Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading, watching and listening list items. The Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading list includes various IT, Data Infrastructure and related topics including Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out. Speaking of my books, Didier Van Hoye (@WorkingHardInIt) has a good review over on his site you can view here, also check out the rest of his great content while there.

Containers, serverless, kubernetes continue to gain in industry adoption, as well as customer deployments. Here is some information about Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). Note that AWS has Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Google, VMware and Pivotal with Pivotal Kubernetes Service (PKS) among others.

Here is an interesting perspective by Ben Kepps about Serverless (e.g. life beyond Kubernetes and containers (e.g. life beyond virtualization which to some is or was life (e.g. life beyond bare metal))) as well as the all to often punditry, evangelism of something new causing something else to be dead.

SNIA has updated their Emerald aka Green energy effectiveness (focus on productivity) measurement specification (V3.01) including NAS NFS file activity (besides block). Learn more at snia.org/forums/green.

Watch for more items to be added to the recommended reading list book shelf soon.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO event activities

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

June 27, 2018 – Webinar – TBA

May 29, 2018 – Webinar – Microsoft Windows as a Service

April 24, 2018 – Webinar – AWS and on-site, on-premises hybrid data protection

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Various useful links and resources:

Data Infrastructure Recommend Reading and watching list
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/downloads – Various presentations and other download material
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/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

Connect and Converse With Us

Storage IO RSS storageio linkedin storageio facebook Server StorageIO on twitter @StorageIO   Google+  Server StorageIO email storageio youtube  storageio instagram

Subscribe to Newsletter – Newsletter Archives – StorageIO.com – StorageIOblog.com

What this all means and wrap-up

Data Infrastructures are what exists inside physical data centers spanning cloud, converged, hyper-converged, virtual, serverless and other software defined as well as legacy environments. So far this spring there has been a lot of data infrastructure related activity, from new technology announcements, to events, trends among others. Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter and watch for more NVMe, Gen-Z, cloud, data protection among other topics in future posts, articles, events, and newsletters.

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.

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Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

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

Major data infrastructure technology announcements include:

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

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

Dell Technology World Buzzword Bingo Lineup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 Announcement Summary

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

Part II Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

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

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

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

Dell Technology World 2018 PowerMax
Dell PowerMax Front View

Dell Technology World 2018 Modern Data Center Announcement Details

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

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

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

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

Powering up the Modern Data Center and Future of Work

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

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

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

Part III Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcement Details

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

Dell Technology World 2018 Storage Announcements Include:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Dell PowerMax Visual Studio (Image via Dell.com)

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

Dell Technology World 2018 XtremIO X2

XtremIO X2

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

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

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

What about Dell Midrange Storage Unity and SC?

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

Dell Bulk and Elastic Cloud Storage (ECS)

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

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

Dell Data Protection

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

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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

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

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

Introducing PowerEdge MX Composable Infrastructure (the other CI)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where to learn more

Learn more about Dell Technology World 2018 and related topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Server StorageIO data infrastructure Update Newsletter

Volume 18, Issue 4 (April 2018) Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Hello and welcome to the April 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter.

In cased you missed it, the March 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter can be viewed here (HTML and PDF).

In this issue themes include life beyond world backup day, focus on recovery, restoration and resiliency, as well as getting ready for GDPR. Also covered in this issue are themes of NVMe along with NVMe over Fabric (NVMeoF), Storage Class Memories (SCM) and related technologies covered in the March 2018 newsletter. Recent VMware public, private and hybrid cloud along with vSphere v6.7 are covered as well as other topics including:

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news, tips and articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via SearchStorage: Comments on Dell EMC storage strategy talk buzzes Dell Tech World
Via GizModo: Comments Can a Loud Noise Really Bring Down a Data Center?
Via StateTech: Comments IT Ingenuity Lets State and Local Agencies Do More with Less
Via StateTech: Comments State and Local Agencies See Power in the VDI, HCI Combination
Via StateTech: Comments How Local Governments Can Meet the Demands of IoT Networking
Via IronMountain: Comments Hybrid cloud deployment demands a change in security mindset
Via IronMountain: Hybrid 4 3 2 1 Data Protection
Via IronMountain InfoGoto: The growing Trend of Secondary Data Storage
Via IronMountain InfoGoto: World Backup Day Best Practices For a Hybrid Approach
Via BizTech: Why Hybrid (SSD and HDD) Storage Might Be Fit for SMB environments

View more Server, Storage and I/O trends and perspectives comments here.

Server StorageIOblog Data Infrastructure Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary
VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details
VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements
Have you heard about the new CLOUD Act data regulation?
Data Protection Recovery Life Post World Backup Day Pre GDPR
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview
March 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Application Data Availability 4 3 2 1 Data Protection
VMware continues cloud construction with March announcements
World Backup Day 2018 Data Protection Readiness Reminder
Use Intel Optane NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 SSD drive in PCIe slot
Data Infrastructure Resource Links cloud data protection tradecraft trends
IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps Podcast
Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
AWS Announces New S3 Cloud Storage Security Encryption Features
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview #blogtober
Hot Popular New Trending Data Infrastructure Vendors To Watch

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

April 25, 2018 – Webinar – SDDC and Data Protection Discussion

April 24, 2018 – Webinar – AWS and on-site, on-premises hybrid data protection

March 27, 2018 – Webinar – Veeams Road to GDPR compliance The 5 Lessons Learned

Feb 28, 2018 – Webinar – Benefits of Moving Hyper-V Disaster Recovery to the Cloud

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Various useful links and resources:

Data Infrastructure Recommend Reading and watching list
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/downloads – Various presentations and other download material
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/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
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What this all means and wrap-up

Data Infrastructures are what exist inside of physical and cloud data centers that in turn support applications that transform data into information. Clouds continue to be a popular topic as well as deployment platform for and of data infrastructures. VMware has made several announcements in support of their public, private and hybrid cloud environments. A fundamental role of data infrastructures is to protect, preserve, secure and serve information via server, storage, I/O network hardware, software as well as services.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary

VMware announced last week vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 among other updates for their software-defined data center (SDDC) and software-defined infrastructure (SDI) solutions. The new April v6.7 announcement updates followed those from this past March when VMware announced cloud enhancements with partner AWS (more on that announcement here).

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vSphere Web Client with vSphere 6.7

For those looking for a more extended version with a closer look and analysis of what VMware announced click here for part two and part three here.

What VMware announced is general availability (GA) meaning you can now download from here the bits (e.g., software) that include:

  • ESXi aka vSphere 6.7 hypervisor build 8169922
  • vCenter Server 6.7 build 8217866
  • vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 build 8217866
  • vSAN 6.7 and other related SDDC management tools
  • vSphere Operations Management (vROps) 6.7
  • Increased the speeds, feeds and other configuration maximum limits

For those not sure or need a refresher, vCenter Server is the software for extended management across multiple vSphere ESXi hypervisors that run on a Windows platform.

Major themes of the VMware April announcement is around increased scalability along with performance enhancements, ease of use, security, as well as extended application support. As part of the v6.7 improvements, VMware is focusing on simplifying, as well as accelerating software-defined data infrastructure along with other SDDC lifecycle operation activities.

Extended application support includes for traditional demanding enterprise IT, along with High-Performance Compute (HPC), Big Data, Little Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), as well as other emerging workloads. Part of supporting demanding workloads includes enhanced support for Graphical Processing Units (GPU) such as those from Nvidia among others.

What Happened to vSphere 6.6?

A question that comes up is that there is a vSphere 6.5 (and its smaller point releases) and now vSphere 6.7 (along with vCenter, vSAN among others). What happened to vSphere 6.6? Good question and not sure what the real or virtual answer from VMware is or would be. My take is that this is a good opportunity for VMware to align their versions of principal components (e.g., vSphere/ESXi, vCenter, vSAN) to a standard or unified numbering scheme.

Where to learn more

Learn more about VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN 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

Overall the VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 enhancements are a good evolution of their core technologies for enabling hybrid, converged software-defined data infrastructures and software-defined data centers. Continue reading more about  VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter version 6.7 SDDC Update Summary here in part II (focus on management, vCenter plus security) and part III here (focus on server storage I/O and deployment) of this three-part series.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details of announcement summary focus on vCenter, Security, and management. This is part two (part one here) of a three-part (part III here) series looking at VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details of announcement summary.

Last week VMware announced vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 updates as part of enhancing their software-defined data center (SDDC) and software-defined infrastructure (SDI) solutions core components. This is an expanded post as a companion to the Server StorageIO summary piece here. These April updates followed those from this past March when VMware announced cloud enhancements with partner AWS (more on that announcement here).

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vSphere Web Client with vSphere 6.7

What VMware announced is generally available (GA) meaning you can now download from here the bits (e.g., software) that include:

  • ESXi aka vSphere 6.7 hypervisor build 8169922
  • vCenter Server 6.7 build 8217866
  • vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 build 8217866
  • vSAN 6.7 and other related SDDC management tools
  • vSphere Operations Management (vROps) 6.7

For those not sure or need a refresher, vCenter Server is the software for extended management across multiple vSphere ESXi hypervisors that run on a Windows platform.

Major themes of the VMware April announcements are focused around:

  • Increased enterprise and hybrid cloud scalability
  • Resiliency, availability, durable and secure
  • Performance, efficiency and elastic
  • Intuitive, simplified management at scale
  • Expanded support for demanding application workloads

Expanded application support includes for traditional demanding enterprise IT, along with High-Performance Compute (HPC), Big Data, Little Data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL), as well as other emerging workloads. Part of supporting demanding workloads includes enhanced support for Graphical Processing Units (GPU)such as those from Nvidia among others.

What was announced

As mentioned above and in other posts in this series, VMware announced new versions of their ESXi hypervisor vSphere v6.7, as well as virtual SAN (vSAN) v6.7, virtual Center (vCenter),  v6.7 among other related tools. One of the themes of this announcement by VMware includes hybrid SDDC spanning on-site, on-premises (or on-premisess if you prefer) to the public cloud. Other topics involve increasing scalability, along with stability as well as ease of management along with security, performance updates.

As part of the v6.7 enhancements, VMware is focusing on simplifying, as well as accelerating software-defined data infrastructure along with other SDDC lifecycle operation activities. Additional themes and features focus on server, storage, I/O resource enablement, as well as application extensibility support.

vSphere ESXi hypervisor

With v6.7 ESXi host maintenance times improved with single reboot vs. previous multiple boots for some upgrades, as well as quick boot. Quick boot enables restarting the ESXi hypervisor without rebooting the physical machine skipping time-consuming hardware initialization.

Enhanced HTML5 based vSphere client GUI (along with API and CLI) with increased feature function parity compared to predecessor versions and other VMware tools. Increased functionality includes NSX, vSAN and VMware Upgrade Management (VUM) capabilities among others. In other words, not only are new technologies support, functions you may have in the past resisted using the web-based interfaces due to extensibility are being addressed with this release.

vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)

VMware has announced that moving forward the hosted (e.g., running on a Windows server platform) version is being depreciated. What this means is that it is time for those not already doing so to migrate to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). As a refresher, VCSA is a turnkey software-defined virtual appliance that includes vCenter Server software running on VMware Photon Linux operating system as a virtual machine. VMware vCenter.

As part of the update, the enhanced vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) supports new efficient, effective API management along with multiple vCenters as well as performance improvements. VMware cites 2x faster vCenter operations per second, 3x reduction in memory usage along with 3x quicker Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) related activities across powered on VMs).

What this means is that VCSA is a self-contained virtual appliance that can be configured for very large, large, medium and small environments in various configurations. With v6.7 vCenter Server Appliance emphasis on scaling, as well as performance along with security and ease of use features, VCSA is better positioned to support large enterprise deployments along with hybrid cloud. VCSA v6.7 is more than just a UI enhancement with v6.5 shown below followed by an image of v6.7 UI.

VMware vSphere 6.5
VMware vCenter Appliance v6.5 main UI

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vCenter Appliance v6.7 main UI

Besides UI enhancements (along with API and CLI) for vCenter, other updates include more robust data protection (aka backup) capability for the vCenter Server environment. In the prior v6.5 version there was a fundamental capability to specify a destination for sending vCenter configuration information to for backup data protection (See image below).

vCenter 6.5 backup
VMware vCenter Appliance 6.5 backup

Note that the VCSA backup only provides data protection for the vCenter Appliance, its configuration, settings along with data collected of the VMware hosts (and VMs) being managed. VCSA backup does not provide data protection of the individual VMware hosts or VMs which is accomplished via other data protection techniques, tools and technologies.

In v6.7 vCenter now has enhanced capabilities (shown below) for enabling data protection of configuration, settings, performance and other metrics. What this means is that with improved UI it is now possible to setup backup schedules as part of enabling automation for data protection of vCenter servers.

vCenter 6.7 backup
VMware VCSA v6.7 enhanced UI and data protection aka backup

The following shows some of the configuration sizing options as part of VCSA deployment. Note that the vCPU, Memory, and Storage are for the VCSA itself to support a given number of VMware hosts (e.g., physical machines) as well as guest virtual machines (VM).

 

VCSA

VCSA

VCSA

VM

 

Size

vCPU

Memory

Storage

Hosts

VMs

Tiny

2

10GB

300GB

10

100

Small

4

16GB

340GB

100

1000

Medium

8GB

24

525GB

400

4000

Large

16

32GB

740GB

1000

10000

Extra Large

24

48GB

1180GB

2000

35000

vCenter 6.7 sizing and number of the physical machine (e.g., VM hosts) and virtual machines supported

Keep in mind that in addition to the above individual VCSA configuration limits, multiple vCenters can be grouped including linked mode spanning onsite, on-premisess (on-prem if you prefer) as well as the cloud. VMware vCenter server hybrid linked mode enables seamless visibility and insight across on-site, on-premises (or on-premisess if you prefer) as well as public clouds such as AWS among others.

In other words, vCenter with hybrid linked mode enables you to have situational awareness and avoid flying blind in and among clouds. As part of hybrid vCenter environment support, cross-cloud (public, private) hot and cold migration including clone as well as vMotion across mixed VMware version provisioning is supported. Using linked mode multiple roles, permissions, tags, policies can be managed across different groups (e.g., unified management) as well as locations.

VMware and vSphere Security

Security is a big push for VMware with this release including Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 along with Virtual TPM 2.0 for protecting both the hypervisors and guest operating systems. Data encryption was introduced in vSphere 6.5 and is enhanced with increased management simplicities along with protection of data at rest and in flight (while in motion).

In other words, encrypted vMotion across different vCenter instances and versions are supported, as well as across hybrid environments (e.g., on-premises and public cloud). Other security enhancements include tighter collaboration and integration with Microsoft for Windows VMs, as well as vSAN, NSX and vRealize for a secure software-defined data infrastructure aka SDDC. For example, VMware has enhanced support for Microsoft Virtualization Based Security (VBS) including credential Guard where vSphere is providing a secure virtual hardware platform.

Additional VMware 6.7 security enhancements include Multiple SYSLOG targets, FIPS 140-2 Validated modules. Note that there is a difference between FIPS certified and FIPS validated, of which VMware vCenter and ESXi leverage two modules (VM Kernel Cryptographic, and OpenSSL) are currently validated. VMware is not playing games like some vendors when it comes to disclosing FIPS 140-2 validated vs. certified. Other VMware security enhancements include

Note, when a vendor mentions FIPS 140-2 and imply or says certified, ask them if they indeed are certified. Any vendor who is actually FIPS 140-2 certified should not get upset if you press them politely. Instead, they should thank you for asking. Otoh, if a vendor gives you a used car salesperson style dance or get upset, ask them why so sensitive, or, perhaps, what are they ashamed of or hiding, just saying. Learn more here.

vRealize Operations Manager (vROps)

vRealize Operations Manager (vROps) v6.7 dashboard for vSphere client plugin provides an overview of cluster view and alerts of both vCenter and vSAN. What this means is that you will want to upgrade vROps to v6.7. The vROps benefit being dashboards for optimal performance, capacity, troubleshooting, and management configuration.

Where to learn more

Learn more about VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN 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

VMware continues to enhance their core SDDC data infrastructure resources to support new and emerging, as well as legacy enterprise applications at scale. VMware enhancements include management, security along with other updates to support the demanding needs of various applications and workloads, along with supporting application developers.

Some examples of demanding workloads include among others AL, Big Data, Machine Learning, In memory and high-performance compute (HPC) among other resource-intensive new workloads, as well as existing applications. This includes enhanced support for Nvidia physical and virtual Graphical Processing Units (GPU) that are used in support for compute-intensive graphics, as well as non-graphic processing (e.g., AI, ML) workloads.

With the v6.7 announcements, VMware is providing proof points that they are continuing to invest in their core SDDC enabling technologies. VMware is also demonstrating the evolution of vSphere ESXi hypervisor along with associated management tools for hybrid environments with ease of use management at scale, along with security.  View more about VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter v6.7 SDDC details in part three of this three-part series here ((focus on server storage I/O, deployment information and analysis).

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements

VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements

This is part three of a three-part series looking at last weeks v6.7 VMware vSphere vSAN vCenter Server Storage I/O Enhancements. The focus of this post is on server, storage, I/O along with deployment and other wrap up items. In case you missed them, read part one here, and part two here.

VMware as part of updates to, vSAN and vCenter introduced several server storage I/O enhancements some of which have already been mentioned.

VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware vSphere Web Client with vSphere 6.7

Server Storage I/O enhancements for vSphere, vSAN, and vCenter include:

  • Native 4K (4kn) block sector size for HDD and SSD devices
  • Intel Volume Management Device (VMD) for NVMe flash SSD
  • Support for Persistent Memory (PMEM) aka Storage Class Memory (SCM)
  • SCSI UNMAP (similar to TRIM) for SSD space reclamation
  • XCOPY and VAAI enhancements
  • VMFS-5 is now default file system
  • VMFS-6 SESparse vSphere snapshot space reclamation
  • VVOL supporting SCSI-3 persistent reservations and IPv6
  • Reduce dependences on RDMs with VVOL enhancements
  • Software-based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) initiator
  • Para Virtualized RDMA (PV-RDMA)
  • Various speeds and feeds enhancements

VMware vSphere 6.7 also adds native 4KN sector size (e.g., 4096 block size) in addition to traditional native and emulated 512-byte sectors for HDD as well as SSD. The larger block size means performance improvements along with better storage allocation for applications, particularly for large capacity devices. Other server storage I/O updates include RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) enabled Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) as well as Intel VMD for NVMe. Learn more about NVMe here.

Other storage-related enhancements include SCSI UNMAP (e.g., SCSI equivalent of SSD TRIM) with the selectable priority of none or low for SSD space reclamation. Also enhanced are SESparse of vSphere snapshot virtual disk space reclamation (for VMFS-6). VMware XCOPY (Extended Copy) now works with vendor-specific VMware API for Array Integration (VAAI) primitives along with SCSI T10 standard used for cloning, zeroing and copy offload to storage systems. Virtual Volumes (VVOL) have been enhanced to support IPv6 and SCSI-3 persistent reservations to help reduce dependency or use of RDMs.

VMware configuration maximums (e.g., speeds and feeds) including server storage I/O enhancements including boosting from 512 to 1024 LUNs per host. Other speeds and feeds improvements include going from 2048 to 4096  server storage I/O paths per host, PVSCSI adapters now support up to 256 disks vs. 64 (virtual disks or Raw Device Mapped aka RDM). Also note that VMFS-3 is now the end of life (EOL) and will be automatically upgraded to VMFS-5 during the upgrade to vSphere 6.7, while the default datastore type is VMFS-6.

Additional server storage I/O enhancements include RoCE for RDMA enabling low latency server to server memory-based data movement access, along with Para-virtualized RDMA (PV-RDMA) on Linux guest OS. ESXi has been enhanced with iSER (iSCSI Extension for RDMA) leveraging faster server I/O interconnects and CPU offload. Another server storage I/O enhancement is Software based Fibre Channel over Ethernet (e.g., SW-FCoE) initiator using loss less Ethernet fabrics.

Note as a reminder or refresher that VMware also has para (e.g., virtualization-optimized) drivers for Ethernet and other networks, NVMe as well as SCSI in addition to standard devices. For example, you can access from a VM an NVMe backed datastore using standard VMware SATA, SCSI Controller, LSI Logic SAS, LSI Logic Parallel, VMware Paravirtual, native NVMe driver (virtual machine type 6.5 or higher) for better performance. Likewise, instead of using the standard SAS and SCSI VM devices, the VMware para-virtualized

Besides the previously mentioned items, other enhancements including for vSAN include support for logical clusters such as Oracle RAC, Microsoft SQL Server Availability Groups, Microsoft Exchange Data Availability Groups as well as Windows Server Failover Clusters (WSFC) using vSAN iSCSI service. Note that as a proof point of continued vSAN deployment customer adoption, VMware is claiming 10,000 deployments. For performance, vSAN enhancement also includes updates for adaptive placement, adaptive resync, as well as faster cache destage. The benefit of quicker destage is that cache can be drained or written to disk to eliminate or prevent I/O bottlenecks.

As part of supporting expanding, more demanding enterprise among other workloads, vSAN enhancements also include resiliency updates, physical resource and configuration checks, health and monitoring checks. Other vSAN improvements include streamlined workflows, converged management views across vCenter as well as vRealize tools. Read more from VMware about server storage I/O enhancements to vSphere, vSAN, and vCenter here.

VMware Server Storage I/O Memory Matters

VMware is also joining others with support for evolving persistent memory (PMEM) leveraging so-called storage class memories (SCM). Note, some refer to SCM as persistent memory as PM, however, context needs to be used as PM also means Physical Machine, Physical Memory, Primary Memory among others. With the new PMEM support for server memory, VMware is laying the foundation for guest operating systems as well as applications to leverage the technology.

For example, Microsoft with Windows Server 2016 supports SCMs as a block addressable storage medium and file system, as well as for Direct Access (e.g., DAX). What this means is that fast file systems can be backed by persistent faster than traditional SSD storage, as well as applications such as SQL Server that support DAX can do direct persistent I/O.

As a refresher, Non-Volatile DIMM enable server memory by combing traditional DRAM with some persistent storage class memory. By combing DRAM and storage class memory (SCM) also known as PMEM servers can use the RAM as a fast read/write memory, with the data destaged to persistent memory. Examples of SCM include Micron 3D Xpoint also known as Intel Optane along with others such as Everspin NVDIMM among others (available from Dell, HPE among others. Learn more SSD and storage class memories (SCM) along with PMEM here, as well as NVMe here.

Deployment, be prepared before you grab the bits and install the software

For those of you who want or need to download the bits here is a link to VMware software download. However, before racing off to install the new software in your production (or perhaps even lab), do your homework. Read the important information from VMware before upgrading to vSphere here (e.g., KB53704) as well as release notes, and review VMware’s best practices for upgrading to vCenter here.

Some of the things to be aware of including upgrade order and dependencies, as well as make sure you have good current backups of your vSphere ESXi configuration, vCenter appliance. In addition to viewing the vSphere ESXi and vCenter 6.7 release notes here, also.

There are some hardware compatibility items you need to be aware of, both for this as well as future versions. Check out the VMware hardware (and software) compatibility list (HCL), along with partner product interoperability matrices, as well as release notes. Pay attention to devices depreciated and no longer supported in ESXi 6.7 (e.g., VMware KB52583) as well as those that may not work in future releases to avoid surprises.

Where to learn more

Learn more about VMware vSphere, vCenter, vSAN 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

In case you missed them, read part one here and click here for part two of this series.

Some will say what’s the big deal why all the noise, coverage and discussion for a point release?

My view is that this is a big evolutionary package of upgrade enhancements and new features, even if a so-called point release (e.g., going from 6.5 to 6.7). Some vendors might have done this type of updates as a significant, e.g., version 6.x to 7.x upgrade to make more noise, get increased coverage or merely enhance the appearance of software maturity (e.g., V1.x to V2.x to V3.x, and so forth).

In the case of VMware, what some might refer to point release that is smaller, are the ones such as vSphere 6.5.0 to 6.5.x among others. Thus, there is a lot in this package of updates from VMware and good to see continued enhancements.

I also think that VMware is getting challenges from different fronts including Microsoft as well as cloud partners among others which is good. The reason I believe that it is okay VMware is being challenged is given their history; they tend to step up their game playing harder as well as stronger with the competition.

VMware is continuing to invest and extend its core SDDC technologies to meet the expanding demands of various organizations, from small to ultra large enterprises. What this means is that VMware is addressing ease of use for smaller, as well as removing complexity to enable simplified scaling from on-site (or on-premises and on-prem if you prefer) to the public cloud.

Overall the VMware Announced version 6.7 of vSphere vSAN vCenter SDDC core components are a useful extension of their existing technology. VMware Announced release 6.7 of vSphere vSAN vCenter SDDC core components enhancements enable customers more flexibility, scalability, resiliency, and security to meet their various needs.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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March 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

March 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter

Server and StorageIO Update Newsletter

Volume 18, Issue 3 (March 2018)

Hello and welcome to the March 2018 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter.

If you are wondering where the January and February 2018 update newsletters are, they are rolled into this combined edition. In addition to the short email version (free signup here), you can access full versions (html here and PDF here) along with previous editions here.

In this issue:

Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure update newsletter.

Cheers GS

Data Infrastructure and IT Industry Activity Trends

Data Infrastructure Data Protection and Backup BC BR DR HA Security

World Backup day is coming up on March 31 which is a good time to remember to verify and validate that your data protection is working as intended. On one hand I think it is a good idea to call out the importance of making sure your data is protected including backed up.

On the other hand data protection is not a once a year, rather a year around, 7 x 24 x 365 day focus. Also the focus needs to be on more than just backup, rather, all aspects of data protection from archiving to business continuance (BC), business resiliency (BR), disaster recovery (DR), always on, always accessible, along with security and recovery.

Data Infrastructure Data Protection Backup 4 3 2 1 rule
Data Infrastructure 4 3 2 1 Data Protection and Backup

Some data spring thoughts, perspectives and reminders. Data lakes may swell beyond their banks causing rivers of data to flood as they flow into larger reservoirs, great data lakes, gulfs of data, seas and oceans of data. Granted, some of that data will be inactive cold parked like glaciers while others semi-active floating around like icebergs. Hopefully your data is stored on durable storage solutions or services and does not melt.

Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O flash SSD NVMe
Various NAND Flash SSD devices and SAS, SATA, NVMe, M.2 interfaces

Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) including various solid state device (SSD) mediums (e.g. nand flash, 3D XPoint, MRAM among others), packaging (drives, PCIe Add in cars [AiC] along with entire systems, appliances or arrays). Also part of the continue evolution of NVM, SSD and other persistent memories (PM) including storage class memories (SCM) are different access protocol interfaces.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between NVM (medium) and NVMe (access), NVM is the generic category of mediums or media and devices such as nand flash, nvram, 3D XPoint among others SCM (and PMs). In other words, NVM is what data devices use for storing data, NVMe is how devices and systems are accessed. NVMe and its variations is how NVM, SSD, PM, SCM media and devices get accessed locally, as well as over network fabrics (e.g. NVMe-oF an FC-NVMe).

NVMe continues to evolve including with networked fabric variations such as RDMA based NVMe over Fabric (NVMe-oF), along with Fibre Channel based (FC-NVMe). The Fibre Channel Industry Association trade group recently held its second multi-vendor plugfest in support of NVMe over Fibre Channel.

Read more about NVM, NVMe, SSD, SCM, flash and related technologies, tools, trends, tips via the following resources:

Has Object Storage failed to live up to its industry hype lacking traction? Or, is object storage (also known as blobs) progressing with customer adoption and deployment on normal realistic timelines? Recently I have seen some industry comments about object storage not catching on with customers or failing to live up to its hyped expectation. IMHO object storage is very much alive along with block, file, table (e.g. database SQL and NoSQL repositories), message/queue among others, as well as emerging blockchain aka data exchanges.

Various Industry and Customer Adoption Deployment timeline
Various Industry and Customer Adoption Deployment Timeline (Via: StorageIOblog.com)

An issue with object storage is that it is still new, still evolving, many IT environments applications do not yet speak or access objects and blobs natively. Likewise as is often the case, industry adoption and deployment is usually early and short term around the hype, vs. the longer cycle of customer adoption and deployment. The downside for those who only focus on object storage (or blobs) is that they may be under pressure to do things short term instead of adjusting to customer cycles which take longer, however real adoption and deployment also last longer.

While the hype and industry buzz around object storage (and blobs) may have faded, customer adoption continues and is here to stay, along with block, file among others, learn more at www.objectstoragecenter.com. Also keep in mind that there is a difference between industry and customer adoption along with deployment.

Some recent Industry Activities, Trends, News and Announcements include:

In case you missed it, Amazon Web Services (e.g. AWS) announced EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) which as its name implies, is an easy to use and manage Kubernetes (containers, serverless data infrastructure) running on AWS. AWS joins others including Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), Googles Kubernetes Engine, EasyStack (ESContainer for openstack and Kubernetes),VMware Pivotal Container Service (PKS) among others. What this means is that in the container serverless data infrastructure ecosystem Kubernetes container management (orchestration platform) is gaining in both industry as well as customer adoption along with deployment.

Check out other industry news, comments, trends perspectives here.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Comments Content

Server StorageIO Commentary in the news, tips and articles

Recent Server StorageIO industry trends perspectives commentary in the news.

Via BizTech: Why Hybrid (SSD and HDD) Storage Might Be Fit for SMB environments
Via Excelero: Server StorageIO white paper enabling database DBaaS productivity
Via Cloudian: YouTube video interview file services on object storage with HyperFile
Via CDW Solutions: Comments on Software Defined Access
Via SearchStorage: Comments on Cloudian HyperStore on demand cloud like pricing
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments and tips on Software Defined Storage Best Practices
Via PRNewsWire: Comments on Excelero NVMe NVMesh Database and DBaaS solutions
Via SearchStorage: Comments on NooBaa multi-cloud storage management
Via CDW: Comments on New IT Strategies Improve Your Bottom Line 
Via EnterpriseStorageForum: Comments on Software Defined Storage: Pros and Cons
Via DataCenterKnowledge: Comments on The Great Data Center Headache IoT
Via SearchStorage: Comments on Dell and VMware merger scenario options
Via PRNewswire: Comments on Chelsio Microsoft Validation of iWARP/RDMA
Via SearchStorage: Comments on Server Storage Industry trends and Dell EMC
Via ChannelProSMB: Comments on Hybrid HDD and SSD storage solutions
Via ChannelProNetwork: Comments on What the Future Holds for HDDs
Via HealthcareITnews: Comments on MOUNTAINS OF MOBILE DATA
Via SearchStorage: Comments on Cloudian HyperStore 7 targets multi-cloud complexities
Via GlobeNewsWire: Comments on Cloudian HyperStore 7
Via GizModo: Comments on Intel Optane 800P NVMe M.2 SSD
Via DataCenterKnowledge: Comments on getting data centers ready for IoT
Via DataCenterKnowledge: Comments on Beyond the Hype: AI in the Data Center
Via DataCenterKnowledge: Comments on Data Center and Cloud Disaster Recovery
Via SearchStoragae: Comments on Cloudian HyperFile marries NAS and object storage
Via SearchStoragae: Comments on Top 10 Tips on Solid State Storage Adoption Strategy
Via SearchStoragae: Comments on 8 Top Tips for Beating the Big Data Deluge

View more Server, Storage and I/O trends and perspectives comments here.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIOblog posts

Server StorageIOblog Data Infrastructure Posts

Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Application Data Availability 4 3 2 1 Data Protection
AWS Cloud Application Data Protection Webinar
Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Insiders Preview
Application Data Characteristics Types Everything Is Not The Same
Application Data Volume Velocity Variety Everything Is Not The Same
Application Data Access Lifecycle Patterns Everything Is Not The Same
Veeam GDPR preparedness experiences Webinar walking the talk
VMware continues cloud construction with March announcements
Benefits of Moving Hyper-V Disaster Recovery to the Cloud Webinar
World Backup Day 2018 Data Protection Readiness Reminder
Use Intel Optane NVMe U.2 SFF 8639 SSD drive in PCIe slot
Data Infrastructure Resource Links cloud data protection tradecraft trends
How to Achieve Flexible Data Protection Availability with All Flash Storage Solutions
November 2017 Server StorageIO Data Infrastructure Update Newsletter
IT transformation Serverless Life Beyond DevOps Podcast
Data Protection Diaries Fundamental Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
HPE Announces AMD Powered Gen 10 ProLiant DL385 For Software Defined Workloads
AWS Announces New S3 Cloud Storage Security Encryption Features
Introducing Windows Subsystem for Linux WSL Overview #blogtober
Hot Popular New Trending Data Infrastructure Vendors To Watch

View other recent as well as past StorageIOblog posts here

Server StorageIO Recommended Reading (Watching and Listening) List

Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials SDDI SDDC

In addition to my own books including Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017) available at Amazon.com (check out special sale price), the following are Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading, watching and listening list items. The Server StorageIO data infrastructure recommended reading list includes various IT, Data Infrastructure and related topics including Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out. Speaking of my books, Didier Van Hoye (@WorkingHardInIt) has a good review over on his site you can view here, also check out the rest of his great content while there.

In case you may have missed it, here is a good presentation from AWS re:invent 2017 by Brendan Gregg (@brendangregg) about how Netflix does EC2 and other AWS tuning along with plenty of great resource links. Keith Tenzer (@keithtenzer) provides a good perspective piece about containers in a large IT enterprise environment here including various options.

Speaking of IT data centers and data infrastructure environments, checkout the list of some of the worlds most extreme habitats for technology here. Mark Betz (@markbetz) has a series of Docker and Kubernetes networking fundamentals posts on his site here, as well as over at Medium including mention of Google Cloud (@googlecloud). The posts in Marks series are good refresher or intros to how Docker and Kubernetes handles basic networking between containers, pods, nodes, hosts in clusters. Check out part I here and part II here.

Blockchain elements
Image via https://stevetodd.typepad.com

Steve Todd (@Stevetodd) has some good perspectives about Trusted Data Exchanges e.g. life beyond blockchain and bitcoin here along with core element considerations (beyond the product pitch) here, along with associated data infrastructure and storage evolution vs. revolution here.

Watch for more items to be added to the recommended reading list book shelf soon.

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO event activities

Events and Activities

Recent and upcoming event activities.

March 27, 2018 – Webinar – Veeams Road to GDPR Compliancy The 5 Lessons Learned

Feb 28, 2018 – Webinar – Benefits of Moving Hyper-V Disaster Recovery to the Cloud

Jan 30, 2018 – Webinar – Achieve Flexible Data Protection and Availability with All Flash Storage

Nov. 9, 2017 – Webinar – All You Need To Know about ROBO Data Protection Backup

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

Data Infrastructure Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

Various useful links and resources:

Data Infrastructure Recommend Reading and watching list
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/downloads – Various presentations and other download material
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/converge – Various CI, HCI and related SDS topics
storageio.com/performance – Various server, storage and I/O benchmark and tools
VMware Technical Network – Various VMware related items

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What this all means and wrap-up

Data Infrastructures are what exists inside physical data centers spanning cloud, converged, hyper-converged, virtual, serverless and other software defined as well as legacy environments. The fundamental role of data infrastructures comprising server (compute), storage, I/O networking hardware, software, services defined by management tools, best practices and policies is to provide a platform for applications along with their data to deliver information services. With March 31 being world backup day, also focus on making sure that on April 1st you are not a fool trying to recover from a bad data protection copy. With the continued movement to flash SSD along with other forms of storage class memory (SCM) and persistent memories (PM), data moves at a faster rate meaning data protection is even more important to get you out of trouble as fast as you get into issues.

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.

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