storage Archives

June 12, 2009March 7, 2022

Catch of the day or post of the day!

Ok, I know, its been a couple of weeks since my last post. Sure I have been tweeting now and then, attending several briefings with new emerging as well as existing vendors for up-coming announcements, not to mention getting some other content out from webcasts, to podcasts, or videos, interviews, articles, tips and presentations at various events, pertaining to Green IT, virtualization, cloud storage and computing, backup, data protection, performance, capacity planning among other topics.

Anyway, for now a quick post as I have many others that I have been wanting to do and will be doing soon, however wanted to get a few things out sooner vs. later, and after all, all work and no play makes for a dull day right?

Well, last week after spending a couple of days in Chicago at Storage Decisions where I presented a couple of sessions and recorded several videos, I had a chance to get out and do some fishing and catching. Fishing is always great, however catching (and release) is even more fun, especially when you can catch some, toss some, and keep some for dinner which is what occurred last week when my friend Rob and me ventured out for a couple of hours and found where the fish were (see picture) on the St. Croix river.

Catch of the Day

Rob on left (Bruins warm up jacket for Bass fishing), Greg on the right (Mustang PFD Jacket)

Catch of the day line-up
From right to left, bottle bass (caught at the dock ;) ), stripped bass, northern pike (swamp shark), more stripped bass, and another bottle bass (also caught at the dock).

Ok, nuff fish talk for now, back to work, get a few things done, and then maybe this weekend, get another blog post done, maybe some fishing, and enjoying the summer weather before heading off to Toronto on Monday for Storage Decisions on Tuesday, then a couple of webcasts and web radio events on Wednesday among other activities.

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

May 8, 2009May 24, 2020

Determining Computer or Server Energy Use

Recently I posted a response to a question over at IT Knowledge Exchange (e.g. ITKE) about how to determine power or energy use.

In a nutshell:

Depending on what you are looking for, or trying to accomplish, you may, or may not need a formula per say.

For example, if all you need to know is how many volts, amps, watts, kva, or btu’s are used by a particular computer or other IT device for that matter, first things first check the “tag” or “label” on the device as well as included documentation, or, on-line spec sheets and documentation.

There are also some measuring devices including among others Kill A Watt that you can plug a device into and see volts, amps, watts, and so forth.

Ok, that might have been the obvious and easy part, now on to the next step.

Often a name plate may give kva however not watts, or perhaps amps and volts however not kva or some other metric. This is where the various conversion formulas come into play.

For example, if you know volts and amps, you can get watts, if you know kva along with watts, amps or volts, you can derive the others, or, if you have btus, you can watts, or if you know watts you can get btus and so forth.

Btu/Hour = watts * 3.413
Watts = Btu/Hour * 0.293
Watts = Amps * Volts
Volts = Watts / Amps
Amps = Watts / Volts
VoltAmps (Va) = Volts * amps
KVA = (Volts * Amps) / 1000

Here’s a link to some additional conversions and formulas that along with many others are found in my new book “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC).

www.thegreenandvirtualdatacenter.com/greenmetrics.html

In “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC). book, there is an entire chapter on metrics, where and how to find them, formulas, conversions as well as other related items including determining energy costs, carbon footprints, cooling and more across servers, storage, networks, facilities along with associated management tools.

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

April 26, 2009January 23, 2019

U.S. EPA Energy Star for Server Update

Following up on previous blog posts, here’s the latest on the U.S. EPA Energy Star for Servers program (in italics below) that was received this week:

Dear Server Manufacturer or Other Industry Stakeholder,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) welcomes your input on the attached Final Draft 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. Please note that this is the final opportunity to comment on EPA’s proposal prior to finalization.

Interested parties are encouraged to submit comments on the Final Draft specification and Power and Performance Data Sheet to Rebecca Duff, ICF International, at rduff@icfi.com no later than May 8, 2009.

The data set used to derive newly proposed I/O Idle allowances will be available for download from the ENERGY STAR Enterprise Server specification development Web page at www.energystar.gov/NewSpecs within the next several days.

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

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

April 26, 2009January 23, 2019

U.S. EPA Looking for Industry Input on Energy Star for Storage

Following up on previous blog posts, here is some information that the U.S. EPA is looking for comments from industry on an Energy Start for enterprise storage program following on the heels of the Energy Star for Server program.

U.S. EPA Energy Star Wants and Needs You!

Here’s the message received from the EPA via their mailing list this past week (in italics below):

Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:

Please see the attached letter from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcing their intent to pursue development of an ENERGY STAR specification for Enterprise Storage equipment. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Andrew Fanara, EPA, at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano, ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.

Thank you for your support of ENERGY STAR.

Here’s the intro letter excerpted from the above email notification (in italics below):

April 23, 2009

Dear Enterprise Storage Equipment Manufacturers and Other Interested Parties:

This letter is intended to inform all stakeholders that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) intends to continue its efforts towards the development of an ENERGY STAR® specification for enterprise data storage equipment. Following is an outline of EPA’s general goals and next steps.

ENERGY STAR is a voluntary partnership between government, businesses, and purchasers designed to encourage the manufacture, purchase, and use of efficient products to help protect the environment. Products that earn the ENERGY STAR prevent greenhouse gas emissions by meeting strict energy efficiency guidelines. Manufacturers that qualify their products to meet ENERGY STAR requirements may use the label as a tool to educate their customers about the enhanced value of these products.

To date:
•More than 2,000 manufacturers are partnering with ENERGY STAR,
•More than 40,000 product models carry the ENERGY STAR label across more than 50 product categories,
•More than 70% of Americans recognize the ENERGY STAR label,
•Consumers have purchased more than 2.5 billion ENERGY STAR qualified products, and
•Americans, with the help of ENERGY STAR, saved enough energy in 2008 to avoid greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 29 million cars — while saving $19 billion on utility bills.

In the last several years, the energy saving opportunities in data centers have been well documented. However, barriers to energy efficiency still persist and need to be addressed. EPA is pursuing a dual strategy to overcome these challenges by helping purchasers more easily identify energy efficient IT equipment with the use of the ENERGY STAR designation, and by encouraging organizations to benchmark the energy performance of their data centers.

In pursuit of this strategy, EPA will introduce an ENERGY STAR Computer Server specification in the coming weeks. In addition, EPA recently conducted a scoping effort to evaluate enterprise storage products for inclusion in the ENERGY STAR program. EPA reviewed available market research and facilitated discussions with product manufacturers, industry associations, and other interested parties. EPA concluded that IT purchasers would benefit from access to standardized information about the energy performance of storage equipment made available through the ENERGY STAR program. As a result, EPA intends to begin the specification development process. Details on this process will be forthcoming in the next several weeks.

To be added to the enterprise storage e-mail distribution list, please send your full contact information to Stephen Pantano at spantano@icfi.com. To stay informed about the ENERGY STAR specification development process for computer servers and other EPA data center initiatives please visit: www.energystar.gov/datacenters.

Thank you for your continued support of ENERGY STAR and please direct additional questions to Andrew Fanara at fanara.andrew@epa.gov or Stephen Pantano of ICF International, at spantano@icfi.com.

Sincerely,

Andrew Fanara
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Climate Protection Partnerships Division ENERGY STAR Program Manager

My take on the Energy Star programs is that as long as they add value including reflecting how energy is effectively used both when IT equipment such as servers and storage are in use, as well as in energy saving or avoidance modes are reflected, they can and should be a good thing.

However industry will need to work together across different trade and focus groups as well as factor in how supporting metrics will be applicable and reflective thus accepted by IT data center environments. This means metrics and measurements for both active or working while in use energy efficiency modes such as IOPS, bandwidth, messages or transactions, files or videos per watt of energy, as well as metrics for in-active or dormant data such as capacity per watt per usable footprint. Check out Chapter 5 (Measurements and Metrics) in "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) to learn more.

Various industry trade and focus groups including Storage Performance Council (SPC), SNIA GSI, Green Grid, SPEC and others are working on various metrics and aligning themselves to work with EPA. If you are in an IT data center involved with servers or storage, consider getting involved with one or more of these groups to help influence and shape what these programs will look like or affect your organization in the future.

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

April 20, 2009March 7, 2022

IBM Out, Oracle In as Buyer of Sun

Following on the heals of IBM in talks with Sun that broke down a week or so ago, today’s news is Oracle has agreed to buy Sun extending Larry Ellison’s software empire as well as boosting his hardware empire from fast sport platforms to server, storage and other IT data center hardware.

What’s the real play and story here is certainly open to discussion and debate, is it good, is it bad, who are the winners and losers will be determined as the dust settles, not to mention as responses from across the industry, not to mention new product announcements and enhances slated by some for as early as this week. What if any role does Cisco wanting to get into servers and maybe storage play, does Oracle want to make sure they remain at the big table?

Regarding discussions of this deal, what it means, the twitter world has been abuzz already this morning, click here to see and follow some of the conversations, perspectives and insights being exchanged.

Nuf said for now, its time to get ready to head off to the airport as I’m doing several events speaking and keynote sessions this week on the right coast while the left coast is abuzz with the Sun & Oracle activity.

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

April 19, 2009March 7, 2022

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

April 4, 2009December 29, 2025

Storage Decisions Spring 2009 Sessions Update

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

March 31, 2009December 29, 2025

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 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

March 18, 2009December 29, 2025

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

March 8, 2009December 29, 2025

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

March 7, 2009January 23, 2019

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

February 21, 2009January 23, 2019

US EPA EnergyStar for Servers Wants To Hear From 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

February 4, 2009January 23, 2019

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.

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

December 23, 2008December 4, 2019

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

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