Welcome to the June 2013 edition of the StorageIO Update. In this edition coverage includes data center infrastructure management (DCIM), metrics that matter, industry trends, IBM buying Softlayer for Cloud, IaaS and managed services. Other items include backup and data protection topics for SMBs, as well as big data storage topics. Also the EPA has announced a review session for Energy Star for Data Center storage that you can give your comments. Enjoy this edition of the StorageIO Update newsletter.
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For those of you interested in EPA Energy Star for Data Center Storage, here is an announcement for an upcoming conference call and review of the version 1.0 final draft specification.
There are a few attachments referenced in the following note from EPA that can be accessed here:
EPA_Version 1.0 Storage Final Draft Specification Cover Letter EPA_Version 1.0 Storage Draft 4 Specification Comment Response Document EPA_Version 1.0 Storage Final Draft Test Method EPA_Version 1.0 Storage Final Draft Specification
Dear ENERGY STAR® Data Center Storage Partner or Other Interested Party:
Please see the attached important correspondence from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concerning the ENERGY STAR Version 1.0 Data Center Storage Final Draft Specification and Test Method. EPA will host a webinar on July 9, 2013 from 3:00 5:00 PM Eastern Time to discuss the documents with stakeholders. Please RSVP for the webinar to storage@energystar.gov no later than July 5, 2013.
Thank you for your continued support of the ENERGY STAR program.
This message was sent to you on behalf of ENERGY STAR. Each ENERGY STAR partner organization must have at least one primary contact receiving e-mail to maintain partnership. If you are no longer working on ENERGY STAR, and wish to be removed as a contact, please update your contact status in your MESA account. If you are not a partner organization and wish to opt out of receiving e-mails, you may call the ENERGY STAR Hotline at 1-888-782-7937 and request to have your mass mail settings changed. Unsubscribing means that you will no longer receive program-wide or product-specific e-mails from ENERGY STAR.
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
Welcome to the May 2013 edition of the StorageIO Update. This edition has announcement analysis of EMC ViPR, Software Defined Storage (including a video here), server, storage and I/O metrics that matter for example how many IOPS can a HDD do (it depends). SSD including nand flash remains a popular topic, both in terms of industry adoption and customer deployment. Also included are my perspectives on the SSD vendor FusionIO CEO leaving in a flash. Speaking of nand flash, have you thought about how some RAID implementations and configurations can extend the life along with durability of SSD’s? More on this soon, however check out this video to give you some perspectives.
Click on the following links to view the May 2013 edition as (HTML sent via Email) version, or PDF versions.
Visit the news letter page to view previous editions of the StorageIO Update.
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All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
How many i/o iops can flash ssd or hdd do with vmware?
Updated 2/10/2018
A common question I run across is how many I/O iopsS can flash SSD or HDD storage device or system do or give.
The answer is or should be it depends.
This is the first of a two-part series looking at storage performance, and in context specifically around drive or device (e.g. mediums) characteristics across HDD, HHDD and SSD that can be found in cloud, virtual, and legacy environments. In this first part the focus is around putting some context around drive or device performance with the second part looking at some workload characteristics (e.g. benchmarks).
Lets leave those for a different discussion at another time.
Getting started
Part of my interest in tools, metrics that matter, measurements, analyst, forecasting ties back to having been a server, storage and IO performance and capacity planning analyst when I worked in IT. Another aspect ties back to also having been a sys admin as well as business applications developer when on the IT customer side of things. This was followed by switching over to the vendor world involved with among other things competitive positioning, customer design configuration, validation, simulation and benchmarking HDD and SSD based solutions (e.g. life before becoming an analyst and advisory consultant).
Btw, if you happen to be interested in learn more about server, storage and IO performance and capacity planning, check out my first book Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) that has a bit of information on it. There is also coverage of metrics and planning in my two other books The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press). I have some copies of Resilient Storage Networks available at a special reader or viewer rate (essentially shipping and handling). If interested drop me a note and can fill you in on the details.
There are many rules of thumb (RUT) when it comes to metrics that matter such as IOPS, some that are older while others may be guess or measured in different ways. However the answer is that it depends on many things ranging from if a standalone hard disk drive (HDD), Hybrid HDD (HHDD), Solid State Device (SSD) or if attached to a storage system, appliance, or RAID adapter card among others.
Taking a step back, the big picture
Various HDD, HHDD and SSD’s
Server, storage and I/O performance and benchmark fundamentals
Even if just looking at a HDD, there are many variables ranging from the rotational speed or Revolutions Per Minute (RPM), interface including 1.5Gb, 3.0Gb, 6Gb or 12Gb SAS or SATA or 4Gb Fibre Channel. If simply using a RUT or number based on RPM can cause issues particular with 2.5 vs. 3.5 or enterprise and desktop. For example, some current generation 10K 2.5 HDD can deliver the same or better performance than an older generation 3.5 15K. Other drive factors (see this link for HDD fundamentals) including physical size such as 3.5 inch or 2.5 inch small form factor (SFF), enterprise or desktop or consumer, amount of drive level cache (DRAM). Space capacity of a drive can also have an impact such as if all or just a portion of a large or small capacity devices is used. Not to mention what the drive is attached to ranging from in internal SAS or SATA drive bay, USB port, or a HBA or RAID adapter card or in a storage system.
HDD fundamentals
How about benchmark and performance for marketing or comparison tricks including delayed, deferred or asynchronous writes vs. synchronous or actually committed data to devices? Lets not forget about short stroking (only using a portion of a drive for better IOP’s) or even long stroking (to get better bandwidth leveraging spiral transfers) among others.
Almost forgot, there are also thick, standard, thin and ultra thin drives in 2.5 and 3.5 inch form factors. What’s the difference? The number of platters and read write heads. Look at the following image showing various thickness 2.5 inch drives that have various numbers of platters to increase space capacity in a given density. Want to take a wild guess as to which one has the most space capacity in a given footprint? Also want to guess which type I use for removable disk based archives along with for onsite disk based backup targets (compliments my offsite cloud backups)?
Thick, thin and ultra thin devices
Beyond physical and configuration items, then there are logical configuration including the type of workload, large or small IOPS, random, sequential, reads, writes or mixed (various random, sequential, read, write, large and small IO). Other considerations include file system or raw device, number of workers or concurrent IO threads, size of the target storage space area to decide impact of any locality of reference or buffering. Some other items include how long the test or workload simulation ran for, was the device new or worn in before use among other items.
Tools and the performance toolbox
Then there are the various tools for generating IO’s or workloads along with recording metrics such as reads, writes, response time and other information. Some examples (mix of free or for fee) include Bonnie, Iometer, Iorate, IOzone, Vdbench, TPC, SPC, Microsoft ESRP, SPEC and netmist, Swifttest, Vmark, DVDstore and PCmark 7 among many others. Some are focused just on the storage system and IO path while others are application specific thus exercising servers, storage and IO paths.
Server, storage and IO performance toolbox
Having used Iometer since the late 90s, it has its place and is popular given its ease of use. Iometer is also long in the tooth and has its limits including not much if any new development, never the less, I have it in the toolbox. I also have Futremark PCmark 7 (full version) which turns out has some interesting abilities to do more than exercise an entire Windows PC. For example PCmark can use a secondary drive for doing IO to.
PCmark can be handy for spinning up with VMware (or other tools) lots of virtual Windows systems pointing to a NAS or other shared storage device doing real world type activity. Something that could be handy for testing or stressing virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) along with other storage systems, servers and solutions. I also have Vdbench among others tools in the toolbox including Iorate which was used to drive the workloads shown below.
What I look for in a tool are how extensible are the scripting capabilities to define various workloads along with capabilities of the test engine. A nice GUI is handy which makes Iometer popular and yes there are script capabilities with Iometer. That is also where Iometer is long in the tooth compared to some of the newer generation of tools that have more emphasis on extensibility vs. ease of use interfaces. This also assumes knowing what workloads to generate vs. simply kicking off some IOPs using default settings to see what happens.
Another handy tool is for recording what’s going on with a running system including IO’s, reads, writes, bandwidth or transfers, random and sequential among other things. This is where when needed I turn to something like HiMon from HyperIO, if you have not tried it, get in touch with Tom West over at HyperIO and tell him StorageIO sent you to get a demo or trial. HiMon is what I used for doing start, stop and boot among other testing being able to see IO’s at the Windows file system level (or below) including very early in the boot or shutdown phase.
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In this episode from SNW Fall 2012 in Santa Clara, I am joined by my co-host Bruce Ravid (@BruceRave) of Ravid and Associates as we catch up with long time storage industry veteran Claus Mikkelsen (@YoClaus) and HDS Chief Scientist.
Bruce and Claus meet for the first time having been around and probably passed each other in the halls at various events, hence, its a small world, however there is always opportunity to meet somebody new. We also chat about SNW past and present, data storage, technologies, networking with people, travel and of course with Claus, touch on wine.
Note that Claus and me were apart of a consortium of people that collaborated on the original book The Resilient Enterprise released in spring of 2012 published by Veritas. Ok, nuff said.
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Riding the current software defined data center (SDC) wave being led by the likes of VMware and software defined networking (SDN) also championed by VMware via their acquisition of Nicira last year, Software Defined Marketing (SDM) is in full force. HP being a player in providing the core building blocks for traditional little data and big data, along with physical, virtual, converged, cloud and software defined has announced a new compute, processor or server platform called the Moonshot 1500.
Software defined marketing aside, there are some real and interesting things from a technology standpoint that HP is doing with the Moonshot 1500 along with other vendors who are offering micro server based solutions.
First, for those who see server (processor and compute) improvements as being more and faster cores (and threads) per socket, along with extra memory, not to mention 10GbE or 40GbE networking and PCIe expansion or IO connectivity, hang on to your hats.
Moonshot is in the model of the micro servers or micro blades such as what HP has offered in the past along with the likes of Dell and Sea Micro (now part of AMD). The micro servers are almost the opposite of the configuration found on regular servers or blades where the focus is putting more ability on a motherboard or blade.
With micro servers the approach support those applications and environments that do not need lots of CPU processing capability, large amount of storage or IO or memory. These include some web hosting or cloud application environments that can leverage more smaller, lower power, less performance or resource intensive platforms. For example big data (or little data) applications whose software or tools benefit from many low-cost, low power, and lower performance with distributed, clustered, grid, RAIN or ring based architectures can benefit from this type of solution.
What is the Moonshot 1500 system?
4.3U high rack mount chassis that holds up to 45 micro servers
Each hot-swap micro server is its own self-contained module similar to blade server
Server modules install vertically from the top into the chassis similar to some high-density storage enclosures
Compute or processors are Intel Atom S1260 2.0GHz based processors with 1 MB of cache memory
Single S0-DIMM slot (unbuffered ECC at 1333 MHz) supports 8GB (1 x 8GB DIMM) DRAM
Each server module has a single 2.5″ SATA 200GB SSD, 500GB or 1TB HDD onboard
A dual port Broadcom 5720 1 Gb Ethernet LAn per server module that connects to chassis switches
Marvel 9125 storage controller integrated onboard each server module
Chassis and enclosure management along with ACPI 2.0b, SMBIOS 2.6.1 and PXE support
A pair of Ethernet switches each give up to six x 10GbE uplinks for the Moonshot chassis
Dual RJ-45 connectors for iLO chassis management are also included
Status LEDs on the front of each chassis providers status of the servers and network switches
Support for Canonical Ubuntu 12.04, RHEL 6.4, SUSE Linux LES 11 SP2
Notice a common theme with moonshot along with other micro server-based systems and architectures?
If not, it is simple, I mean literally simple and flexible is the value proposition.
Simple is the theme (with software defined for marketing) along with low-cost, lower energy power demand, lower performance, less of what is not needed to remove cost.
Granted not all applications will be a good fit for micro servers (excuse me, software defined servers) as some will need the more robust resources of traditional servers. With solutions such as HP Moonshot, system architects and designers have more options available to them as to what resources or solution options to use. For example, a cloud or object storage system based solutions that does not need a lot of processing performance per node or memory, and a low amount of storage per node might find this as an interesting option for mid to entry-level needs.
Will HP release a version of their Lefthand or IBRIX (both since renamed) based storage management software on these systems for some market or application needs?
How about deploying NoSQL type tools including Cassandra or Mongo, how about CloudStack, OpenStack Swift, Basho Riak (or Riak CS) or other software including object storage, on these types of solutions, or web servers and other applications that do not need the fastest processors or most memory per node?
Thus micro server-based solutions such as Moonshot enable return on innovation (the new ROI) by enabling customers to leverage the right tool (e.g. hard product) to create their soft product allowing their users or customers to in turn innovate in a cost-effective way.
Will the Moonshot servers be the software defined turnaround for HP, click here to see what Bloomberg has to say, or Forbes here.
Learn more about Moonshot servers at HP here, here or data sheets found here.
Btw, HP claims that this is the industries first software defined server, hmm.
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Wayne gives us an update on what’s new with SNIA including education, tutorials, videos and other training material, along with standards such as SMIS among other items. Also check out the companion pod cast where Wayne is joined by SW Worth of SNIA education to discuss their new SNIA SPDEcon conference that will occur June 10th in Santa Clara California. Listen to the SPDEcon overview pod cast discussion here.
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Cloud Bulk Big Data Software Defined Object Storage Resources
Welcome to the Cloud, Big Data, Software Defined, Bulk and Object Storage Resources Center Page objectstoragecenter.com.
This object storage resources, along with software defined, cloud, bulk, and scale-out storage page is part of the server StorageIOblog microsite collection of resources. Software-defined, Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage exist to support expanding and diverse application data demands.
Bulk, Cloud, Object Storage Solutions and Services
There are various types of cloud, bulk, and object storage including public services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Simple Storage Service (S3), Backblaze, Google, Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, Rackspace among many others. There are also solutions for hybrid and private deployment from Cisco, Cloudian, CTERA, Cray, DDN, Dell EMC, Elastifile, Fujitsu, Vantera/HDS, HPE, Hedvig, Huawei, IBM, NetApp, Noobaa, OpenIO, OpenStack, Quantum, Rackspace, Rozo, Scality, Spectra, Storpool, StorageCraft, Suse, Swift, Virtuozzo, WekaIO, WD, among many others.
Cloud products and services among others, along with associated data infrastructures including object storage, file systems, repositories and access methods are at the center of bulk, big data, big bandwidth and little data initiatives on a public, private, hybrid and community basis. After all, not everything is the same in cloud, virtual and traditional data centers or information factories from active data to in-active deep digital archiving.
Object Context Matters
Before discussing Object Storage lets take a step back and look at some context that can clarify some confusion around the term object. The word object has many different meanings and context, both inside of the IT world as well as outside. Context matters with the term object such as a verb being a thing that can be seen or touched as well as a person or thing of action or feeling directed towards.
Besides a person, place or physical thing, an object can be a software-defined data structure that describes something. For example, a database record describing somebody’s contact or banking information, or a file descriptor with name, index ID, date and time stamps, permissions and access control lists along with other attributes or metadata. Another example is an object or blob stored in a cloud or object storage system repository, as well as an item in a hypervisor, operating system, container image or other application.
Besides being a verb, an object can also be a noun such as disapproval or disagreement with something or someone. From an IT context perspective, an object can also refer to a programming method (e.g. object-oriented programming [oop], or Java [among other environments] objects and classes) and systems development in addition to describing entities with data structures.
In other words, a data structure describes an object that can be a simple variable, constant, complex descriptor of something being processed by a program, as well as a function or unit of work. There are also objects unique or with context to specific environments besides Java or databases, operating systems, hypervisors, file systems, cloud and other things.
The Need For Bulk, Cloud and Object Storage
There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, moved, processed, stored, preserved and served, granted there are economic realities. Likewise as a society our dependence on information being available for work or entertainment, from medical healthcare to social media and all points in between continues to increase (check out the Human Face of Big Data).
Object and cloud storage are in your future, the questions are when, where, with what and how among others.
Watch for more content and links to be added here soon to this object storage center page including posts, presentations, pod casts, polls, perspectives along with services and product solutions profiles.
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.
While there is a focus on VMware and Virtualization blogs, there are also other categories such as Storage, Scripting, pod casting as well as independent for the non vendors and VARs.
It is an honor to be included in the polling along with my many 2012 fellow vExperts on the list.
Last year I made Eric’s 2012 top 50 list as well as appearing in the storage and some other categories in those rankings (thanks to all who voted last year).
This year I forgot to nominate myself (it’s a self nomination process) so while I am not on the storage, independent bloggers, pod cast sub-categories, I am however included in the general voting having made the top 50 list last year (#46).
A summary of Eric’s recommended voting criteria vs. basic popularity are:
Longevity: How long has somebody been blogging and posting for vs. starting and stopping.
Length: Short quick snippet posts vs more original content, time and effort vs. just posting.
Frequency: How often do posts appear, lots of short pieces vs. regular longer ones vs. an occasional post.
Quality: What’s in the post, original ideas, tips, information, insight, analysis, thought perspectives vs. reposting or reporting what others are doing.
Voting is now open (click here on the vote image) and closes on March 1, 2013 so if you read this or any of my other posts, comments and content or listen to our new pod casts at storageio.tv (also on iTunes).
Thank you in advance for your continued support and watch for more posts, comments, perspectives and pod casts about data and information infrastructure topics, trends, tools and techniques including servers, storage, IO networking, cloud, virtualization, backup/recovery, BC, DR and data protection along with big and little data (among other things).
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Cloud and object storage will continue to gain in awareness, functionality, and options from various providers in terms of products, solutions, and services. There will be a mix of large-scale solutions and smaller ones, with a mix of open-source and proprietary pieces. Some of these will be for archiving, some for backup or data protection. Others will be for big-data, high-performance computing, or cloud on a local or wide area basis, while others for general file sharing.
Along with cloud and object storage, watch for more options about how those products or services can be accessed using traditional NAS (NFS, CIFS, HDFS and others) along with block, such as iSCSI object API’s, including Amazon S3, REST, HTTP, JSON, XML, iOS and CDMI along with programmatic bindings.
Data protection modernization, including backup/restore, high-availability, business continuity, disaster recovery, archiving, and related technologies for cloud, virtual, and traditional environments will remain popular themes.
Expect more Fibre Channel over Ethernet for networking with your servers and storage, PCIe Gen 3 to move data in and out of servers, and Serial-attached SCSI (SAS) as a means of attaching storage to servers or as the back-end storage for larger storage systems and appliances. For those who like to look out over the horizon, keep an eye and ear open for more discussion around PCI gen 3 deployment and gen 4 definitions, not to mention DDR4 and nand flash moving close to the processors.
With VMware buying Virsto, that should keep software defined marketing (SDM) and Storage hypervisors, storage virtualization, virtual storage, virtual storage arrays (VSA’s) active topic themes. Lets also keep in mind for storage space capacity optimization Data footprint reduction (DFR) including archiving, backup and data protection modernization, compression, consolidation, dedupe and data management.
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This is the first in a multi-part series of posts looking at if large enterprise and legacy storage systems are dead, along with what todays EMC VMAX 10K updates means.
EMC has announced an upgrade, refresh or new version of their previously announced Virtual matrix (VMAX) 10,000 (10K), part of the VMAX family of enterprise class storage systems formerly known as DMX (Direct Matrix) and Symmetrix. I will get back to more coverage on the VMAX 10K and other EMC enhancements in a few moments in part two and three of this series.
Have you heard the industry myth about the demise or outright death of traditional storage systems? This has been particularly the case for high-end enterprise class systems, which by the way which were first, declared dead back in the mid-1990s then at the hands of emerging mid-range storage systems.
Enterprise class storage systems include EMC VMAX, Fujitsu Eternus DX8700, HDS, HP XP P9000 based on the HDS high-end product (OEM from HDS parent Hitachi Ltd.). Note that some HPers or their fans might argue that the P10000 (formerly known as 3PAR) declared as tier 1.5 should also be on the list; I will leave that up to you to decide.
Let us not forget the IBM DS8000 series (whose predecessors was known as the ESS and VSS before that); although some IBMers will tell you that XIV should also be in this list. High-end enterprise class storage systems such as those mentioned above are not alone in being declared dead at the hands of new all solid-state devices (SSD) and their startup vendors, or mixed and hybrid-based solutions.
Some are even declaring dead due to new SSD appliances or systems, and by storage hypervisor or virtual storage array (VSA) the traditional mid-range storage systems that were supposed to have killed off the enterprise systems a decade ago (hmm, DejaVu?).
The mid-range storage systems include among others block (SAN and DAS) and file (NAS) systems from Data Direct Networks (DDN), Dell Complement, EqualLogic and MD series (Netapp Engenio based), EMC VNX and Isilon, Fujitsu Eternus, and HDS HUS mid-range formerly known as AMS. Let us not forget about HP 3PAR or P2000 (DotHill based) or P6000 (EVA which is probably being put out to rest). Then there are the various IBM products (their own and what they OEM from others), NEC, NetApp (FAS and Engenio), Oracle and Starboard (formerly known as Reldata). Note that there are many startups that could be in the above list as well if they were not considering the above to be considered dead, thus causing themselves to also be extinct as well, how ironic ;).
What are some industry trends that I am seeing?
Some vendors and products might be nearing the ends of their useful lives
Some vendors, their products and portfolios continue to evolve and expand
Some vendors and their products are moving into new or adjacent markets
Some vendors are refining where and what to sell when and to who
Some vendors are moving up market, some down market
Some vendors are moving into new markets, others are moving out of markets
Some vendors are declaring others dead to create a new market for their products
One size or approach or technology does not fit all needs, avoid treating all the same
Leverage multiple tools and technology in creative ways
Maximize return on innovation (the new ROI) by using various tools, technologies in ways to boost productivity, effectiveness while removing complexity and cost
Realization that cutting cost can result in reduced resiliency, thus look for and remove complexity with benefit of removing costs without compromise
Storage arrays are moving into new roles, including as back-end storage for cloud, object and other software stacks running on commodity servers to replace JBOD (DejaVu anyone?).
Keep in mind that there is a difference between industry adoption (what is talked about) and customer deployment (what are actually bought and used). Likewise there is technology based on GQ (looks and image) and G2 (functionality, experience).
There is also an industry myth that SSD cannot or has not been successful in traditional storage systems which in some cases has been true with some products or vendors. Otoh, some vendors such as EMC, NetApp and Oracle (among others) are having good success with SSD in their storage systems. Some SSD startup vendors have been more successful on both the G2 and GQ front, while some focus on the GQ or image may not be as successful (or at least yet) in the industry adoption vs. customer deployment game.
For the above mentioned storage systems vendors and products (among others), or at least for most of them there is still have plenty of life in them, granted their role and usage is changing including in some cases being found as back-end storage systems behind servers running virtualization, cloud, object storage and other storage software stacks. Likewise, some of the new and emerging storage systems (hardware, software, valueware, services) and vendors have bright futures while others may end up on the where are they now list.
Here are links to two polls where you can cast your vote.
Cast your vote and see results of if large storage arrays and systems are dead here.
Cast your vote and see results of if SSD has not been successful in storage systems.
So what about it, are enterprise or large storage arrays and systems dead?
Perhaps in some tabloids or industry myths (or that some wish for) or in some customer environments, as well as for some vendors or their products that can be the case.
However, IMHO for many other environments (and vendors) the answer is no, granted some will continue to evolve from legacy high-end enterprise class storage systems to mid-range or to appliance or VSA or something else.
There is still life many of the storage systems architectures, platforms and products that have been declared dead for over a decade.
Continue reading about the specifics of the EMC VMAX 10K announcement in the next post in this series here. Also check out Chucks EMC blog to see what he has to say.
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Thank you Gartner for your statements concurring and endorsing the notion of clouds can be viable, however do your homework, welcome to the club.
Why am I thanking Gartner?
Simple, I appreciate Gartner now saying what has been said for a couple of years hoping it will help to amplify the theme to the Gartner followers and faithful.
Gartner: Cloud storage viable option, but proceed carefully
Images licensed for use by StorageIO via Atomazul / Shutterstock.com
Sounds like Gartner has come to the same conclusion on what has been said for several years now in posts, articles, keynotes, presentations, webinars and other venues which is when it comes to IT clouds, don’t be scared. However do your homework, be prepared, do your due diligence, proof of concepts.
Here are some related materials to prepare and plan for IT clouds (public and private):
What is your take on IT clouds? Click here to cast your vote and see what others are thinking about clouds.
Now for those who feel that free information or content is not worth its price, then feel free to go to Amazon and buy some Book copies here, or subscribing to the Kindle version of the StorageIOblog, or contact us for an advisory consultation or other project. For everybody else, enjoy and remember, don’t be scared of clouds, do your homework, be prepared and keep in mind that clouds are a shared responsibility.
Disclosure: I was a Gartner client when I working in an IT organization and then later as a vendor, however not anymore ;).
All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved
My copy of the new book The Human Face of Big Data created by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt arrived yesterday compliments of EMC (the lead sponsor). In addition to EMC, the other sponsors of the book are Cisco, VMware, FedEx, Originate and Tableau software.
To say this is a big book would be an understatement, then again, big data is a big topic with a lot of diversity if you open your eyes and think in a pragmatic way, which once you open and see the pages you will see. This is physically a big book (11x 14 inches) with lots of pictures, texts, stories, factoids and thought stimulating information of the many facets and dimensions of big data across 224 pages.
Big data needs to be protected and preserved as it has value, or its value can increase over time as new ways to leverage it are discovered which also leads to changing data access and life cycle patterns. With many faces, facets and areas of interests applying to various spheres of influence, big data is not limited to programmatic, scientific, analytical or research, yet there are many current and use cases in those areas.
Big data is not limited to videos for security surveillance, entertainment, telemetry, audio, social media, energy exploration, geosciences, seismic, forecasting or simulation, yet those have been areas of focus for years. Some big data files or objects are millions of bytes (MBytes), billion of bytes (GBytes) or trillion of bytes (TBytes) in size that when put into file systems or object repositories, add up to Exabytes (EB – 1000 TBytes) or Zettabytes (ZB – 1000 EBs). Now if you think those numbers are far-fetched, simply look back to when you thought a TByte, GByte let alone a MByte was big or far-fetched future. Remember, there is no such thing as a data or information recession, people and data are living longer and getting larger.
Big data is more than hadoop, map reduce, SAS or other programmatic and analytical focused tool, solution or platform, yet those all have been and will be significant focus areas in the future. This also means big data is more than data warehouse, data mart, data mining, social media and event or activity log processing which also are main parts have continued roles going forward. Just as there are large MByte, GByte or TByte sized files or objects, there are also millions and billions of smaller files, objects or pieces of information that are part of the big data universe.
You can take a narrow, product, platform, tool, process, approach, application, sphere of influence or domain of interest view towards big data, or a pragmatic view of the various faces and facets. Of course you can also spin everything that is not little-data to be big data and that is where some of the BS about big data comes from. Big data is not exclusive to the data scientist, researchers, academia, governments or analysts, yet there are areas of focus where those are important. What this means is that there are other areas of big data that do not need a data science, computer science, mathematical, statistician, Doctoral Phd or other advanced degree or training, in other words big data is for everybody.
Back to how big this book is in both physical size, as well as rich content. Note the size of The Human Face of Big Data book in the adjacent image that for comparison purposes has a copy of my last book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), along with a 2.5 inch hard disk drive (HDD) and a growler. The Growler is from Lift Bridge Brewery (Stillwater, MN), after all, reading a big book about big data can create the need for a big beer to address a big thirst for information ;).
The Human Face of Big Data is more than a coffee table or picture book as it is full of with information, factoids and perspectives how information and data surround us every day. Check out the image below and note the 2.5 inch HDD sitting on the top right hand corner of the page above the text. Open up a copy of The Human Face of Big Data and you will see examples of how data and information are all around us, and our dependence upon it.
Book Details: Copyright 2012 Against All Odds Productions ISBN 978-1-4549-0827-2 Hardcover 224 pages, 11 x 0.9 x 14 inches 4.8 pounds, English
For those who can see big data in a broad and pragmatic way, perhaps using the visualization aspect this book brings forth the idea that there are and will be many opportunities. Then again for those who have a narrow or specific view of what is or is not big data, there is so much of it around and various types along with focus areas you too will see some benefits.
Do you want to play in or be part of a big data puddle, pond, or lake, or sail and explore the oceans of big data and all the different aspects found in, under and around those bigger broader bodies of water.
Bottom line, this is a great book and read regardless of if you are involved with data and information related topics or themes, the format and design lend itself to any audience. Broaden your horizons, open your eyes, ears and thinking to the many facets and faces of big data that are all around us by getting your copy of The Human Face of Big Data (Click here to go to Amazon for your copy) book.
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