Tag: storage

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Has SSD put Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) On Endangered Species List?

Storage I/O trends

Disclosure: I have been a user, vendor, author and analyst covering and a fan (and continue to be) of SSD for over 20 years

I have thought and wanting to post about this for a while, however recently several things popped up including moderating a panel where a vendor representative told the audience that the magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) would be dead in two, at most three years. While there were a few nods from those in the audience, the majority smiled politely, chuckled, looked at their watches or returned to doing email, twitters, texting or simply rolled their eyes in a way like, yeah right, we have heard this before ( ;) ).

Likewise, I have done many events including seminars, keynotes including at a recent CMG event (the performance and capacity planning group that I have been a part of for many years), webcasts and other interactions with IT pros, vendors, vars and media. These interactions have included among other topics, IT optimization, boosting server and storage efficiency, as well as the roll of tiering IT resources to boost efficiency, achieve better productivity while boosting performance in a cost-effective way during touch economic times, in other words, the other green IT!

Then the other day, I received an email from Mary Jander over at Internet Evolution. You may remember Mary from her days over at Byte & Switch. Mary was looking for a point, counter point, perspective and sound bit to a recent blog posting on her site and basically asked if I thought that the high performance HDD would be dead in a couple of years at the cost of FLASH SSD. Having given Mary some sound bits and perspectives which appear in her Article/Blog posting, there has since been a fun and lively discourse in Marys’ Internet Evolution blog comment section which could be seen by some as the pending funeral for high performance HDDs.

There has been a lot of work taking place including by industry trade groups such as the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) among others, not to mention many claims, discussions, banter and even some trash talk about how the magnetic hard disk drives (HDD) that as a technology is over 50 years old now, is nearing the end of the road and is about to be replaced by FLASH SSD in the next two to three years depending on who you talk with or listen to.

That may very well be the case, however, I have a strong suspicion that while the high performance 3.5" Fibre Channel 15,500 Revolution per minute (15.5K RPM) HDD is nearing the end of the line, I don’t believe that the 2.5" small form factor (SFF) Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 15.5K (maybe faster in the future?) high performance and larger capacity HDD will have met its demise in the two to three-year timeframe.

The reason I subscribe to this notion is that of a need for balancing performance, availability, capacity, energy to a given power, cooling, floor space and environmental need along with price to meet different tiers of application and data quality of service and service level needs. Simply put, there continues to be a need even with some the new or emerging enhanced intelligence capabilities of storage systems for tiered media. That is tier-0 ultra fast SSD (FLASH or RAM) in a 2.5" form factor with SATA shifting to SAS connectivity, tier-1 fast 2.5" SAS 15.5K large capacity HDDs, tier-2 2.5" SATA and SAS high-capacity, 5.4 to 10K HDDs, or, ultra large capacity SAS and SATA 3.5" HDDs to meet different performance, availability, capacity, energy and economic points.

Why not just use SSD FLASH for all high performance activity, after all it excels in reads correct? Yup, however, take a closer look at write performance which is getting better and better, even with less reliance on intelligent controllers, firmware and RAM as a buffer. However, there is still a need for a balance of Tier-0, Tier-1, Tier-2, Tier-3 etc mediums to balance different requirements and stretch strained IT budgets to do more efficiency.

Maybe I’m stuck in my ways and spend to much time talking with IT professionals including server or storage architects, as well as IT planners, purchasers and others in the trenches and not enough time drinking the cool-aid and believing the evangelists and truth squads ;). However there is certainly no denying that Solid State Devices (SSD) using either RAM or FLASH are back in the spotlight again as SSD has been in the past, this time for many reasons with adoption continuing to grow. I think that its safe to say that some HDDs will fade away like other earlier generations have, such as the 3.5" FC HDD, however other HDDs like the high performance 2.5" SAS HDDs have some time to enjoy before their funeral or wake.

What say you?

BTW, check out this popular (and its Free) StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspectives White Paper Report that looks at various data center performance bottlenecks and how to discuss them to transition towards becoming more efficient. However a warning, you might actually be inclined to jump on the SSD bandwagon.

Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with SSD, after all as I mentioned earlier, I’m a huge fan, however, I’m also a huge fan of spinning HDDs having skipped SSD in my latest computer purchases for fast 7.2K (or faster) HDDs with FLASH for portability (encrypted of course). After all, it’s also about balancing the different tiers of storage mediums to the task at hand, that is, unless you subscribe to the notion that one tool or technique should be used to solve all problems which is fine if that is your cup of tea.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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Storage Decisions Spring 2009 Sessions Update

StorageDecisions Logo

The conference lineup and details for the Spring 2009 Storage Decisions event (June 1st and 2nd) in Chicago is coming together including two talks/presentations that I will be doing. One will be in Track 2 (Disaster Recovery) titled "Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery" and the other in Track 6 (Management/Executive) titled "The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization" with both sessions leveraging themes and topics from my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC).

Track 2: Disaster Recovery
Server Virtualization, Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery
Presented by Greg Schulz, Founder and Senior Analyst, StorageIO
Server virtualization has the potential to bring sophisticated business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) techniques to organizations that previously didn’t have the means to adopt them. Likewise, virtualized as well as cloud environments need to be included in a BC/DR plan to enable application and data availability. Learn tips and tricks on building an accessible BC/DR strategy and plan using server virtualization and the storage products that enable efficient, flexible green and virtual data centers.

Topics include:
* Cross technology domain data protection management
* Tiered data protection to stretch your IT budget dollar
* What’s needed to enable BC/DR for virtualized environments
* How virtualization can enable BC/DR for non-virtualized environments
* General HA, BC/DR and data protection tips for virtual environments

Track 6: Management/Executive
The Other Green — Storage Efficiency and Optimization
Throw out the "green“: buzzword, and you’re still left with the task of saving or maximizing use of space, power, and cooling while stretching available IT dollars to support growth and business sustainability. For some environments the solution may be consolation while others need to maintain quality of service response time, performance and availability necessitating faster, energy efficient technologies to achieve optimization objectives. To accomplish these and other related issues, you can turn to the cloud, virtualization, intelligent power management, data footprint reduction and data management not to mention various types of tiered storage and performance optimization techniques. The session will look at various techniques and strategies to optimize either on-line active or primary as well as near-line or secondary storage environment during tough economic times, as well as to position for future growth, after all, there is no such thing as a data recession!

Topics include:
* Energy efficiency (strategic) vs. energy avoidance (tactical)
* Optimization and the need for speed vs. the need for capacity
* Metrics and measurements for management insight
* Tiered storage and tiered access including SSD, FC, SAS and clouds
* Data footprint reduction (archive, compress, dedupe) and thin provision
* Best practices, financial incentives and what you can do today

See you in Chicago in June if not before then. Learn more about other upcoming events and activities on the StorageIO events page.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

twitter @storageio

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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March and Mileage Mania Wrap-up

Today’s flight to Santa Ana (SNA) Orange County California for an 18 hour visit marks my 3rd trip to the left coast in the past four weeks that started out with a trip to Los Angeles. The purpose of today’s trip is to deliver a talk around Business Continuance (BC) and Disaster recovery (DR) topics for virtual server and storage environments along with related data transformation topics themes, part of a series of on-going events.

Planned flight path from MSP to SNA, note upper midwest snow storms. Thanks to Northwest Airlines, now part of Delta!
Planned flight path from MSP to SNA courtesy of Northwest Airlines, now part of Delta

This is a short trip to southern California in that I have to be back in Minneapolis for a Wednesday afternoon meeting followed by keynoting at an IT Infrastructure Optimization Seminar downtown Minneapolis Thursday morning. Right after Thursday morning session, its off to the other coast for some Friday morning and early afternoon sessions in the Boston area, the results of which I hope to be able to share with you in a not so distant future posting.

Where has March gone? Its been a busy and fun month out on the road with in-person seminars, vendor and user group events in Minneapolis, Los Angles, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Atlanta, St. Louis, Birmingham, Minneapolis for CMG user group, Cincinnati and Orange County not to mention some other meetings and consulting engagements elsewhere including participating in a couple of webcast and virtual conference/seminars while on the road. Coverage and discussion around my new book "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) continues expand, read here to see what’s being said.

What has made the month fun in addition to traveling around the country is the interaction with the hundreds of IT professionals from organizations of all size hearing what they are encountering, what their challenges are, what they are thinking, and in general what’s on their mind.

Some of the common themes include:

  • There’s no such thing as a data recession, however the result is doing more with less, or, with what you have
  • Confusion abounds around green hype including carbon footprints vs. core IT and business issues
  • There is life beyond consolidation for server and storage virtualization to enable business agility
  • Security and encryption remain popular topic as does heterogeneous and affordable key management
  • End to end IT resource management for virtual environments is needed that is scalable and affordable
  • Performance and quality of service can not be sacrificed in the quest to drive up storage utilization
  • Clouds, SSD (FLASH), Dedupe, FCoE and Thin Provisioning among others are on the watch list
  • Tape continues to be used complimenting disks in tiered storage environments along with VTLs
  • Dedupe continues to be deployed and we are just seeing the very tip of the ice-berg of opportunity
  • Software licensing cost savings or reallocation should be a next step focus for virtual environments

    • Now, for a bit of irony and humor, overheard was a server sales person talking to a storage sales person comparing notes on how they are missing their forecasts as their customers are buying fewer servers and storage now that they are consolidating with virtualization, or using disk dedupe to eliminate disk drives. Doh!!!

    Now if those sales people can get their marketing folks to get them the play book for virtualization for business agility, improving performance and enabling business growth in an optimized, transformed environment, they might be able to talk a different story with their customers for new opportunities…

    What’s on deck for April? More of the same, however also watch and listen for some additional web based content including interviews quotes and perspectives on industry happenings, articles, tips and columns, reports, blogs, videos, podcasts, webcasts and twitter activity as well as appearances at events in Boston, Chicago, New Jersey and Providence among other venues.

    To all of those who came out to the various events in March, thank you very much and look forward to future follow-up conversations as well as seeing you at some of the upcoming future events.

    Cheers gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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    Out and About Update

    As part of the continuing on the road theme and series, this post is being done while traveling for this weeks adventures and events including stops in Atlanta, St. Louis and wrapping up the week in Minneapolis at the local CMG quarterly meeting event. At both last weeks events in Las Vegas and Milwaukee as well as this weeks events talking with IT professionals from various organizations, a consistent theme is that there is no data or I/O recession, however there is the need to do more with less while enabling business sustainability.

    While VMware remains the dominant server virtualization platform, I’m hearing of more organizations using Citrix or other Xensource based technologies along with some Microsoft HyperV adopters in part to leverage lower cost of ownership compared to VMware in instances where not all of the feature functionality of the robust VMware technology is needed. This will be an interesting scenario to keep an eye on in the weeks and months to come to see if there are any shifting patterns on the server virtualization front while trying to stretch IT dollars further to do more.

    On the Merger & Acquisition (M&A) scene, coverage of on again, off-again and recently rekindled rumored of IBM buying Sun is rampant from the Wall Street Journal to twitter and most points in between. There have been many storm clouds around Sun the past several years from a business and technology perspective, and perhaps the best thing is for Sun and IBM to combine forces and resources, bridging the gap between old physical worlds and new virtual cloud enabled worlds so to speak. Personally, I like the idea for many different reasons and think that some shape or form of an IBM and Sun deal either in entirety, or pieces is far more likely to occur and sooner, than seeing funds returned from either AIG or Bernard Madoff, the other top news items this week, nuf said for now about IBM and Sun.

    Also this week, other activity included Cisco announcing that they are testing the waters to enter into the server market space to help jumpstart the converged networking space with some of my initial comments here and here. Check out StorageIO in the news page here for other comments on various IT industry trends, technologies and related activities including a recent piece by Drew Robb about The State of the Data Storage Job Market.

    Lets see how this plays out with more to say later, thanks again for everyone who came out for last weeks as well as this weeks events, look forward to seeing and talking with you again soon I hope.

    Cheers – gs

    Technorati tags: Recession, Sustainability, Wall Street Journal, Data Center Bottlenecks, Performance, Capacity, Networking, Telephone, Data Center, Consolidation, Virtualization, VMware, Server, Storage, Software, Sun, IBM, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Atlanta, CMG, AIG, Bernard Madoff, Cisco

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    Work and Entertainment From Coast to Coast

    A week ago I was in St. Petersburg, Tampa and Miami Florida for a mix of work and relaxation along with Karen (Mrs. Schulz), visiting with my cousin and her husband who lives in the St. Pete beach area for a few days before back to work. While in the St. Pete and Tampa area, for fun, we did an afternoon at Busch Garden including a ride on Montu. For those who have not ridden on Montu, here’s a video I found that someone recorded to help give you a perspective of the ride. Other fun activities included stops or time at Billys Stonecrab and Seafood joint, Kayaking, lounging pool-side, shelling at Ft. Desoto and St. Pete Beach as well as a visit to the Hurricane among others.

    In Miami, the pool area at the Four Seasons including a nice cabana pool-side spot to escape the cool breeze made for a great relaxing and catch-up on some work spot while Karen relaxed in the sun. Some of the restraunts in Miami we visited when taking a break from work included Gordon Birsch and Rosa for some outstanding, made at the table side fresh Guacamole en Molcajet!.

    Speaking of work, the Florida trip involved doing keynotes at events in both Tampa and Miami with a theme of IT Infrastructure Optimization with both events being well attended. Themes included doing more with less, or, doing more with what you have, addressing data footprint and data management to boost productivity, how to address the continued growth in data and need to process, move and store more data and information. A discussion point prompted the thought of if there is a data recession or not (See previous blog post and here). Other topics of discussion and interested included converged networking for voice, data and general networking, security, server and storage virtualization, performance and capacity planning, data protection and BC/DR among others.

    This past week involved a lunch and learn Keynote in the Minneapolis area with a local VAR, before a quick trip to the other (left) coast for another IT Infrastructure Optimization session and keynote, this time in Los Angeles. Some common themes heard from IT professionals at this past weeks events echoed those heard in Florida as well as concern about managing encryption keys not to mention securing virtual environments and software licensing models in virtualized server environments. The trip to LA also enabled a quick visit with friend Bruce Rave of Go Deep fame who provided a great tour and sightseeing of the Hollywood music scene.

    Hollywood stops included dinner at Genghis Cohens (The duck and cashew chicken were outstanding) followed by visits to the Cat and Fiddle and Infamous Rainbow Bar & Grill next door to legendary Roxy. People watching was great as was the music and ambiance including a Nikki Sixx of Motely Crew sighting at the Rainbow as well as Dr. Sanjay Gupta of CNN seen in hotel lobby minutes after appearing on Larry King Live.

    Thanks too everyone who came out and participated in the seminar events in Tampa, Miami, Minneapolis and LA, look forward to seeing and hearing from you again soon. Now its time to get ready to head off too the airport for this weeks events and activities including stops in Las Vegas and Milwaukee among others.

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press, 2011), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press, 2009), and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier, 2004)

    twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2012 StorageIO and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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    Update: EnergyStar for Server Workshop

    Here’s an update from a previous post about US EPA EnergyStar program team looking for data center feedback on the draft specs for EnergyStar for servers.

    Dear Server Manufacturer or Other Interested Stakeholder,

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host an online stakeholder meeting on Monday, March 16 from 1:00 – 3:00 p.m. EST to discuss the recently released ENERGY STARÒ Draft 4 Computer Server specification.  

    To participate in this online meeting, stakeholders must register no later than Thursday, March 12. Please RSVP to Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at rduff@icfi.com.  If registering colleagues along with yourself, please include names, email addresses, and whether phone connections to the audio portion of the meeting will be shared.  There will be a limited number of lines available so attendees representing the same company are encouraged to share a connection.

    Instructions for joining the online meeting will be provided via email to confirmed attendees on Friday, March 13. The Draft 4 specification and supporting documents are available on the ENERGY STAR Web site at www.energystar.gov (Click on New Specifications in Development).  

    For those stakeholders who are unable to join the discussion, slides and meeting notes will be posted to the ENERGY STAR Web site.  

    Stakeholders with questions can contact Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at (202) 862-1266 or Andrew Fanara, EPA, at fanara.andrew@epa.gov and (206) 553-6377.

    Thanks for your continued support of ENERGY STAR!

     

    There you have it, get involved if inclined, provide feedback, comments, critique or what have you.

    Cheers – gs

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    US EPA EnergyStar for Servers Wants To Hear From YOU!

    US EPA Needs you
    US EPA EnergyStar wants to hear from you!

    Uncle Sam, that is, the US EPA EnergyStar team working on new programs wants to hear from IT data centers for feedback and comments on new EnergyStar for server draft 4 specifications. (Read here for some background).

    For those interested, here’s what’s what via a recent note I received from the EnergyStar folks:

     

    Dear Server Manufacturer or Other Industry Stakeholder,

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) welcomes your input on the attached Draft 4 ENERGY STAR® Version 1.0 Computer Server specification.  Also attached is the latest version of the Power and Performance Data Sheet, referenced in Section 3.C of the specification. 

    Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments on the Draft 4 specification and Power and Performance Data Sheet to Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at rduff@icfi.com no later than March 20, 2009.  Manufacturers who wish to submit Idle performance data for Blade Servers should use the attached data collection sheet.  Questions regarding the data analyses can be sent to Arthur Howard, ICF International, at ahoward@icfi.com.   

    Masked data sets used to derive proposed Draft 4 requirements will be available for download from the ENERGY STAR enterprise server specification development Web site at www.energystar.gov/productdevelopment (Click on New Specifications in Development) within the next several days.  

    Stakeholders with questions or concerns can also contact Andrew Fanara, EPA, at (206) 553-6377 or fanara.andrew@epa.gov.

    Andrew Fanara, U,S, EPA, at Data center Dynamics New York Event on March 4th
    Andrew Fanara, U.S .EPA, will be available to discuss the latest Draft 4 specification and other ENERGY STAR initiatives at the upcoming 7th Annual New York Datacenter Dynamics Conference and Expo on March 4, 2009 at the Hilton on Avenue of the Americas. Datacenter Dynamics would like to offer a number of complimentary tickets to data center end users and operators that are working with EPA, DOE and NYSERDA to attend this event. 

    EPA will participate in the session titled A Data Center Public Policy Discussion with DOE, EPA and NYSERDA along with:

    • Paul Scheihing, US DOE Industrial Technologies Program, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy – US DOE   
    • Sandy Hwang, LEED® AP – The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)

    More information, including the preliminary line-up of speakers for New York, can be found at: www.datacenterdynamics.com/newyork.

    The first 15 data center end users / operators that are working with the EPA, DOE, and/or NYSERDA, and are not already registered, and send their full contact details via email to chris.collins@datacenterdynamics.com will receive a complimentary ticket to attend one of these events. Note: this offer is not available to vendor/services organizations; or to sales, business development or marketing personnel.

     

    If you have an interest in servers or storage for that matter (that’s in the works as well), reach out to Andrew Fanara, Arthur Howard (AJ) and the rest of their team to learn more and give them your feedback. In my past conversations with both Andrew and AJ, they are a delight to talk with and don’t let the EPA or EnergyStar title fool you, both are technology and business minded smart and savvy folks who want to know more about your issues, concerns and how to enhance their programs.

    Click on the above links to learn more.

    There, you’ve been advised!

    Cheers – gs

    Posted on

    Server and Storage Virtualization – Life beyond Consolidation

    Storage I/O trends

    Ask someone what virtualization of IT servers or storage means and the typical response is to consolidate under-utilized physical servers or storage systems to reduce power, cooling, floor space and physical hardware costs.  However I commonly hear from IT professionals that not all of their servers or storage can be consolidated for various reasons. Some reasons why IT resources such as servers or storage cannot be consolidated include among others While consolidation is one the faces or capabilities, and certainly a common usage today, there are many other quality of service (QoS), performance, politics, financial ownership, security, software compatibility and vendor support to name a few.

    In the big picture, the percentage of all servers (or storage) that can be  consolidated ranges from as low as 15% to as high as 35%, or perhaps higher (or lower) depending on whose numbers you subscribe to. Likewise, the percentage of virtualized servers that have been virtualized for consolidation purposes is generally considered to be in the high 77-94% percent range based on different estimates.

    What this means, is that while the benefits of leveraging consolidation via server virtualization are well-known, not all servers can be consolidated for different reasons and the same holds true for storage and other IT resources. However, this does not mean that the majority of servers, storage or other IT resources cannot be virtualized to enable transparent management for maintenance, technology updates, load-balancing, supporting business continuance (BC) or disaster recovery (DR) along with other non consolidation centric functions. In other words, with consolidation, we are just seeing the tip of the virtualization iceberg (or mountain).

    There are several faces or functionality of virtualization technologies beyond consolidation including abstraction, emulation and providing transparency for enabling enhanced management and flexibility of IT resources. For example, virtual tape libraries leverage abstraction and emulation to enable new disk based technologies that combine replication, compression and de-duplication to cut  data footprint and enable BC/DR to co-exist with existing backup and data protection software, processes and procedures. Another example is using server or storage virtualization to provide an abstraction layer to support BC/DR enabling transparent movement of applications for consolidated, as well as non-consolidated servers. Technology upgrades are another time consuming and disruptive process where virtualization can be used to more seamlessly move applications and data while reducing or eliminating application downtime. In other words, the focus today is clearly on consolidation to drive up utilization and reduce costs; however there are even greater opportunities on a go forward basis for using different aspects of virtualization

    Note that this does not mean however that not all servers or storage cannot be virtualized, something that is a common misperception given the perception and industry messaging that incorrectly pigeon holes virtualization to mean consolidation, and consolidation to mean virtualization. To the contrary, the reality is that there is life beyond consolidation, there are even more scenarios and far greater market opportunity for non-consolidation virtualization deployments over time, then what has already been seen for first wave of consolidation centric virtualization scenarios.

    There is a very large market opportunity for virtualization of servers, storage and I/O networking in scenarios beyond consolidation for enabling transparent data and application movement, supporting BC/DR and other common time-consuming and disruptive IT infrastructure resource management tasks.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    Is There Still Innovation For IT and Storage?

    Storage I/O trends

    Is the IT industry and specifically, storage and networking segments currently lacking from innovation? The answer to that question exists in part due to what your definition or view of innovation is and how it is measured.

    By some definitions, innovation is defined by how many startups exists as was the case in the late 90s and early 2000s when there was a large number of startup companies involving Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NAS, SRM, CDP, Backup, Compliance and Archiving among others.

    Several bloggers have recently made posts about what is or what is not innovative as well as how previous innovate hype may have led to showing up on the not so hot or where are they now lists. Some examples can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here among others.

    3Leaf, 4blox, Astaro, Attrato, Autovirt, Axxana, Candera, Caringo, Cassatt, Cleaversafe, Code42, Continuity, Cyberark, Digitalocular, Drobo, Fisec, FusionIO, Fusionio, Greenbytes, Iosafe, Monospehere, Moonwalk, Neptuney, Netrion, Nextio, Nirvanix, Numonyx, Ocarina, Open-e, Parrascale, Piviot3, Pliant, Racemi, ScaleMP, Seanodes, Stormagic, Storwize, Tarmin, Violin, Woven, XIV and Xsigo among others constantly show up in my inbox making announcements or preparing to launch, some have been around longer than others.

    There are also several startups that are still either in stealth mode or preferring to keep a low profile for now. How does this compare to what we saw in the storage and networking industry during the late 90s and early 2000s, certainly not the same number or amount of money being spent on marketing startups, however there are still startup companies to fill the void left from M&A as well as to address new opportunities including in the converged storage, networking and server sectors as well as virtualization.

    Look, here’s my point, vendors have been innovating and even more impotently, executing and delivering on prior hype and innovation with scalable and stable solutions. What of established companies such as Amazon and their S3 cloud solution are innovative or EMC with their cloud optimized storage aka Atmos are innovative? How about Sun with their open source based solutions are those innovate for the industry or for the vendor?

    As for technologies and techniques, which are innovative or evolutionary, that depends, however some candidates include among others:

  • FLASH and RAM based SSD, both as component devices for installation into laptop, desktop and servers as well as into storage systems
  • Standalone SSD storage systems with Fibre Channel, SAS and SATA interfaces.
  • Innovations for FLASH include write performance optimization and wear leveling to boost endurance and reliability
  • Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and converged enhanced Ethernet (CEE) or Data Center Ethernet (DCE)
  • If you prefer Cisco version leveraging enhanced, premium loss-less and low latency Ethernet for converged networking.
  • PCI-SIG Single-Root (SR) and Multi-Root (MR) I/O virtualization.
  • Incremental enhancements including SAS shifting from 3GB to 6GB including switched SAS
  • 40 GbE along with 100 GbE, 8 GbE Fibre Channel along with enhanced InfiniBand and enhanced NFS V4.x
  • Cloud based servers and solutions for internal (private) and public (services) use.
  • Clustered storage and clustered file systems including object based access
  • Cross technology domain and infrastructure resource management (IRM) tools to support virtual environments

    • What’s your take, is there still innovation taking place in storage and networking, or, is it all just hype and execution delivering on prior hype?

  • What is innovation and how to measure it?
  • What is the value prop of an innovate solution that makes it a viable solution?
  • Does innovation have to be adopted to be considered innovative?
  • Who is innovating and who is executing?

    • Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

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    Time In and Around Clouds

    This past week I spent some time in, around and above the clouds literally and figutively. I was in the Netherlands the past few days doing a seminar with Brouwer Storage as well as key note presentation on Wednesday at the Dutch StorageExpo in Utrecht (a fabulous event with lots of buzz and activity, nice job Marloes!) before flying home today from my favorite airport (Amsterdam Schiphol).

    (Following photo’s were taken this past summer on an early morning flight from my phone camera)
    View of morning clouds from the air
    Getting ready to land on a morning flight going through some clouds

    Another view of morning clouds from the air just before landing
    More morning clouds

    Looking out at the wing of an Northwest Airlines Airbus A320 while in the clouds
    Low visibility as you can barely see the wingtip

    In addition to flying above the clouds over the Atlantic (not the above photos), the fall clouds at home where it was snowing when I left and then raining when I returned, with wind and clouds (some occasional sun) while in Holland, and then the industry buzz around EMC’s cloud and clustered storage solution announcement (also here and here and here and here) called Atmos (aka the solution code named hulk and maui), this week had a strong cloud theme along with a dose of policy management.

    Meeting regularly with IT professionals from organizations of all size as well as various vendors and vars around the world, is a great way to avoid having your thinking end up to much in the clouds, instead, staying rooted as to where IT issues and pain points are vs. where they are perceived to be.

    However, the long plane ride with no cell phone or email or web access also made for some great time to relax and watch the clouds go by. In a few days I?m back in the air again as next week I will be in San Francisco presenting at Storage Decisions. Next weeks topics will include a session updated with new content looking at “Clustered Storage: From SMB, to Scientific, to File Serving, to Commercial, Social Networking and Web 2.0” and grids among other topics.

    If you are in the area, stop by and say hello next Monday and Tuesday at the San Francisco Hilton.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

    Posted on

    SSD activity continues to go virtually round and round

    Storage I/O trends

    Solid State Disk (SSD) (both FLASH and RAM based) activities and discussions continue to go round and round (pun intended) with announcements (here, here, here, here, here, and here and among others) of various improvements and evolution for technologies focused from the consumer to the small office home office (SOHO) to small medium business (SMB) to enterprise with technologies from vendors including Intel, Sandisk, Seagate and many others.

    Recent innovations are looking to address write performance issues or challenges associated with FLASH based SSD, which while better than magnetic hard disk drives (HDD), are slower than their RAM based counterparts.

    Other activity includes extending the useful life or duration of how many times a FLASH based device can be rewritten or modified before problems arise or performance degrades. Yet another activity is Sandisk introducing “virtual RPM” (vRPM) metrics to provide consumers an indication of relative revolutions per minute (RPM) of a non-rotating SSD device to make comparisons to help with shopping decisions makings. Can you say SSDs going round and round and round at least in a virtual world? Now that should make for some interesting “virtual benchmarking” discussions!

    Meanwhile industry trade groups include the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) are gathering momentum to address marketing, messaging, awareness, education as well as metrics or benchmarks among things normally done around industry trade group camp fires and camp outs.

    So, as the HDDs spin, so to does the activity in and around SSD based technologies.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

    Posted on

    HP Storage Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP)

    Storage I/O trends

    HP recently announced announced their new SAN Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP) which is an appliance with software (oh, excuse me, I mean platform) for enabling various (e.g. replication, snapshots, pooling, consolidation, migration, etc) storage virtualization capabilities across different HP (e.g. MSA, EVA and in "theory" XP) or in "theory" as well, 3rd party (e.g. EMC, Dell, HDS, IBM, NetApp, Sun, etc) storage.

    Sure HP has had a similar capability via their XP series which HP OEMs from Hitachi Ltd. (who also supplies the similar/same product to HDS which HP competes with), however what?s different from the XP based solution and the SVSP is that one (SVSP) is via software running on an appliance and the other implemented via software/firmware on dedicated Hitachi based hardware (e.g. the XP). One requires an investment in the XP which for larger organizations may be practical while the other enables smaller organizations to achieve the benefits of virtualization capabilties to enable efficient IT not to mention help transition from different generations of HP MSA, EVAs to newer versions of MSAs and EVAs or even to XPs .Other benefits of solutions like the HP SVSP which also include the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC) include cross storage system, or cross storage vendor based replication, snapshots, dynamic (e.g. thin) provisioning among other capabilities for block based storage access.

    While there will be comparisons of HP SVSP to the XP, those in many ways will be apples to oranges, the more applicable apples to apples comparison would be IBM SVC to HP SVSP, or, perhaps HP SVSP to EMC Invista, Fujitsu VS900, Incipient, Falconstor or ?Datacore based solutions.

    With the HP SVSP announcement, I’m suspecting that we will see the re-emergence of the storage virtualization in-band vs. out-of-band including fast-path control-path aka split path approaches being adopted by HP with the SVSP not to mention hardware vs. software and appliance based approaches as was the case a few years ago.

    This time around as the storage virtualization discussions heat up again, we should see and hear the usual points, counter points and continued talk around consolidation and driving up utilization to save money and avoid costs. However, as part of enabling and transforming into an efficient IT organization (e.g. a ?Green and Virtual Data Center?) that embodies efficient, productivity in an economical and environmental friendly manner, virtualization discussions will also re-focus on using management transparency to enable data movement or migration for load-balancing, maintenance, upgrades and technology replacement, BC/DR and other common functions to enable more work to be done in the same or less anoint of time while supporting more data and storage processing and retention needs.

    Thus similar to servers where not all servers have been, will be or can be consolidated, however most can be virtualized for management transparency for BC/DR and migration, the same holds true for storage, that is, not all storage can be consolidated for different quality of service reasons, however, most storage can be virtualized to assist with and facilatate common management functions.

    Here are some additional resources to learn more about the many faces of Storage Virtualizaiton and related topics and trends:

    Storage Virtualization: Myths, Realities and Other Considerations
    Storage virtualization: How to deploy it
    The Semantics of Storage Virtualization
    Storage Virtualization: It’s More Common Than You Think
    Choosing a storage virtualization approach
    Switch-level storage virtualization: Special report
    Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier)
    The Green and Virtual Data Center (Auerbach)

    Cheers – gs

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

    Posted on

    DAS, SAS, FCoE, Green Efficient Storage and I/O Podcast & FAQs

    Storage I/O trends

    Here are some links to several recent podcast and FAQs pertaining to various popular technolgies and trends.

    Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) FAQs

    Direct Attached Storage for SMB and other enviromnets that do not need networked (SAN or NAS) storage.

    Green and Energy Efficient Storage as well as FCoE and related topics

    Along with several other topics found here.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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

    Posted on

    Tape Talk – Changing Role of Tape

    Storage I/O trends

    Here’s a link to a new article over at Enterprise Storage Forum titled “The Changing Role of Tape” for those of you who still use or care to admit to using magnetic tape as part of your data protection (backup, BC, DR) and data preservation (e.g. archiving and compliance) strategies.

    Disk based solutions continue to grow in adoption for data protection, however tape remains relevant taking on different roles, similar to how disk drives are taking on different roles as FLASH and RAM based SSD continue to evolve and grow in terms of customer deployment adoption. Consequently, despite the continued hype that tape is dead, the reality is that tape remains on of if not the most energy-efficient or green storage mediums of in-active, off-line data in a given footprint and cost basis.

    Tape is still being used in many environments particularly more so in larger environments with a focus shifting towards supporting ultra-dense large full backups that have been copied from disk to disk based backups as well as for archives.

    Disk based data protection particularly with virtual tape libraries (VTLs) that combine data footprint reduction techniques such as compression, de-dupe, replication and migration to tape capabilities continue to gain in popularity as a convenient way to migrate from tape based backups to disk based backup preserving investment in existing people skills, policies, rules and software.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

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