Tag: virtual

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PACE your Server Storage I/O decision making, its about application requirements

PACE your Server Storage I/O decision making, its about application requirements

PACE your Server Storage I/O decision-making, it’s about application requirements. Regardless of if you are looking for physical, software-defined virtual, cloud or container storage, block, file or object, primary, secondary or protection copies, standalone, converged, hyper-converged, cluster in a box or other forms of storage and packaging, when it comes to server storage I/O decision-making, it’s about the applications.

I often see people deciding on the best storage before the questions of requirements, needs and wants are even mentioned. Sure the technology is important, so too are the techniques and trends including using new things in new ways, as well as old things in new ways. There are lots of buzzwords on the storage scene these days. But don’t even think about buying it until you truly understand your business’ storage needs.

However when it comes down to it unless you have a unique need, most environments server, and storage I/O resources exist to protect preserve and serve applications and their information or data. Recently I did a couple of articles over at Network Computing; these are tied to server and storage I/O decision-making balancing technology buzzwords with business and application requirements.

PACE and common applications characteristics

PACE your server storage decisions

A theme I mention in the above two articles as well as elsewhere on server, storage I/O and applications is PACE. That is, application Performance Availability Capacity Economics (PACE). Different applications will have various attributes, in general, as well as how they are used. For example database transaction activity vs. reporting or analytics, logs and journals vs. redo logs, indices, tables, indices, import/export, scratch and temp space. PACE (figure 2.7) describes the applications and data characters and needs.

Server Storage I/O PACE

Common Application Pace Attributes

All applications have PACE attributes

  • Those PACE attributes vary by application and usage
  • Some applications and their data are more active vs. others
  • PACE characteristics will vary within different parts of an application

Think of an application along with associated data PACE as its personality or how it behaves, what it does, how it does it and when along with value, benefit or cost along with Quality of Service (QoS) attributes. Understanding the applications in different environments, data value and associated PACE attributes is essential for making informed server, storage I/O decisions from configuration to acquisitions or upgrades, when, where, why and how to protect, or performance optimization along with capacity planning, reporting, and troubleshooting, not to mention addressing budget concerns.

Data and Application PACE

Primary PACE attributes for active and inactive applications and data:
P – Performance and activity (how things get used)
A – Availability and durability (resiliency and protection)
C – Capacity and space (what things use or occupy)
E – Energy and Economics (people, budgets and other barriers)

Some applications need more performance (server computer, or storage and network I/O) while others need space capacity (storage, memory, network or I/O connectivity). Likewise, some applications have different availability needs (data protection, durability, security, resiliency, backup, BC, DR) that determine various tools, technologies and techniques to use. Budgets are also a concern which for some applications meaning enabling more performance per cost while others are focused on maximizing space capacity and protection level per cost. PACE attributes also define or influence policies for QoS (performance, availability, capacity), as well as thresholds, limits, quotas, retention and disposition among others.

Where to learn more

Learn more about data infrastructures and tradecraft related trends, tools, technologies and topics via the following links:

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What this all means

The best storage will be the one that meets or exceeds your application requirements instead of the solution that meets somebody else’s needs or wants. Keep in mind, PACE your Server Storage I/O decision making, it is about application requirements

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Cheers Gs

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

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

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March 31st is world backup day; when is world recovery day

March 31st is world backup day; when is world recovery day

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day?

For several years, if not decades, March 31st has been world backup day, a reminder to protect and backup your apps and data. Data protection, including backup, recovery, business continuance (BC), disaster recovery (DR), and business resilience (BR), should be a 365-day-a-year focus. If you have regular data protection, including backup, that is great; when was the last time you tested restore?

Some related content

Upcoming and past events including webinars, tips and commentary
World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery
Data Infrastructure Overview, Its What’s Inside of a Data Center
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Protection Diaries Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips

Reminder to Protect your data and apps and settings

Thus, this is also a reminder to protect your data and apps and their settings regularly. What’s even better is evolving from none once a year to more frequent data protection, including backup of your critical and noncritical apps and data. Notice I keep mentioning apps and not just the usual focus of or on data. Program apps are considered broadly data; after all, apps and your settings and metadata are just data when stored and protected.

There is also often a focus on just the data, which can lead to problems when it comes time to recover an app program, settings, or metadata. Also, a reminder that data protection, including backup, is not just for large enterprises; it applies to organizations and entities of all sizes, including small and medium businesses (SMBs), non-profits, and homes (e.g., your photos, worksheets, and other documents).

What About Recovery

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? So far, I have been talking about backup as part of data protection or ensuring your apps, data, and settings are protected; what about recovery?

Sometimes with data protection, discussions can drift into what’s more critical, backup or recovery, which is a bit like a chicken and egg situation. In other words, what’s more important, the chicken or the egg? Similar to data protection, what’s more critical, backup or recovery?

Recovery is only as good as your backup (or snapshot, point-in-time copy, checkpoint, or consistency point), and your backup or protection copy is only as good as its recoverability. Recoverability means that not only is there something to restore from a point in time (e.g., recovery point objective or RPO) in a given amount of time (recovery time objective or RTO).

Recoverability also means that you can pull the data (e.g., bits, bytes, blocks, blobs, objects, files, tables) from the protection medium, media, or service and use it. Recovery means that the data is valid and consistent, has integrity, or is otherwise not bad, missing, damaged, or corrupted (e.g., usable).

What About Recovery Day?

For several years I have mentioned and will continue to do so that if March 31st is world backup day, then April 1st should be a world recovery day. So why April 1st for world recovery day? Simple, you don’t want to look like a fool the day after world backup day if you can’t restore and use data backed up the day before.

If you are not comfortable with April 1st for world recovery day? Then make your world recovery day (or test) a day or so later. The important message is to ensure your apps, data, and settings are protected (e.g., copied, backed up, snapshot, checkpoint, etc.), trust yet verify, and test your restorations.

Why do I mentation apps, data, and settings?

The important message here is that it is good if you are already protecting your data, your spreadsheets, worksheets, databases, files, photos, and the application programs that use them. However, also ensure that you are protecting application settings, configurations, metadata, encryption keys, the backup or protection mechanisms, and their data.

For example, when I accidentally delete a data file or configuration settings, I can restore those without recovering everything. Suppose, for instance, I accidentally or intentionally uninstall an application program. In that case, I can reinstall (assuming I have a copy of the program), then restore my settings and pick up where I resumed.

Who does this apply to?

From organizations of size and type to individuals. If you have or generate or save data, if it is worth having (or you have to keep it), then it should be protected. What how often to protect data (time interval) will be based on what your recovery point objective (RPO) is. Likewise how fast you need to recover with your recovery time objective (RTO).

Remember that it is not if you will need to restore, recover, reload, refresh, or repair your apps, data, and settings instead when. It might be because of accidental or planned deletion, accident, hardware, software, cloud service situation, ransomware, or malware, among other things that can and do happen.

What to do?

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? Ensure you have regular copies of your apps, data, and configuration settings, including encryption keys. Implement a variation of the old school three two one (e.g., 3 2 1) data protection, e.g., backup scheme (e.g., three or more copies, stored on two or more devices, systems, media or mediums, and at least one of them offsite preferably offline including at cloud).

A variation of the new school 4 3 2 1 data protection scheme has:
Have four or more versions of your protected data.
Three or more copies (feel free to swap the number of copies and versions).
Stored on two or more different systems (devices, media, or locations).
At least one copy offsite (preferably with one offline), including cloud.

The big difference between the old school 3 2 1 and the new school 4 3 2 1 is the emphasis and distinction of having multiple copies and various versions (e.g., points in time). For example, storing three copies on two systems with one offsite is good unless all copies are damaged. Having different versions (e.g., point in time) and multiple copies of those versions stored in different places including at least one offline (e.g., air-gapped), is essential.

Trust yet verify, test your backups and recovery

Test to verify your data protection is working and that data (apps, data, settings) can be restored. When testing restores, be careful not to overwrite your good data and cause a disaster. Also, ensure your data is encrypted in multiple locations and layers and that you protect your encryption keys. Finally, make sure your backup, protection software, catalog, and settings are encrypted, secured, and protected.

If you have questions, not sure, learn more here in my book Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press), Data Infrastructure Management Insight and Strategies (CRC Press), as well as check out these listed below, or reach out to me or others. If you are an individual consumer and just looking to protect some photos, valuable documents, and heirlooms, get in touch with professionals who specialize in these types of things.

What do I do?

Implement 4 3 2 1 type data protection with different granularities and frequencies. For example, my data protection includes regular point-in-time copies, including backups and snapshots, checkpoints, consistency points of systems, volumes, shares, apps, files, data, and settings at different intervals. Having different types of apps and data, some of which are more static vs. others that are changing, protection is also varied to avoid treating everything the same, reduce cost, and increase coverage.

I protect my Apps, data, and settings with multiple versions and copies locally on different systems, devices, mediums, and offsite, including offline and at cloud services. So why do I store data offsite vs. having it all in the cloud? Simple, speed of recovery, and flexibility.

If it’s a few files, perhaps a few GBs of data, it is usually faster for me if I don’t have a good copy locally to get it from Microsoft Azure. Otoh, if I need to restore TBs of data (something terrible happens), then it can be faster to bring an offline, offsite copy back, correct that, then only pull the more recent data I need from the cloud.

What are some of the tools and technologies that I use?

Locally I have multiple Microsoft Windows Servers (Server 2022) with various storage (HDDs and SSDs), including removable devices. In addition to on-prem, I have data stored offsite on removable media and cloud copies. For my cloud copies, I have a mix of files and blobs stored at Microsoft Azure.

A challenge moving from AWS to Azure was Retrospect did not support objects (Azure blobs). I realized, no worries, Retrospect supports storing data on local storage (SSD or HDD) on regular filesystems as files. The solution was set up an Azure file share for Retrospect, and everything has worked fantastic.

Are there things I need and want to improve? Yes, it’s an ongoing process and journey.

What should you do next?

Make sure you have a data backup; if not, march 31st is a good reminder. Trust yet verify your backups are working and you can recover and not be an April 1st fool.

Where to learn more

Learn more about world backup day, recovery and data protection along with other related topics via the following links:

Upcoming and past events including webinars, tips and commentary
Next Generation Hybrid Data Infrastructures Are In Your Future
Cloud File Data Storage Consolidation and Economic Comparison Model
New Book Data Infrastructure Management Insight Strategies
World Backup Day Reminder Don’t Be an April Fool Test Your Data Recovery
Virtual, Cloud and IT Availability, it’s a shared responsibility
Don’t Stop Learning Expand Your Skills Experiences Everyday
Data Infrastructure Overview, Its What’s Inside of a Data Center
Application Data Value Characteristics Everything Is Not The Same
Data Protection Diaries Topics Tools Techniques Technologies Tips
Data Infrastructure Server Storage I/O related Tradecraft Overview

Additional learning experiences can be found in Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials book. Also check out Data Infrastructure Management Insight and Strategies.

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC backup restore data protection cloud storage containers data footprint reduction

What this all means

If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day? Every day should be a backup day (e.g., some protection, backup, copy, snapshot, checkpoint, consistency point). Likewise, every day should be able to be a recovery day. World backup day and recovery apply to organizations of all sizes and individuals. Remember that If March 31st is world backup day, when is world recovery day?

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, ten-time VMware vExpert. Author of Data Infrastructure Insights (CRC Press), Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC). Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier). Visit twitter @storageio as well as www.picturesoverstillwater.com to view various UAS/UAV e.g. drone based aerial content created by Greg Schulz. Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com. Any reproduction without attribution or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO. Visit our companion site https://picturesoverstillwater.com to view drone based aerial photography and video related topics. All Rights Reserved. StorageIO is a registered Trade Mark (TM) of Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC.

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Data Infrastructure server storage I/O network Recommended Reading #blogtober

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends recommended reading list

Updated 7/30/2018

The following is an evolving recommended reading list of data infrastructure topics including, server, storage I/O, networking, cloud, virtual, container, data protection and related topics that includes books, blogs, podcast’s, events and industry links among other resources.

Various Data Infrastructure including hardware, software, services related links:

Links A-E
Links F-J
Links K-O
Links P-T
Links U-Z
Other Links

In addition to my own books including Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC Press 2017), the following are Server StorageIO recommended reading list items . The recommended reading list includes various IT, Data Infrastructure and related topics.

Intel Recommended Reading List (IRRL) for developers is a good resource to check out.

Duncan Epping (@DuncanYB), Frank Denneman (@FrankDenneman) and Neils Hagoort (@NHagoort) have released their VMware vSphere 6.7 Clustering Deep Dive book available at venues including Amazon.com. This is the latest in a series of Cluster and deep dive books from Frank and Duncan which if you are involved with VMware, SDDC and related software defined data infrastructures these should be on your bookshelf.

Check out the Blogtober list of check out some of the blogs and posts occurring during October 2017 here.

Preston De Guise aka @backupbear is Author of several books has an interesting new site Foolsrushin.info that looks at topics including Ethics in IT among others. Check out his new book Data Protection: Ensuring Data Availability (CRC Press 2017) and available via Amazon.com here.

Brendan Gregg has a great site for Linux performance related topics here.

Greg Knieriemen has a must read weekly blog, post, column collection of whats going on in and around the IT and data infrastructure related industries, Check it out here.

Interested in file systems, CIFS, SMB, SAMBA and related topics then check out Chris Hertels book on implementing CIFS here at Amazon.com

For those involved with VMware, check out Frank Denneman VMware vSphere 6.5 host resource guide-book here at Amazon.com.

Docker: Up & Running: Shipping Reliable Containers in Production by Karl Matthias & Sean P. Kane via Amazon.com here.

Essential Virtual SAN (VSAN): Administrator’s Guide to VMware Virtual SAN,2nd ed. by Cormac Hogan & Duncan Epping via Amazon.com here.

Hadoop: The Definitive Guide: Storage and Analysis at Internet Scale by Tom White via Amazon.com here.

Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud by Brendan Gregg Via Amazon.com here.

Implementing Cloud Storage with OpenStack Swift by Amar Kapadia, Sreedhar Varma, & Kris Rajana Via Amazon.com here.

The Human Face of Big Data by Rick Smolan & Jennifer Erwitt Via Amazon.com here.

VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive (Vol. 1) by Duncan Epping & Frank Denneman Via Amazon.com here. Note: This is an older title, but there are still good fundamentals in it.

Linux Administration: A Beginners Guide by Wale Soyinka Via Amazon.com here.

TCP/IP Network Administration by Craig Hunt Via Amazon.com here.

Cisco IOS Cookbook: Field tested solutions to Cisco Router Problems by Kevin Dooley and Ian Brown Via Amazon.com here.

I often mention in presentations a must have for anybody involved with software defined anything, or programming for that matter which is the Niklaus Wirth classic Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs that you can get on Amazon.com here.

Seven Databases in Seven Weeks including NoSQL

Another great book to have is Seven Databases in Seven Weeks (here is a book review) which not only provides an overview of popular NoSQL databases such as Cassandra, Mongo, HBASE among others, lots of good examples and hands on guides. Get your copy here at Amazon.com.

Additional Data Infrastructure and related topic sites

In addition to those mentioned above, other sites, venues and data infrastructure related resources include:

aiim.com – Archiving and records management trade group

apache.org – Various open-source software

blog.scottlowe.org – Scott Lowe VMware Networking and topics

blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/virtual_pc_guy – Ben Armstrong Hyper-V blog

brendangregg.com – Linux performance-related topics

cablemap.info – Global network maps

CMG.org – Computer Measurement Group (CMG)

communities.vmware.com – VMware technical community and resources

comptia.org – Various IT, cloud, and data infrastructure certifications

cormachogan.com – Cormac Hogan VMware and vSAN related topics

csrc.nist.gov – U.S. government cloud specifications

dmtf.org – Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF)

ethernetalliance.org – Ethernet industry trade group

fibrechannel.org – Fibre Channel trade group

github.com – Various open-source solutions and projects

Intel Reading List – recommended reading list for developers

ieee.org – Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

ietf.org – Internet Engineering Task Force

iso.org – International Standards Organizations

it.toolbox.com – Various IT and data infrastructure topics forums

labs.vmware.com/flings – VMware Fling additional tools and software

nist.gov – National Institute of Standards and Technology

nvmexpress.org – NVM Express (NVMe) industry trade group

objectstoragecenter.com – Various object and cloud storage items

opencompute.org – Open Compute Project (OCP) servers and related topics

opendatacenteralliance.org – Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA)

openfabrics.org – Open-fabric software industry group

opennetworking.org – Open Networking Foundation (ONF)

openstack.org – OpenStack resources

pcisig.com – Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) trade group

reddit.com – Various IT, cloud, and data infrastructure topics

scsita.org – SCSI trade association (SAS and others)

SNIA.org – Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA)

Speakingintech.com – Popular industry and data infrastructure podcast

Storage Bibliography – Collection of Dr. J. Metz storage related content

technet.microsoft.com – Microsoft TechNet data infrastructure–related topics

thenvmeplace.com – various NVMe and related tools, topics and links

thevpad.com – Collection of various virtualization and related sites

thessdplace.com – various NVM, SSD, flash, 3D XPoint related topics, tools, links

tpc.org – Transaction Performance Council benchmark site

vmug.org – VMware User Groups (VMUG)

wahlnetwork.com – Chris Whal Networking and related topics

yellow-bricks.com – Duncan Epping VMware and related topics

Additional Data Infrastructure Venues

Additional useful data infrastructure related information can be found at BizTechMagazine, BrightTalk, ChannelProNetwork, ChannelproSMB, ComputerWeekly, Computerworld, CRN, CruxialCIO, Data Center Journal (DCJ), Datacenterknowledge, and DZone. Other good sourses include Edtechmagazine, Enterprise Storage Forum, EnterpriseTech, Eweek.com, FedTech, Google+, HPCwire, InfoStor, ITKE, LinkedIn, NAB, Network Computing, Networkworld, and nextplatform. Also check out Reddit, Redmond Magazine and Webinars, Spiceworks Forums, StateTech, techcrunch.com, TechPageOne, TechTarget Venues (various Search sites, e.g., SearchStorage, SearchSSD, SearchAWS, and others), theregister.co.uk, TheVarGuy, Tom’s Hardware, and zdnet.com, among many others.

Where To Learn More

Learn more about related technology, trends, tools, techniques, and tips with the following links.

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

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

The above is an evolving collection of recommended reading including what I have on my physical and virtual bookshelves, as well as list of web sites, blogs and podcasts worth listening, reading or watching. Watch for more items to be added to the book shelf soon, and if you have a suggested recommendation, add it to the comments below.

By the way, if you have not heard, its #Blogtober, check out some of the other blogs and posts occurring during October here as part of your recommended reading list.

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

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Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade?

server storage I/O data infrastructure trends

Data Storage regardless of if hardware, legacy, new, emerging, cloud service or various software defined storage (SDS) approaches are all fundamental resource components of data infrastructures along with compute server, I/O networking as well as management tools, techniques, processes and procedures.

fundamental Data Infrastructure resource components
Fundamental Data Infrastructure resources

Data infrastructures include legacy along with software defined data infrastructures (SDDI), along with software defined data centers (SDDC), cloud and other environments to support expanding workloads more efficiently as well as effectively (e.g. boosting productivity).

Data Infrastructures and workloads
Data Infrastructure and other IT Layers (stacks and altitude levels)

Various data infrastructures resource components spanning server, storage, I/O networks, tools along with hardware, software, services get defined as well as composed into solutions or services which may in turn be further aggregated into more extensive higher altitude offerings (e.g. further up the stack).

IT and Data Infrastructure Stack Layers
Various IT and Data Infrastructure Stack Layers (Altitude Levels)

Focus on Data Storage Present and Future Predictions

Drew Robb (@Robbdrew) has a good piece over at Enterprise Storage Forum looking at the past, present and future of who will rule the data storage world that includes several perspective predictions comments from myself as well as others. Some of the perspectives and predictions by others are more generic and technology trend and buzzword bingo focus which should not be a surprise. For example including the usual performance, Cloud and Object Storage, DPDK, RDMA/RoCE, Software-Defined, NVM/Flash/SSD, CI/HCI, NVMe among others.

Here are some excerpts from Drews piece along with my perspective and prediction comments of who may rule the data storage roost in a decade:

Amazon Web Services (AWS) – AWS includes cloud and object storage in the form of S3. However, there is more to storage than object and S3 with AWS also having Elastic File Services (EFS), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), database, message queue and on-instance storage, among others. for traditional, emerging and storage for the Internet of Things (IoT).

It is difficult to think of AWS not being a major player in a decade unless they totally screw up their execution in the future. Granted, some of their competitors might be working overtime putting pins and needles into Voodoo Dolls (perhaps bought via Amazon.com) while wishing for the demise of Amazon Web Services, just saying.

Voodoo Dolls via Amazon.com
Voodoo Dolls and image via Amazon.com

Of course, Amazon and AWS could follow the likes of Sears (e.g. some may remember their catalog) and ignore the future ending up on the where are they now list. While talking about Amazon and AWS, one will have to wonder where Wall Mart will end up in a decade with or without a cloud of their own?

Microsoft – With Windows, Hyper-V and Azure (including Azure Stack), if there is any company in the industry outside of AWS or VMware that has quietly expanded its reach and positioning into storage, it is Microsoft, said Schulz.

Microsoft IMHO has many offerings and capabilities across different dimensions as well as playing fields. There is the installed base of Windows Servers (and desktops) that have the ability to leverage Software Defined Storage including Storage Spaces Direct (S2D), ReFS, cache and tiering among other features. In some ways I’m surprised by the number of people in the industry who are not aware of Microsoft’s capabilities from S2D and the ability to configure CI as well as HCI (Hyper Converged Infrastructure) deployments, or of Hyper-V abilities, Azure Stack to Azure among others. On the other hand, I run into Microsoft people who are not aware of the full portfolio offerings or are just focused on Azure. Needless to say, there is a lot in the Microsoft storage related portfolio as well as bigger broader data infrastructure offerings.

NetApp – Schulz thinks NetApp has the staying power to stay among the leading lights of data storage. Assuming it remains as a freestanding company and does not get acquired, he said, NetApp has the potential of expanding its portfolio with some new acquisitions. “NetApp can continue their transformation from a company with a strong focus on selling one or two products to learning how to sell the complete portfolio with diversity,” said Schulz.

NetApp has been around and survived up to now including via various acquisitions, some of which have had mixed results vs. others. However assuming NetApp can continue to reinvent themselves, focusing on selling the entire solution portfolio vs. focus on specific products, along with good execution and some more acquisitions, they have the potential for being a top player through the next decade.

Dell EMC – Dell EMC is another stalwart Schulz thinks will manage to stay on top. “Given their size and focus, Dell EMC should continue to grow, assuming execution goes well,” he said.

There are some who I hear are or have predicted the demise of Dell EMC, granted some of those predicted the demise of Dell and or EMC years ago as well. Top companies can and have faded away over time, and while it is possible Dell EMC could be added to the where are they now list in the future, my bet is that at least while Michael Dell is still involved, they will be a top player through the next decade, unless they mess up on execution.

Cloud and software defined storage data infrastructure
Various Data Infrastructures and Resources involving Data Storage

Huawei – Huawei is one of the emerging giants from China that are steadily gobbling up market share. It is now a top provider in many categories of storage, and its rapid ascendancy is unlikely to stop anytime soon. “Keep an eye on Huawei, particularly outside of the U.S. where they are starting to hit their stride,” said Schulz.

In the US, you have to look or pay attention to see or hear what Huawei is doing involving data storage, however that is different in other parts of the world. For example, I see and hear more about them in Europe than in the US. Will Huawei do more in the US in the future? Good question, keep an eye on them.

VMware – A decade ago, Storage Networking World (SNW) was by far the biggest event in data storage. Everyone who was anyone attended this twice yearly event. And then suddenly, it lost its luster. A new forum known as VMworld had emerged and took precedence. That was just one of the indicators of the disruption caused by VMware. And Schulz expects the company to continue to be a major force in storage. “VMware will remain a dominant player, expanding its role with software-defined storage,” said Schulz.

VMware has a dominant role in data storage not just because of the relationship with Dell EMC, or because of VSAN which continues to gain in popularity, or the soon to be released VMware on AWS solution options among others. Sure all of those matters, however, keep in mind that VMware solutions also tie into and work with other legacies as well as software-defined storage solution, services as well as tools spanning block, file, object for virtual machines as well as containers.

"Someday soon, people are going to wake up like they did with VMware and AWS," said Schulz. "That’s when they will be asking ‘When did Microsoft get into storage like this in such a big way.’"

What the above means is that some environments may not be paying attention to what AWS, Microsoft, VMware among others are doing, perhaps discounting them as the old or existing while focusing on new, emerging what ever is trendy in the news this week. On the other hand, some environments may see the solution offerings from those mentioned as not relevant to their specific needs, or capable of scaling to their requirements.

Keep in mind that it was not that long ago, just a few years that VMware entered the market with what by today’s standard (e.g. VSAN and others) was a relatively small virtual storage appliance offering, not to mention many people discounted and ignored VMware as a practical storage solution provider. Things and technology change, not to mention there are different needs and solution requirements for various environments. While a solution may not be applicable today, give it some time, keep an eye on them to avoid being surprised asking the question, how and when did a particular vendor get into storage in such a big way.

Is Future Data Storage World All Cloud?

Perhaps someday everything involving data storage will be in or part of the cloud.

Does this mean everything is going to the cloud, or at least in the next ten years? IMHO the simple answer is no, even though I see more workloads, applications, and data residing in the cloud, there will also be an increase in hybrid deployments.

Note that those hybrids will span local and on-premises or on-site if you prefer, as well as across different clouds or service providers. Granted some environments are or will become all in on clouds, while others are or will become a hybrid or some variation. Also when it comes to clouds, do not be scared, be prepared. Also keep an eye on what is going on with containers, orchestration, management among other related areas involving persistent storage, a good example is Dell EMCcode RexRay among others.

Server Storage I/O resources
Various data storage focus areas along with data infrastructures.

What About Other Vendors, Solutions or Services?

In addition to those mentioned above, there are plenty of other existing, new and emerging vendors, solutions, and services to keep an eye on, look into, test and conduct a proof of concept (PoC) trial as part of being an informed data infrastructure and data storage shopper (or seller).

Keep in mind that component suppliers some of whom like Cisco also provides turnkey solutions that are also part of other vendors offerings (e.g. Dell EMC VxBlock, NetApp FlexPod among others), Broadcom (which includes Avago/LSI, Brocade Fibre Channel, among others), Intel (servers, I/O adapters, memory and SSDs), Mellanox, Micron, Samsung, Seagate and many others.

E8, Excelero, Elastifile (software defined storage), Enmotus (micro-tiering, read Server StorageIOlab report here), Everspin (persistent and storage class memories including NVDIMM), Hedvig (software defined storage), NooBaa, Nutanix, Pivot3, Rozo (software defined storage), WekaIO (scale out elastic software defined storage, read Server StorageIO report here).

Some other software defined management tools, services, solutions and components I’m keeping an eye on, exploring, digging deeper into (or plan to) include Blue Medora, Datadog, Dell EMCcode and RexRay docker container storage volume management, Google, HPE, IBM Bluemix Cloud aka IBM Softlayer, Kubernetes, Mangstor, OpenStack, Oracle, Retrospect, Rubrix, Quest, Starwind, Solarwinds, Storpool, Turbonomic, Virtuozzo (software defined storage) among many others

What about those not mentioned? Good question, some of those I have mentioned in earlier Server StorageIO Update newsletters, as well as many others mentioned in my new book "Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials" (CRC Press). Then there are those that once I hear something interesting from on a regular basis will get more frequent mentions as well. Of course, there is also a list to be done someday that is basically where are they now, e.g. those that have disappeared, or never lived up to their full hype and marketing (or technology) promises, let’s leave that for another day.

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

Where To Learn More

Learn more about related technology, trends, tools, techniques, and tips with the following links.

Data Infrastructures and workloads
Data Infrastructures Resources (Servers, Storage, I/O Networks) enabling various services

Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

What This All Means

It is safe to say that each new year will bring new trends, techniques, technologies, tools, features, functionality as well as solutions involving data storage as well as data infrastructures. This means a usual safe bet is to say that the current year is the most exciting and has the most new things than in the past when it comes to data infrastructures along with resources such as data storage. Keep in mind that there are many aspects to data infrastructures as well as storage all of which are evolving. Who Will Be At Top Of Storage World Next Decade? What say you?

Ok, nuff said (for now…).

Cheers
Gs

Greg Schulz – Multi-year Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, VMware vExpert (and vSAN). Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press), Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio. Watch for the spring 2017 release of his new book "Software-Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials" (CRC Press).

Courteous comments are welcome for consideration. First published on https://storageioblog.com any reproduction in whole, in part, with changes to content, without source attribution under title or without permission is forbidden.

All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO. All Rights Reserved.

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Six plus data center software defined management dashboards tools

Software defined data infrastructure management insight tools

server storage I/O trends

Updated 1/17/2018

Managing data infrastructures involves using software defined management dashboards tools. Recently I found in my inbox a link to a piece 6 Dashboards for Managing Every Modern Data Center that caught my attention. I was hoping to see who the six different datacenter technologies, dashboard solutions tools were instead of finding list of dashboard considerations for modern data centers and data infrastructures.

Turns out the piece was nothing more than a list of six items featured as part of the vendors (Sunbird) piece about what to look for in a dashboard (e.g. their product). Sure there were some of the usual key performance indicator (KPI) associated with or related to IT Service Management (ITSM), Data Center Infrastructure (Insight/Information) Management (DCIM), Configuration and Change management databases (CMDB), availability, capacity and Performance Management Databases (PMDB) among others.

  • Space
  • Inventory
  • Connectivity
  • Change
  • Environment
  • Power

Dashboard Discussions

Keep in mind however that there are many different types of dashboards (and consoles), some are active along with analytics including correlation, others are passive simply displaying. The focus area also various from physical data center facilities, to applications, to data infrastructures or components such as servers, storage, I/O networks, clouds, virtual, containers among others modern data centers.

Data Infrastructures and SDDI, SDDC, SDI
Data Infrastructures (hardware, software, services, servers, storage, I/O and networks)

This is where some context comes into play as there are different types of dashboards for various audience, technology and focus areas (e.g. domains) across data infrastructure (and other entities). For example do a google search of “dashboard” and see what appears, or “IT dashboard”, “data center dashboard” vs. “datacenter dashboard” among others.

Additional KPIs include:

  • Performance, availability, Capacity and Economic (PACE) attributes
  • Service Level Objectives (SLO), Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
  • Recovery Time Objectives (RTO), Recovery Point Objectives (SLO)
  • IT Service Management (ITSM) and Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)
  • Configuration and Change Management (e.g. things part of CMDB)
  • Performance, availability and capacity (e.g. things part of PMDB)
  • Various focus and layers, cross domain functionality views
  • Costs management including subscriptions, licenses and others

IT Data Center and Data Infrastructure Dashboard Options

For those of you who have made it this far, while not a comprehensive list, the following are some examples of vendors, services or solutions that either are, or have an association with data center, as well as data infrastructure management. Some dashboards or tools are homogenous in that they only work within a given area of focus such as particular cloud, service provider, vendor or solution set. Others are heterogeneous or federated working across different services, solutions, vendors and domain focus areas. Think of these as software defined management (SDM), or, software defined data infrastructure (SDDI) management, software defined data center (SDDC) management among other variations for the modern information factory.

There is a mix of tools that run on site (e.g. on premise) or via cloud services (e.g. manager your on site from the cloud). Likewise, some are for fee, others subscription and some are open source. In addition some of the tools are turnkey while others are do it yourself (DiY) or allow you to customize. Also keep in mind that depending on what your tradecraft (skills, experience, expertise) interest area is, these may or may not be applicable to you, while relevant to others. For example some such as Spiceworks tend to be more helpdesk focused while others on other data center or data infrastructure areas.

There are dashboards for or from AWS, Canonical (Ubuntu), Dell including EMC, Google, HPE, IBM, Microsoft System Center and Azure, NetApp, OpenStack, Oracle, Rackspace, Redhat, Rightscale, Servicenow, Softlayer, Suse and VMware among others.

Blue Medora (various data infrastructure monitoring)
Cloudkitty (open source cloud rating and chargeback)
Collectd (data infrastructure collection and monitoring)
cPanel and whm (web and hosting dashboards)
data infrastructure sddi cpanel

Dashbuilder (customize your dashboard)
Datadog (super easy to get access, download, install, configure and use)
Domo (various data infrastructure monitoring tools)
Extrahop (still waiting to be able to download and try their bits vs. watching a demo)
Firescope (data infrastructure insight and awareness)
Freezer (open source dashboard tools)
Komprise (interesting solution, would like try, however lots of gated material)
Nagios (data infrastructure monitoring)
Openit (data infrastructure tracking, report, monitoring)
Opvizor (data infrastructure monitoring and reporting)

storageio datadog dashboard

Panorama9 (various data infrastructure monitoring and reporting)
Quest (various tools)
Redhat Cloudforms (openstack and cloud management)
Rrdtools (data collection, logging and display)
Sisense (insight and awareness tools)
Solarwinds Server Application Monitor (SAM) among other tools
Teamquest (various monitoring, management, capacity planning tools)
Turbomomic (software defined data infrastructure insight tools)
Virtual Instruments (various monitoring and insight awareness along with analytics)

In addition to the above, there are tools such as Splunk among others that also provide insight and awareness to help avoid flying blind while managing your data center or data infrastructure.

Where to learn more

Learn more via the following links.

  • Data Infrastructure Primer and Overview (Its Whats Inside The Data Center)
  • E2E Awareness and insight for IT environments
  • Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking and Performance Resources
  • Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) and IRM
  • The Value of Infrastructure Insight – Enabling Informed Decision Making
  • More storage and IO metrics that matter
  • Whats a data infrastructure?

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What this all means

    Without insight and awareness you are flying blind, how can you make informed decisions about your information factory, data infrastructures, data center along with applications. There are different focus areas for various audiences up and down the stack layers in data infrastructures and data centers. Key is having insight and awareness including knowing what are some different tool options.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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

    Posted on

    Updated Software Defined Data Infrastructure Webinars and Fall 2016 events

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Webinars and Fall 2016 events

    server storage I/O trends

    Here is the updated Server StorageIO fall 2016 webinar and event activities covering software defined data center, data infrastructure, virtual, cloud, containers, converged, hyper-converged server, storage, I/O network, performance and data protection among other topics.

    December 7, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – BrightTalk
    Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Decision Making

    Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, HCI and CI Decision Making

    Are Converged Infrastructures (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructures (HCI), Cluster in Box or Cloud in Box (CiB) solutions for you? The answer is it depends on what your needs, requirements, application among other criteria are. In addition are you focused on a particular technology solution or architecture approach, or, looking for something that adapts to your needs? Join us in this discussion exploring your options for different scenarios as we look beyond they hype including to next wave of hyper-scale converged along with applicable decision-making criteria. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – What are your application and environment needs along with other objectives
    – Explore various approaches for hyper-small and hyper-large environments
    – What are you converging, hardware, hypervisors, management or something else?
    – Does HCI mean hyper-vendor-lock-in, if so, is that a bad thing?
    – When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

    November 29-30, 2016 (New) – Converged & Hyper-Converged Decision Making
    Is Converged Infrastructure Right For You?
    Workshop Seminar – Nijkerk The Netherlands

    Converged and server storage I/O data infrastructure trends
    Agenda and topics to be covered include:

    • When should decide to evaluate CI/HCI vs. traditional approach
    • What are decision and evaluation criteria for apples to apples vs. Apples to pears
    • What are the costs, benefits, and caveats of the different approaches
    • How different applications such as VDI or VSI or database have different needs
    • What are the network, storage, software license and training cost implications
    • Different comparison criteria for smaller environments remote office vs. Larger enterprise
    • How will you protect and secure a CI, HCI environment (HA, BC, BR, DR, Backup)
    • What is the risk and benefit of startups, companies with limited portfolios vs. Big vendors
    • Do it yourself (DiY) vs. Turnkey software vs. Bundled tin wrapped software solution
    • We will also look at associated trends including software-defined, NVM/SSD, NVMe, VMware, Microsoft, KVM, Citrix/Xen, Docker, OpenStack among others.

    Organized by:
    Brouwer Storage Consultancy

    November 28, 2016 (New) – Server Storage I/O Fundamental Trends V2.1116
    Whats New, Whats the buzz, what you need to know about and whos doing what
    Workshop Seminar – Nijkerk The Netherlands

    Converged and server storage I/O data infrastructure trends
    Agenda and topics that will be covered include:

    • Who’s doing what, who are the new emerging vendors, solutions and technologies to watch
    • Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), flash solid state device (SSD), Storage Class Memory (SCM)
    • Networking with your servers and storage including NVMe, NVMeoF and RoCE
    • Cloud, Object and Bulk storage for data protection, archiving, near-line, scale-out
    • Data protection and software defined storage management (backup, BC, BR, DR, archive)
    • Microsoft Windows Server 2016, Nano, S2D and Hyper-V
    • VMware, OpenStack, Ceph, Docker and Containers, CI and HCI
    • EMC is gone, now there is Dell EMC and what that means
    • Various vendors and solutions from legacy to new and emerging
    • Recommendations, usage or deployment scenarios and tips
    • Some examples of who’s doing what includes AWS, Brocade, Cisco, Dell EMC, Enmotus, Futjistu, Google, HDS, HP and Huawei, IBM, Intel, Lenovo, Mellanox, Micron, Microsoft, NetApp, Nutanix, Oracle, Pure, Quantum, Qumulo, Reduxio, Rubrik, Samsung, SANdisk, Seagate, Simplivity and Tintri, Veeam, Veritas, VMware and WD among others.

    Organized by:
    Brouwer Storage Consultancy

    November 23, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT BrightTalk
    BCDR and Cloud Backup Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Data Protection

    BC DR Cloud Backup and Data Protection

    The answer is BCDR and Cloud Backup, however what was the question? Besides how to protect preserve and secure your data, applications along with data Infrastructures against various threat risk issues, what are some other common questions? For example how to modernize, rethink, re-architect, use new and old things in new ways, these and other topics, techniques, trends, tools have a common theme of BCDR and Cloud Backup. Join us in this discussion exploring your options for protecting data, applications and your data Infrastructures spanning legacy, software-defined virtual and cloud environments. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
    – Do clouds need to be backed-up or protected?
    – How to leverage clouds for various data protection objectives
    – When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

    November 23, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
    Cloud Storage – Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

    Cloud Storage Decision Making

    You have been told, or determined that you need (or want) to use cloud storage, ok, now what? What type of cloud storage do you need or want, or do you simply want cloud storage? However, what are your options as well as application requirements including Performance, Availability, Capacity and Economics (PACE) along with access or interfaces? Where are your applications and where will they be located? What are your objectives for using cloud storage or is it simply you have heard or told its cheaper. Join us in this discussion exploring your options, considerations for cloud storage decision-making. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
    – Storage for primary, secondary, performance, availability, capacity, backup, archiving
    – Public, private and hybrid cloud storage options from block, file, object to application service
    – When, where, why and how to use cloud storage for different scenarios

    November 22, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT – BrightTalk
    Cloud Infrastructure Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

    Cloud Infrastructure and Hybrid Software Defined

    At the core of cloud (public, private, hybrid) next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that exist to protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for cloud services (and underlying data infrastructures). Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services options for cloud infrastructures. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers and clouds
    – Various types of clouds along with cloud services that determine how resources get defined
    – When, where, why and how to use cloud Infrastructures along with associated resources

    November 15, 2016 (New) – 11AM PT Webinar – Redmond Magazine and Solarwinds
    The O.A.R. of Virtualization Scaling
    A journey of optimization, automation, and reporting

    Your journey to a flexible, scalable and secure IT universe begins now. Join Microsoft MVP and VMware vSAN and vExpert Greg Schulz of Server StorageIO along with VMware vExpert, Cisco Champion and Head Geek of Virtualization and Cloud Practice Kong Yang of SolarWinds for an interactive discussion empowering you to become the master of your software defined and virtual data center. Topics will include:

    • Trust your instruments and automation, however, verify they are working properl
    • Insight into how your environment, as well as automation tools, are working
    • Leverage automation to handle recurring tasks so you can focus on more productive activities
    • Capture, retain and transfer knowledge and tradecraft experiences into automation policies
    • Automated system management is only as good as the policies and data they rely upon
    • Optimize via automation that relies on reporting for insight, awareness and analytics 

    November 3, 2016 (New) – Webinar 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and
    Dell Software
    Tailor Your Backup Data Repositories to
    Fit Your Security and Management Needs

    Does data protection storage have you working overtime to take care of it? Do you have the flexibility to protect, preserve, secure and serve different workgroups or customers in a shared environment? Is your environment looking to expand with new applications and remote offices, yet your data protection is slowing you down? 

    In this webinar we will look at current and emerging trends along with issues including how different threat risk challenges impact your evolving environment, as well as opportunities to address them. It’s time to deploy technology that works for you and your environment instead of you working for the solution. 

    Attend and learn about:

    • Data protection trends, issues, regulatory compliance, challenges and opportunities
    • How to utilize purpose built appliances to protect and defend your systems, applications and data from various threat risks
    • Importance of timely insight and situational awareness into your data protection infrastructure
    • Protecting centralized and distributed remote office branch offices (ROBO) workgroups
    • What you can do today to optimize your environment

    October 27, 2016 (New) – Webinar 10AM PT – Virtual Instruments
    The Value of Infrastructure Insight

    This webinar looks at the value of data center infrastructure insight both as a technology as well as a business productivity enabler. Besides productivity, having insight into how data infrastructure resources (servers, storage, networks, system software) are used, enables informed analysis, troubleshooting, planning, forecasting as well as cost-effective decision-making. In other words, data center infrastructure insight, based on infrastructure performance analytics, enables you to avoid flying blind, having situational awareness for proactive Information Technology (IT) management. Your return on innovation is increased, and leveraging insight awareness along with metrics that matter drives return on investment (ROI) along with enhanced service delivery.

    October 20, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
    Next-Gen Data Centers Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) including Servers, Storage and Virtualization

    Cloud Storage Decision Making

    At the core of next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that enable, protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for virtual servers and storage. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around storage and virtualization for today, tomorrow, and in the years to come. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers
    – Server and Storage Virtualization better together, with and without CI/HCI
    – Many different facets (types) of Server virtualization and virtual storage
    – When, where, why and how to use storage virtualization and virtual storage

    September 20, 2016 – Webinar 8AM PT – BrightTalk
    Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) Enabling Software Defined Data Centers – Part of Software-Defined Storage summit

    Cloud Storage Decision Making

    Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs. Software-Defined Infrastructures (SDI) are what enable Software-Defined Data Centers, and at the heart of a SDI is storage that is software-defined. This spans cloud, virtual and physical storage and is at the focal point of today. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around SDI and SDDC- today, tomorrow, and in the years to come.

    September 13, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and
    Dell Software
    Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory
    Whats New and How to Plan for Migration

    Windows Server 2016 is expected to GA this fall and is a modernized version of the Microsoft operating system that includes new capabilities such as Active Directory (AD) enhancements. AD is critical to organizational operations providing control and secure access to data, networks, servers, storage and more from physical, virtual and cloud (public and hybrid). But over time, organizations along with their associated IT infrastructures have evolved due to mergers, acquisitions, restructuring and general growth. As a result, yesterday’s AD deployments may look like they did in the past while using new technology (e.g. in old ways). Now is the time to start planning for how you will optimize your AD environment using new tools and technologies such as those in Windows Server 2016 and AD in new ways. Optimizing AD means having a new design, performing cleanup and restructuring prior to migration vs. simply moving what you have. Join us for this interactive webinar to begin planning your journey to Windows Server 2016 and a new optimized AD deployment that is flexible, scalable and elastic, and enables resilient infrastructures. You will learn:

    • What’s new in Windows Server 2016 and how it impacts your AD
    • Why an optimized AD is critical for IT environments moving forward
    • How to gain insight into your current AD environment
    • AD restructuring planning considerations

    September 8, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT (Watch on Demand) – Redmond Magazine, Acronis and Unitrends
    Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments

    Your organization’s business depends on modern Microsoft® environments — Microsoft Azure and new versions of Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Hyper-V with RCT, and business applications — and you need a data protection solution that keeps pace with Microsoft technologies. If you lose mission-critical data, it can cost you $100,000 or more for a single hour of downtime. Join our webinar and learn how different data protection solutions can protect your Microsoft environment, whether you store data on company premises, at remote locations, in private and public clouds, and on mobile devices.

    Where To Learn More

    What This All Means

    Its fall back to school and learning time, join me on these and other upcoming event activities.

    Ok, nuff said, for now…

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP Cloud and Data Center Management, vSAN and VMware vExpert. Author Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC Press), The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC Press) and Resilient Storage Networks (Elsevier) and twitter @storageio

    All Comments, (C) and (TM) belong to their owners/posters, Other content (C) Copyright 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    EMC is now Dell EMC, part of Dell Technologies and other server storage Updates

    EMC is now Dell EMC and other server storage Updates

    server storage I/O trends

    In case you missed it or did not hear, EMC is now Dell EMC and is future ready (one of their new tag lines).

    What this means is that EMC is no longer a publicly traded company instead now being privately held under the Dell Technologies umbrella. In case you did not know or had forgotten, one of the principal owners of Dell Technologies is Michael Dell aka the founder of Dell Computers which itself went private a few years ago. The Dell Server division which sells direct as well as via channels and OEMs is now part of the Dell EMC division (e.g. they sell Servers, Storage, I/O and Networking hardware, software and services).

    Dell EMC Storage Portfolio
    Dell EMC Storage Portfolio – Via emc.com

    Other related news and activities include:

    • Dell EMC sells Content Division (e.g. Documentum (bought in 2003), InfoArchive and LEAP) to OpenText for $1.62B USD
    • Dell is selling its Sonicwall and software division (e.g. what was a mix of Quest and other non-EMC related software) to a Private Equity group. The new company to be called Quest has ironically as one of its investors, activist PE firm Elliott Management. You might recall Elliott Management was the activist investor pushing for more value out of EMC for shareholders.
    • Expands Data Protection Portfolio For VMware Environments
    • Hybrid Cloud Platform Enhancements
    • XtremIO New Features and Management for Virtualized Environments
    • Combines DSSD and PowerEdge Servers for SAS (Software) Analytics
    • ScaleIO Ready Node Offers All-Flash Software-Defined
    • Expands Microsoft Support across Cloud and Converged Infrastructure
    • With approximately 140,000 employees worldwide post merger Dell EMC has announce some expected layoffs.

    Dell EMC Enahncements made today

    • Announced a new entry-level VMAX (200F) with very small physical footprint, affordable starter system price and flexibility to scale as you need to grow. Also announced were SRDF third site enhancements as well as VPLEX updates.
    • Data Domain enhancements including OS 6.0, flash and tiering across private, public and hybrid cloud
    • Unity mid-range storage (e.g. the successor to VNX) enhanced with all-flash and UnityOE software updates that include in-line compression along with cloud tiering. All-flash Unity models using 15.36TB SAS Flash SSD drives (3D NAND) can support up to 384TB in a 2U rack. Cloud tiering includes support for Virtustream, AWS and Microsoft Azure.

    Dell EMC VMAX storage family
    Dell EMC VMAX family and new 200F – Via emc.com

    Note that in-line compression on Unity and VMAX systems is available on all-flash based systems, while tiering is available on both all-flash as well as hybrid systems.

    Where To Learn More

    Dell Updates Storage Center Operating System 7 (SCOS 7)
    EMC DSSD D5 Rack Scale Direct Attached Shared SSD All Flash Array Part I
    Part II – EMC DSSD D5 Direct Attached Shared AFA
    EMCworld 2016 Getting Started on Dell EMC announcements
    EMCworld 2016 EMC Hybrid and Converged Clouds Your Way
    Dell-EMC: The Storage Ramifications
    VMware Targets Synergies in Dell-EMC Deal 
    Dell to Buy EMC for $67B; Sharpen Focus on Large Enterprises and High-End Computing
    Dell SAN strategy examined after move to go private
    EMC VxRack Neutrino Nodes launched for OpenStack cloud storage
    EMC Under Pressure To Spin Off VMware
    EMC Bridges Cloud, On-Premise Storage With TwinStrata Buy
    Top Ten Takeaways from EMC World
    When to implement ultra-dense server storage
    EMCworld 2015 How Do You Want Your Storage Wrapped?
    EMCworld 2015 How Do You Want Your Storage Wrapped?

    What This All Means

    For those that think (or wish) that now that EMC has gone private (e.g. granted under Dell ownership) that they have gone away and no longer relevant, time will tell what happens long term. However while they (EMC, now Dell EMC) are no longer a publicly held company, they are still very much in the public spotlight addressing legacy, current as well as emerging IT data infrastructure and software-defined data center, software defined storage and related topics spanning cloud, virtual, container among others.

    What this all means is that Dell EMC is following through with providing different types of data infrastructure along with associated server, storage and I/O solutions as well as associated software defined storage management and data protection tools to meet various needs. How do you want your storage wrapped? Do you want it software defined such as a ScaleIO, ECS (object), DataDomain (data protection), VIPR, or Unity among other virtual storage appliances (VSAs), or tin-wrapped as a physical storage system or appliance?

    With the VMAX 200F, Dell EMC is showing that they can scale-down the VMAX. Dell EMC is also showing they can scale VMAX up and out while making it affordable and physically practical for smaller environments who want, need or are required to have traditional enterprise class storage in a small footprint (price, physical space) with enterprise resiliency.

    Dell EMC Storage Portfolio
    Dell EMC Storage Portfolio – Via emc.com

    A question that comes up is what happens with the various competing Dell and EMC (pre-merger) storage product lines. If you look closely at the storage line up photo above, you will notice the Dell SC (e.g. Compellent) is shown along with all of the EMC solutions. This should or could prompt the question of what about the PS series (e.g. EqualLogic) or some MD. So far the answer I have received is that they remain available for sale which you can confirm via the Dell website. However, what will the future bring to those or others is still TBD.

    Needless to say there is more to see and hear coming out of Dell EMC in the weeks and months ahead, that is unless as some predict (or wishful thinking) they go away which I don’t see happening anytime soon. Oh, FWIW, Dell and EMC have been Server StorageIO clients direct and indirect via 3rd parties in the past (that’s a disclosure btw).

    Ok, nuff said, for now…

    Cheers
    Gs

    Greg Schulz – Microsoft MVP and VMware vSAN vExpert, 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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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    Back To Software Defined Data Infrastructure School, Webinar and Fall 2016 events

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Webinars and Fall 2016 events

    server storage I/O trends

    Its September and that means back to school time, and not just for the kids. Here is the preliminary Server StorageIO fall 2016 back to school, webinar and event activities covering software defined data center, data infrastructure, virtual, cloud, containers, converged, hyper-converged server, storage, I/O network, performance and data protection among other topics.

    December 7, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – BrightTalk
    Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Decision Making

    Are Converged Infrastructures (CI), Hyper-Converged Infrastructures (HCI), Cluster in Box or Cloud in Box (CiB) solutions for you? The answer is it depends on what your needs, requirements, application among other criteria are. In addition are you focused on a particular technology solution or architecture approach, or, looking for something that adapts to your needs? Join us in this discussion exploring your options for different scenarios as we look beyond they hype including to next wave of hyper-scale converged along with applicable decision-making criteria. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – What are your application and environment needs along with other objectives
    – Explore various approaches for hyper-small and hyper-large environments
    – What are you converging, hardware, hypervisors, management or something else?
    – Does HCI mean hyper-vendor-lock-in, if so, is that a bad thing?
    – When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

    November 23, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT BrightTalk
    BCDR and Cloud Backup Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) and Data Protection

    The answer is BCDR and Cloud Backup, however what was the question? Besides how to protect preserve and secure your data, applications along with data Infrastructures against various threat risk issues, what are some other common questions? For example how to modernize, rethink, re-architect, use new and old things in new ways, these and other topics, techniques, trends, tools have a common theme of BCDR and Cloud Backup. Join us in this discussion exploring your options for protecting data, applications and your data Infrastructures spanning legacy, software-defined virtual and cloud environments. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
    – Do clouds need to be backed-up or protected?
    – How to leverage clouds for various data protection objectives
    – When, where, why and how to use different scenarios

    November 23, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
    Cloud Storage – Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

    You have been told, or determined that you need (or want) to use cloud storage, ok, now what? What type of cloud storage do you need or want, or do you simply want cloud storage? However, what are your options as well as application requirements including Performance, Availability, Capacity and Economics (PACE) along with access or interfaces? Where are your applications and where will they be located? What are your objectives for using cloud storage or is it simply you have heard or told its cheaper. Join us in this discussion exploring your options, considerations for cloud storage decision-making. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Various cloud storage options to meet different application PACE needs
    – Storage for primary, secondary, performance, availability, capacity, backup, archiving
    – Public, private and hybrid cloud storage options from block, file, object to application service
    – When, where, why and how to use cloud storage for different scenarios

    November 22, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT – BrightTalk
    Cloud Infrastructure Hybrid and Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI)

    At the core of cloud (public, private, hybrid) next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that exist to protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for cloud services (and underlying data infrastructures). Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services options for cloud infrastructures. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers and clouds
    – Various types of clouds along with cloud services that determine how resources get defined
    – When, where, why and how to use cloud Infrastructures along with associated resources

    October 27, 2016 – Webinar 10AM PT – Virtual Instruments
    The Value of Infrastructure Insight

    This webinar looks at the value of data center infrastructure insight both as a technology as well as a business productivity enabler. Besides productivity, having insight into how data infrastructure resources (servers, storage, networks, system software) are used, enables informed analysis, troubleshooting, planning, forecasting as well as cost-effective decision-making. In other words, data center infrastructure insight, based on infrastructure performance analytics, enables you to avoid flying blind, having situational awareness for proactive Information Technology (IT) management. Your return on innovation is increased, and leveraging insight awareness along with metrics that matter drives return on investment (ROI) along with enhanced service delivery.

    October 20, 2016 – Webinar 9AM PT – BrightTalk
    Next-Gen Data Centers Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) including Servers, Storage and Virtualizations

    At the core of next generation data centers are software defined data infrastructures that enable, protect, preserve and serve applications, data along with their resulting information services. Software defined data infrastructure core components include hardware, software servers and storage configured (defined) to provide various services enabling application Performance Availability Capacity and Economics (PACE). Just as there are different types of environments, applications along with workloads various options, technologies as well as techniques exist for virtual servers and storage. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around storage and virtualization for today, tomorrow, and in the years to come. Topics include:

    – Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs
    – Software Defined Infrastructures (SDDI) are what enable Software Defined Data Centers
    – Server and Storage Virtualization better together, with and without CI/HCI
    – Many different facets (types) of Server virtualization and virtual storage
    – When, where, why and how to use storage virtualization and virtual storage

    September 20, 2016 – Webinar 8AM PT – BrightTalk
    Software Defined Data Infrastructures (SDDI) Enabling Software Defined Data Centers – Part of Software-Defined Storage summit

    Data Infrastructures exist to support applications and their underlying resource needs. Software-Defined Infrastructures (SDI) are what enable Software-Defined Data Centers, and at the heart of a SDI is storage that is software-defined. This spans cloud, virtual and physical storage and is at the focal point of today. Join us in this session to discuss trends, technologies, tools, techniques and services around SDI and SDDC- today, tomorrow, and in the years to come.

    September 13, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT – Redmond Magazine and
    Dell Software
    Windows Server 2016 and Active Directory
    Whats New and How to Plan for Migration

    Windows Server 2016 is expected to GA this fall and is a modernized version of the Microsoft operating system that includes new capabilities such as Active Directory (AD) enhancements. AD is critical to organizational operations providing control and secure access to data, networks, servers, storage and more from physical, virtual and cloud (public and hybrid). But over time, organizations along with their associated IT infrastructures have evolved due to mergers, acquisitions, restructuring and general growth. As a result, yesterday’s AD deployments may look like they did in the past while using new technology (e.g. in old ways). Now is the time to start planning for how you will optimize your AD environment using new tools and technologies such as those in Windows Server 2016 and AD in new ways. Optimizing AD means having a new design, performing cleanup and restructuring prior to migration vs. simply moving what you have. Join us for this interactive webinar to begin planning your journey to Windows Server 2016 and a new optimized AD deployment that is flexible, scalable and elastic, and enables resilient infrastructures. You will learn:

    • What’s new in Windows Server 2016 and how it impacts your AD
    • Why an optimized AD is critical for IT environments moving forward
    • How to gain insight into your current AD environment
    • AD restructuring planning considerations

    September 8, 2016 – Webinar 11AM PT (Watch on Demand) – Redmond Magazine, Acronis and Unitrends
    Data Protection for Modern Microsoft Environments

    Your organization’s business depends on modern Microsoft® environments — Microsoft Azure and new versions of Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Hyper-V with RCT, and business applications — and you need a data protection solution that keeps pace with Microsoft technologies. If you lose mission-critical data, it can cost you $100,000 or more for a single hour of downtime. Join our webinar and learn how different data protection solutions can protect your Microsoft environment, whether you store data on company premises, at remote locations, in private and public clouds, and on mobile devices.

    Where To Learn More

    What This All Means

    Its back to school and learning time, join me on these and other upcoming event activities.

    Ok, nuff said, for now…

    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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

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    NetApp Announces ONTAP 9 software defined storage management

    NetApp Announces ONTAP 9 software defined storage management

    server storage I/O trends

    NetApp has announced ONTAP 9 the latest version or generation of their storage software that defines and powers ONTAP storage systems and appliances (e.g. those known by some as FAS among others).

    The major theme of ONTAP 9 is simple anywhere eluding to the software runs on storage system appliances (e.g. “tin wrapped” or hardware platform based), virtual storage (e.g. what has been known as “edge” in the past), as well as cloud versions (cDOT). The other part of simple beyond where the software gets deployed and how the resources along with functionality are consumed ties to management.

    This means simple from standalone systems to clusters, ONTAP 9 is focused on consolidation and management across different storage media mediums (HDD and SSD), platforms (engineered e.g. FAS to white box), protocols (block, file, objects) as well as consumption (on hardware or software deployed including cloud).

    As part of the announcement NetApp will continue with its engineered hardware platform solutions (e.g. appliances or storage systems) as well as ONTAP Select (third-party storage) and Flex using white box server platforms (e.g. a software defined storage option). This capability provides customers with flexibility on where and how to buy as well as deployment options.

    Another dimension to ONTAP 7 simple theme is support for known workloads such as Oracle RAC, Microsoft SQL Server and VMware among others. ONTAP 9 provides tools for rapid provisioning of storage resources to support those and other application workloads.

    Data services feature enhancements include support of new high-capacity read optimized SSDs, along with inline data compaction on 4K boundaries (data chunks) including data reduction guarantees of 4:1. For data durability, triple parity RAID has also been implemented, as well as Snaplock is also present in ONTAP 9.

    Another aspect of Simple theme for ONTAP 9 is an easy transition from third-party storage systems, as well as ONTAP 8.3 and ONTAP 7 modes with new tools and processes. These also include copy free transitions where existing storage systems are detached from older generation ONTAP controller, attached to new versions and an auto update occurs.

    Where To Learn More

    ONTAP 9 Data Sheet (PDF)
    NetApp FlashAdvantage 3-4-5 Makes the All-Flash Data Center a Reality
    NetApp ONTAP 9 Software Simplifies Transition to Hybrid Cloud, Next-Generation Data Center

    What This All Means

    ONTAP 9 are a welcome set of enhancements for NetApps flagship storage platforms that are based on ONTAP. With these enhancements, existing or new customers gain flexibility and deployment option choices for how the ONTAP software gets deployed from physical NetApp based storage systems, to white box hardware, software defined and cloud editions. In an era where there is a focus on converged, hyper-converged, object, all flash arrays and software defined virtual as well as cloud, ONTAP 9 provides options for customers who simply want or still need a traditional multi-protocol storage system that can run in an all flash or hybrid with disk modes.

    Ok, nuff said, for now…

    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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    vSphere Software Defined Beta, Something for free from VMware

    vSphere Beta, Something free from VMware (other than your time)

    server storage I/O trends

    Something free from VMware (other than time)

    VMware is looking for candidate beta test sites and environments for an upcoming vSphere release. Target audience or environments are those who have deployed vSphere 5.5 and 6.0 in your environment and looking to test the new software (e.g. bits).

    What VMware is looking for

    For this private community

    vSphere beta, VMware is looking for participants with expectations including:

    • Online acceptance of the Master Software Beta Test Agreement will be required prior to visiting the Private Beta Community
    • Install beta software within 3 days of receiving access to the beta product
    • Provide feedback within the first 4 weeks of the beta program
    • Submit Support Requests for bugs, issues and feature requests
    • Complete surveys and beta test assignments
    • Participate in the private beta discussion forum and conference calls

    How to get involved and test the bits?

    To get involved (and get the bits), simply fill out the VMware form found here (no credit card or money required, just some of your time).

    The VMware vSphere team will grant access to the program to selected candidates in stages. This vSphere Beta Program leverages a private Beta community to download software and share information. VMware will provide discussion forums, webinars, and service requests to enable you to share your opinion with them.

    VMware cites the following reasons to participate in this vSphere beta opportunity:

    • Receive early access to the vSphere Beta products
    • Interact with the vSphere Beta team consisting of Product Managers, Engineers, Technical Support, and Technical Writers
    • Provide direct input on product functionality, configurability, usability, and performance
    • Provide feedback influencing future products, training, documentation, and services
    • Collaborate with other participants, learn about their use cases, and share advice and learnings

    Where To Learn More

    What This All Means

    Having been involved in earlier vSphere betas this is a great way to get an early glimpse and hands on behind the wheel real-world experience with new technology for the experience, as well as testing to see how things will work in yours, or in a VMware hosted environment. You are free to use and test the bits (e.g. software) in your environment (or VMware hosted) how you like in a free-form real-world way. In addition to hands on time, you also get exposure and chance to interact with the VMware folks.

    This experience can be useful for planning on how to use new feature functionality, as well as strategy planning for deployment once the production bits get released down the road.

    Remember to sign up if interested here, see you in the beta.

    Ok, nuff said, for now

    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 2006-2023 Server StorageIO(R) and UnlimitedIO All Rights Reserved

    Posted on

    Server StorageIO March 2016 Update Newsletter

    Volume 16, Issue III

    Hello and welcome to the March 2016 Server StorageIO update newsletter.

    Here in the northern hemisphere spring has officially arrived as of March 20th equinox along with warmer weather, more hours and minutes of day light, and plenty of things to do. In addition to the official arrival of spring here (fall in the southern hemisphere), it also means in the U.S. that March Madness and college basketball tournament playoff brackets and office (betting) pools are in full swing.

    In This Issue

  • Feature Topic and Themes
  • Industry Trends News
  • Commentary in the news
  • Tips and Articles
  • StorageIOblog posts
  • Videos and Podcast’s
  • Events and Webinars
  • Recommended Reading List
  • Industry Activity Trends
  • Server StorageIO Lab reports
  • New and Old Vendor Update
  • Resources and Links

    • A couple of other things associated with spring is to move clocks forward which occurred recently here in the U.S. Spring is also a good time to check your smoke and dangerous gas detectors or other alarms. This means replacing batteries and cleaning the detectors.

    Besides smoke and gas detectors, spring is also a good time do preventive maintenance on your battery backup uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), as well as generators and other standby power devices. For my part, I had a service tech out to do a tune up on my Kohler generator, as well as replaced some batteries in APC UPS devices.

    Besides smoke and CO2 detectors, generators and UPS standby power systems, March madness basketball and other sports tournaments, something else occurs on March 31st (besides being the day before April 1st and April fools day). March 31st is World Backup (and Restore) Day meaning an awareness on making sure your data, applications, settings, configurations, keys, software and systems are backed up, and can be recovered.

    Hopefully none of you are in the situation where data, applications, systems, computers, laptops, tablets, smart phones or other devices only get backed up or protected once a year, however maybe you know somebody who does.

    March also marks the 10th anniversary of Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services (more here), happy birthday AWS.

    March wraps up on the 31st with World Backup Day which is intended to draw attention to the importance of data protection and your ability to recover applications and data. While backup are important, so to are testing to make sure you can actually use and recover from what was protected. Keep in mind that while some claim backup is dead, data protection is alive and as along as vendors and others keep referring to data protection as backup, backup will stay alive.

    Join me and folks from HP Enterprise (HPE) on March 31st at 1PM ET for a free webinar compliments of HPE with a theme of Backup with Brains, emphasis on awareness and analytics to enable smart data protection. Click here to learn more and register.

    Enjoy this edition of the Server StorageIO update newsletter and watch for new tips, articles, StorageIO lab report reviews, blog posts, videos and podcast’s along with in the news commentary appearing soon.

    Cheers GS

    Feature Topic and Theme

    This months feature theme and topics include backup (and restore) as part of data protection, more on clouds (public, private and hybrid) including how some providers such as DropBox are moving out of public cloud providers such as AWS building their own data centers.

    Building off of the February newsletter there is more on Google including their use of Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) aka NAND Flash Solid State Devices (SSD). and some of their research. In addition to Google’s use of SSD, check out the posts and industry activity on NVMe as well as other news and updates including new converged platforms from Cisco and HPE among others.

    StorageIOblog Posts

    Recent and popular Server StorageIOblog posts include:

    View other recent as well as past blog posts here

    Server Storage I/O Industry Activity Trends (Cloud, Virtual, Physical)

    StorageIO news (image licensed for use from Shutterstock by StorageIO)

    Some new Products Technology Services Announcements (PTSA) include:

  • Via Redmondmag: AWS Cloud Storage Service Turns 10 years old in March, happy birthday AWS (read more here at the AWS site).
  • Cisco announced new flexible HyperFlex converged compute server platforms for hybrid cloud and other deployments. Also announced were NetApp All Flash Array (AFA) FlexPod converged solutions powered by Cisco UCS servers and networking technology. In other activity, Cisco unveiled a Digital Network Architecture to enable customer digital data transformation. Cisco also announced its intent to acquire CliQr for management of hybrid clouds.

  • Data Direct Networks (DDN) expands NAS offerings with new GS14K platform via PRnewswire.

  • Via Computerworld: DropBox quits Amazon cloud, takes back 500 PB of data. DropBox has created their own cloud to host videos, images, files, folders, objects, blobs and other storage items that used to be stored within AWS S3. In this DropBox post, you can read about the why they decided to create their own cloud, as well as how they used a hybrid approach with metadata kept local, actual data stored in AWS S3. Now the data and the metadata are in DropBox data centers. However, DropBox is still keeping some data in AWS particular in different geographies.

  • Web site hosting company GoDaddy has extended their capabilities similar to other service providers by adding an OpenStack powered cloud service. This is a trend that others such as Bluehost (where my sites are located on a DPS) have evolved from simple shared hosting, to dedicated private servers (DPS), virtual private servers (VPS) along with other cloud related services. Think of a VPS as a virtual machine or cloud instance. Likewise some of the cloud service providers such as AWS are moving into dedicated private servers.

  • Following up from the February 2016 Server StorageIO Update Newsletter that included Google’s message to disk vendors: Make hard drives like this, even if they lose more data and Google Disk for Data Centers White Paper (PDF Here), read about Google experiences SSD.

    In this PDF white paper that was presented at the recent Usenix 2016 conference outlining Google’s experiences with different types (SLC, MLC, eMLC) and generations of NAND flash SSD media across various vendors and generations. Some of the takeaways include that context matters when looking at SSD metrics on endurance, durability and errors. While some in the industry focus on Unrecoverable Bit Error Rates (UBER), there needs to be awareness around Raw Bit Error Rate (RBER) among other metrics and usage. Read more about Google’s experiences here.


  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced Hyper-Converged systems Via Marketwired including HC 380 based on ProLiant DL380 technology providing all in one (AiO) converged compute, storage and virtualization software with simplified management. The HC 380 is targeted for mid-market aka small medium business (SMB), remote office branch office (ROBO) and workgroups. HPE also announced all flash array (AFA) enhancements for 3PAR storage (Via Businesswire).

  • Microsoft has announced that it will be releasing a version of its SQL Server database on Linux. What this means is that as well as being able to use SQL Server and associated tools on Windows and Azure platforms, you will also in the not so distant future be able to deploy on Linux. By making SQL Server available on Linux opens up some interesting scenarios and solution alternatives vs. Oracle along with MySQL and associated MySQL derivatives, as well as NoSQL offerings (Read more about NoSQL Databases here). Read more about Microsoft’s SQL Server for Linux here.

    In addition to SQL Server for Linux, Microsoft has also announced enhancements for easing docker container migrations to clouds. In other Microsoft activity, they announced enhancements to Storsimple and Azure. Keep an eye out for Windows Server 2016 Tech Preview 5 (e.g. TP5) which will be the next release of the upcoming new version of the popular operating systems.


  • MSDI, Rockland IT Solutions and Source Support Services Merge to Form Congruity with CEO Todd Gresham, along with Mike Stolz and Mark Shirman (formerly of Glasshouse) among others you may know.

  • Via Businesswire: PrimaryIO announces server-based flash acceleration for VMware systems, while Riverbed extends Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) cloud connectivity Via Businesswire.

  • Via Computerworld: Samsung ships 12Gbs SAS 15TB 2.5" 3D NAND Flash SSD (Hey Samsung, send me a device or two and will give them a test drive in the Server StorageIO lab ;). Not to be out done, Via Forbes: Seagate announces fast SSD card, as well as for the High Performance Compute (HPC) and Super Compute (SC) markets, Via HPCwire: Seagate Sets Sights on Broader HPC Market with their scale-out clustered Lustre based systems.

  • Servers Direct is now offering the HGST 4U x 60 drive enclosures while Via PRnewswire: SMIC announces RRAM partnership.

  • ATTO Technology has enhanced their RAID Arrays Behind FibreBridge 7500, while Oracle announced mainframe virtual tape library (VTL) cloud support Via Searchdatabackup. In other updates for this month, VMware has released and made generally available (GA) VSAN 6.2 and Via Businesswire: Wave and Centeris Launch Transpacific Broadband Data and Fiber Hub.

    • The above is a sampling of some of the various industry news, announcements and updates for this March. Watch for more news and updates in April coming out of NAB and OpenStack Summit among other events.

    View other recent news and industry trends here.

    StorageIO Commentary in the news

    View more Server, Storage and I/O hardware as well as software trends comments here

    Vendors you may not have heard of

    Various vendors (and service providers) you may not know or heard about recently.

    • Continum – R1Soft Server Backup Manager
    • HyperIO – HiMon and HyperIO server storage I/O monitoring software tools
    • Runcast – VMware automation and management software tools
    • Opvizor – VMware health management software tools
    • Asigra – Cloud, Managed Service and distributed backup/data protection tools
    • Datera – Software defined storage management startup
    • E8 Storage – Software Defined Stealth Storage Startup
    • Venyu – Cloud and data center data protection tools
    • StorPool – Distributed software defined storage management tools
    • ExaBlox – Scale out storage solutions

    Check out more vendors you may know, have heard of, or that are perhaps new on the Server StorageIO Industry Links page here (over 1,000 entries and growing).

    StorageIO Tips and Articles

    Recent Server StorageIO articles appearing in different venues include:

    • InfoStor:  Data Protection Gaps, Some Good, Some Not So Good

    • Virtual Blocks (VMware Blogs):  Part III EVO:RAIL – When And Where To Use It?

    • InfoStor:  Object Storage Is In Your Future

    Check out these resources and links technology, techniques, trends as well as tools. View more tips and articles here

    StorageIO Videos and Podcasts

    Check out this video (Via YouTube) of a Google Data Center tour.

    In the IoT and IoD era of little and big data, how about this video I did with my Phantom DJI drone and a HD GoPro (e.g. 1K vs. 2.7K or 4K in newer cameras). This generates about a GByte of raw data per 10 minutes of flight, which then means another GB copies to a staging area, then to a protected copies, then production versions and so forth. Thus a 2 minute clip in 1080p resulted in plenty of storage including produced, uploaded versions along with backup copies in archives spread across YouTube, Dropbox and elsewhere.

    StorageIO podcasts are also available via and at StorageIO.tv

    StorageIO Webinars and Industry Events

    EMCworld (Las Vegas) May 2-4, 2016

    Interop (Las Vegas) May 4-6 2016

    TBA – April 27, 2016 webinar

    NAB (Las Vegas) April 19-20, 2016

    Backup with Brains – March 31, 2016 free webinar (1PM ET)

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

    From StorageIO Labs

    Research, Reviews and Reports

    NVMe is in your future, resources to start preparing today for tomorrow

    NVM and NVMe corner (Via and Compliments of Micron.com)

    View more NVMe related items at microsite thenvmeplace.com.

    Read more in this Server StorageIO industry Trends Perspective white paper and lab review.

    Server StorageIO Recommended Reading List

    The following are various recommended reading including books, blogs and videos. If you have not done so recently, also check out the Intel Recommended Reading List (here) where you will also find a couple of mine as well as books from others.

    For this months recommended reading, it’s a blog site. If you have not visited Eric Siebert’s (@ericsiebert) site vSphere-land and its companion resources pages including top blogs, do so now.

    Granted there is a heavy VMware server virtualization focus, however there is a good balance of other data infrastructure topics spanning servers, storage, I/O networking, data protection and more.

    Server StorageIO Industry Resources and Links

    Check out these useful links and pages:

    storageio.com/links – Various industry links (over 1,000 with more to be added soon)
    objectstoragecenter.com – Cloud and object storage topics, tips and news items
    storageioblog.com/data-protection-diaries-main/ – Various data protection items and topics
    thenvmeplace.com – Focus on NVMe trends and technologies
    thessdplace.com – NVM and Solid State Disk topics, tips and techniques
    storageio.com/performance.com – Various server, storage and I/O performance and benchmarking

    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

    Server Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)

    Server Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I)

    server storage I/O trends

    This is part-one of a two-part post pertaining Microsoft Diskspd.that is also part of a broader series focused on server storage I/O benchmarking, performance, capacity planning, tools and related technologies. You can view part-two of this post here, along with companion links here.

    Background

    Many people use Iometer for creating synthetic (artificial) workloads to support benchmarking for testing, validation and other activities. While Iometer with its GUI is relatively easy to use and available across many operating system (OS) environments, the tool also has its limits. One of the bigger limits for Iometer is that it has become dated with little to no new development for a long time, while other tools including some new ones continue to evolve in functionality, along with extensibility. Some of these tools have optional GUI for easy of use or configuration, while others simple have extensive scripting and command parameter capabilities. Many tools are supported across different OS including physical, virtual and cloud, while others such as Microsoft Diskspd are OS specific.

    Instead of focusing on Iometer and other tools as well as benchmarking techniques (we cover those elsewhere), lets focus on Microsoft Diskspd.


    server storage I/O performance

    What is Microsoft Diskspd?

    Microsoft Diskspd is a synthetic workload generation (e.g. benchmark) tool that runs on various Windows systems as an alternative to Iometer, vdbench, iozone, iorate, fio, sqlio among other tools. Diskspd is a command line tool which means it can easily be scripted to do reads and writes of various I/O size including random as well as sequential activity. Server and storage I/O can be buffered file system as well non-buffered across different types of storage and interfaces. Various performance and CPU usage information is provided to gauge the impact on a system when doing a given number of IOP’s, amount of bandwidth along with response time latency.

    What can Diskspd do?

    Microsoft Diskspd creates synthetic benchmark workload activity with ability to define various options to simulate different application characteristics. This includes specifying read and writes, random, sequential, IO size along with number of threads to simulate concurrent activity. Diskspd can be used for testing or validating server and storage I/O systems along with associated software, tools and components. In addition to being able to specify different workloads, Diskspd can also be told which processors to use (e.g. CPU affinity), buffering or non-buffered IO among other things.

    What type of storage does Diskspd work with?

    Physical and virtual storage including hard disk drive (HDD), solid state devices (SSD), solid state hybrid drives (SSHD) in various systems or solutions. Storage can be physical as well as partitions or file systems. As with any workload tool when doing writes, exercise caution to prevent accidental deletion or destruction of your data.


    What information does Diskspd produce?

    Diskspd provides output in text as well as XML formats. See an example of Diskspd output further down in this post.

    Where to get Diskspd?

    You can download your free copy of Diskspd from the Microsoft site here.

    The download and installation are quick and easy, just remember to select the proper version for your Windows system and type of processor.

    Another tip is to remember to set path environment variables point to where you put the Diskspd image.

    Also stating what should be obvious, don’t forget that if you are going to be doing any benchmark or workload generation activity on a system where the potential for a data to be over-written or deleted, make sure you have a good backup and tested restore before you begin, if something goes wrong.


    New to server storage I/O benchmarking or tools?

    If you are not familiar with server storage I/O performance benchmarking or using various workload generation tools (e.g. benchmark tools), Drew Robb (@robbdrew) has a Data Storage Benchmarking Guide article over at Enterprise Storage Forum that provides a good framework and summary quick guide to server storage I/O benchmarking.




    Via Drew:

    Data storage benchmarking can be quite esoteric in that vast complexity awaits anyone attempting to get to the heart of a particular benchmark.

    Case in point: The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) has developed the Emerald benchmark to measure power consumption. This invaluable benchmark has a vast amount of supporting literature. That so much could be written about one benchmark test tells you just how technical a subject this is. And in SNIA’s defense, it is creating a Quick Reference Guide for Emerald (coming soon).


    But rather than getting into the nitty-gritty nuances of the tests, the purpose of this article is to provide a high-level overview of a few basic storage benchmarks, what value they might have and where you can find out more. 

    Read more here including some of my comments, tips and recommendations.


    In addition to Drew’s benchmarking quick reference guide, along with the server storage I/O benchmarking tools, technologies and techniques resource page (Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking 101 for Smarties.

    How do you use Diskspd?


    Tip: When you run Microsoft Diskspd it will create a file or data set on the device or volume being tested that it will do its I/O to, make sure that you have enough disk space for what will be tested (e.g. if you are going to test 1TB you need to have more than 1TB of disk space free for use). Another tip is to speed up the initializing (e.g. when Diskspd creates the file that I/Os will be done to) run as administrator.

    Tip: In case you forgot, a couple of other useful Microsoft tools (besides Perfmon) for working with and displaying server storage I/O devices including disks (HDD and SSDs) are the commands "wmic diskdrive list [brief]" and "diskpart". With diskpart exercise caution as it can get you in trouble just as fast as it can get you out of trouble.

    You can view the Diskspd commands after installing the tool and from a Windows command prompt type:

    C:\Users\Username> Diskspd


    The above command will display Diskspd help and information about the commands as follows.

    Usage: diskspd [options] target1 [ target2 [ target3 …] ]
    
version 2.0.12 (2014/09/17)
    

    Available targets:
    
       file_path
    
       #
       :
    

    Available options:











    -?display usage information
    -a#[,#[…]]advanced CPU affinity – affinitize threads to CPUs provided after -a in a round-robin manner within current KGroup (CPU count starts with 0); the same CPU can be listed more than once and the number of CPUs can be different than the number of files or threads (cannot be used with -n)

    -ag

    		group affinity – affinitize threads in a round-robin manner across KGroups
    -b[K|M|G]block size in bytes/KB/MB/GB [default=64K]

    -B[K|M|G|b]

    		base file offset in bytes/KB/MB/GB/blocks [default=0] (offset from the beginning of the file)
    -c[K|M|G|b]create files of the given size. Size can be stated in bytes/KB/MB/GB/blocks

    -Ccool down time – duration of the test after measurements finished [default=0s].

    -DPrint IOPS standard deviations. The deviations are calculated for samples of duration . is given in milliseconds and the default value is 1000.
    -dduration (in seconds) to run test [default=10s]
    -f[K|M|G|b]

    		file size – this parameter can be used to use only the part of the file/disk/partition for example to test only the first sectors of disk
    -fropen file with the FILE_FLAG_RANDOM_ACCESS hint
    -fsopen file with the FILE_FLAG_SEQUENTIAL_SCAN hint
    -Ftotal number of threads (cannot be used with -t)
    -gthroughput per thread is throttled to given bytes per millisecond note that this can not be specified when using completion routines
    -hdisable both software and hardware caching
    -inumber of IOs (burst size) before thinking. must be specified with -j
    -jtime to think in ms before issuing a burst of IOs (burst size). must be specified with -i
    -ISet IO priority to . Available values are: 1-very low, 2-low, 3-normal (default)
    -lUse large pages for IO buffers

    -Lmeasure latency statistics
    -ndisable affinity (cannot be used with -a)
    -onumber of overlapped I/O requests per file per thread (1=synchronous I/O, unless more than 1 thread is specified with -F) [default=2]
    -pstart async (overlapped) I/O operations with the same offset (makes sense only with -o2 or grater)
    -Penable printing a progress dot after each completed I/O operations (counted separately by each thread) [default count=65536]
    -r[K|M|G|b]random I/O aligned to bytes (doesn’t make sense with -s). can be stated in bytes/KB/MB/GB/blocks [default access=sequential, default alignment=block size]
    -R

    		output format. Default is text.
    -s[K|M|G|b]stride size (offset between starting positions of subsequent I/O operations)
    -Sdisable OS caching
    -tnumber of threads per file (cannot be used with -F)
    -T[K|M|G|b]stride between I/O operations performed on the same file by different threads [default=0] (starting offset = base file offset + (thread number * ) it makes sense only with -t or -F
    -vverbose mode
    -wpercentage of write requests (-w and -w0 are equivalent). absence of this switch indicates 100% reads IMPORTANT: Your data will be destroyed without a warning
    -W

    		warm up time – duration of the test before measurements start [default=5s].
    -xuse completion routines instead of I/O Completion Ports
    -Xuse an XML file for configuring the workload. Cannot be used with other parameters.
    -zset random seed [default=0 if parameter not provided, GetTickCount() if value not provided]




     
    		Write buffers command options. By default, the write buffers are filled with a repeating pattern (0, 1, 2, …, 255, 0, 1, …)
    -Z

    		zero buffers used for write tests
    -Z[K|M|G|b]use a global buffer filled with random data as a source for write operations.
    -Z[K|M|G|b],

    		use a global buffer filled with data from as a source for write operations. If is smaller than , its content will be repeated multiple times in the buffer. By default, the write buffers are filled with a repeating pattern (0, 1, 2, …, 255, 0, 1, …)







     Synchronization command options
    -ys
    		signals event
    before starting the actual run (no warmup) (creates a notification event if does not exist)
    -yfsignals event after the actual run finishes (no cooldown) (creates a notification event if does not exist)
    -yrwaits on event before starting the run (including warmup) (creates a notification event if does not exist)
    -ypallows to stop the run when event is set; it also binds CTRL+C to this event (creates a notification event if does not exist)
    -yesets event and quits









    Event Tracing command options

    -epuse paged memory for NT Kernel Logger (by default it uses non-paged memory)
    -equse perf timer
    -esuse system timer (default)
    -ecuse cycle count
    -ePROCESSprocess start & end
    -eTHREADthread start & end
    -eIMAGE_LOADimage load
    -eDISK_IOphysical disk IO
    -eMEMORY_PAGE_FAULTSall page faults
    -eMEMORY_HARD_FAULTShard faults only
    -eNETWORK

    		TCP/IP, UDP/IP send & receive
    -eREGISTRYregistry calls



    
Examples:
    

    Create 8192KB file and run read test on it for 1 second:
    

      diskspd -c8192K -d1 testfile.dat
    

    Set block size to 4KB, create 2 threads per file, 32 overlapped (outstanding)
    
I/O operations per thread, disable all caching mechanisms and run block-aligned random
    
access read test lasting 10 seconds:
    

      diskspd -b4K -t2 -r -o32 -d10 -h testfile.dat
    

    Create two 1GB files, set block size to 4KB, create 2 threads per file, affinitize threads
    
to CPUs 0 and 1 (each file will have threads affinitized to both CPUs) and run read test
    
lasting 10 seconds:
    

      diskspd -c1G -b4K -t2 -d10 -a0,1 testfile1.dat testfile2.dat

    Where to learn more


    The following are related links to read more about servver (cloud, virtual and physical) storage I/O benchmarking tools, technologies and techniques.
    resource page

    Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking 101 for Smarties.

    Microsoft Diskspd download and Microsoft Diskspd overview (via Technet)

    I/O, I/O how well do you know about good or bad server and storage I/Os?

    Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I and Part II)

    Wrap up and summary, for now…


    This wraps up part-one of this two-part post taking a look at Microsoft Diskspd benchmark and workload generation tool. In part-two (here) of this post series we take a closer look including a test drive using Microsoft Diskspd.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    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

    Microsoft Diskspd (Part II): Server Storage I/O Benchmark Tools

    Microsoft Diskspd (Part II): Server Storage I/O Benchmark Tools

    server storage I/O trends

    This is part-two of a two-part post pertaining Microsoft Diskspd.that is also part of a broader series focused on server storage I/O benchmarking, performance, capacity planning, tools and related technologies. You can view part-one of this post here, along with companion links here.

    Microsoft Diskspd StorageIO lab test drive

    Server and StorageIO lab

    Talking about tools and technologies is one thing, installing as well as trying them is the next step for gaining experience so how about some quick hands-on time with Microsoft Diskspd (download your copy here).

    The following commands all specify an I/O size of 8Kbytes doing I/O to a 45GByte file called diskspd.dat located on the F: drive. Note that a 45GByte file is on the small size for general performance testing, however it was used for simplicity in this example. Ideally a larger target storage area (file, partition, device) would be used, otoh, if your application uses a small storage device or volume, then tune accordingly.

    In this test, the F: drive is an iSCSI RAID protected volume, however you could use other storage interfaces supported by Windows including other block DAS or SAN (e.g. SATA, SAS, USB, iSCSI, FC, FCoE, etc) as well as NAS. Also common to the following commands is using 16 threads and 32 outstanding I/Os to simulate concurrent activity of many users, or application processing threads.
    server storage I/O performance
    Another common parameter used in the following was -r for random, 7200 seconds (e.g. two hour) test duration time, display latency ( -L ) disable hardware and software cache ( -h), forcing cpu affinity (-a0,1,2,3). Since the test ran on a server with four cores I wanted to see if I could use those for helping to keep the threads and storage busy. What varies in the commands below is the percentage of reads vs. writes, as well as the results output file. Some of the workload below also had the -S option specified to disable OS I/O buffering (to view how buffering helps when enabled or disabled). Depending on the goal, or type of test, validation, or workload being run, I would choose to set some of these parameters differently.

    diskspd -c45g -b8K -t16 -o32 -r -d7200 -h -w0 -L -a0,1,2,3 F:\diskspd.dat >> SIOWS2012R203_Eiscsi_145_noh_write000.txt

    diskspd -c45g -b8K -t16 -o32 -r -d7200 -h -w50 -L -a0,1,2,3 F:\diskspd.dat >> SIOWS2012R203_Eiscsi_145_noh_write050.txt

    diskspd -c45g -b8K -t16 -o32 -r -d7200 -h -w100 -L -a0,1,2,3 F:\diskspd.dat >> SIOWS2012R203_Eiscsi_145_noh_write100.txt

    diskspd -c45g -b8K -t16 -o32 -r -d7200 -h -S -w0 -L -a0,1,2,3 F:\diskspd.dat >> SIOWS2012R203_Eiscsi_145_noSh_test_write000.txt

    diskspd -c45g -b8K -t16 -o32 -r -d7200 -h -S -w50 -L -a0,1,2,3 F:\diskspd.dat >> SIOWS2012R203_Eiscsi_145_noSh_write050.txt

    diskspd -c45g -b8K -t16 -o32 -r -d7200 -h -S -w100 -L -a0,1,2,3 F:\diskspd.dat >> SIOWS2012R203_Eiscsi_145_noSh_write100.txt

    The following is the output from the above workload command.
    Microsoft Diskspd sample output
    Microsoft Diskspd sample output part 2
    Microsoft Diskspd sample output part 3

    Note that as with any benchmark, workload test or simulation your results will vary. In the above the server, storage and I/O system were not tuned as the focus was on working with the tool, determining its capabilities. Thus do not focus on the performance results per say, rather what you can do with Diskspd as a tool to try different things. Btw, fwiw, in the above example in addition to using an iSCSI target, the Windows 2012 R2 server was a guest on a VMware ESXi 5.5 system.

    Where to learn more

    The following are related links to read more about server (cloud, virtual and physical) storage I/O benchmarking tools, technologies and techniques.

    Drew Robb’s benchmarking quick reference guide
    Server storage I/O benchmarking tools, technologies and techniques resource page
    Server and Storage I/O Benchmarking 101 for Smarties.
    Microsoft Diskspd download and Microsoft Diskspd overview (via Technet)
    I/O, I/O how well do you know about good or bad server and storage I/Os?
    Server and Storage I/O Benchmark Tools: Microsoft Diskspd (Part I and Part II)

    Comments and wrap-up

    What I like about Diskspd (Pros)

    Reporting including CPU usage (you can’t do server and storage I/O without CPU) along with IOP’s (activity), bandwidth (throughout or amount of data being moved), per thread and total results along with optional reporting. While a GUI would be nice particular for beginners, I’m used to setting up scripts for different workloads so having an extensive options for setting up different workloads is welcome. Being associated with a specific OS (e.g. Windows) the CPU affinity and buffer management controls will be handy for some projects.

    Diskspd has the flexibility to use different storage interfaces and types of storage including files or partitions should be taken for granted, however with some tools don’t take things for granted. I like the flexibility to easily specify various IO sizes including large 1MByte, 10MByte, 20MByte, 100MByte and 500MByte to simulate application workloads that do large sequential (or random) activity. I tried some IO sizes (e.g. specified by -b parameter larger than 500MB however, I received various errors including "Could not allocate a buffer bytes for target" which means that Diskspd can do IO sizes smaller than that. While not able to do IO sizes larger than 500MB, this is actually impressive. Several other tools I have used or with have IO size limits down around 10MByte which makes it difficult for creating workloads that do large IOP’s (note this is the IOP size, not the number of IOP’s).

    Oh, something else that should be obvious however will state it, Diskspd is free unlike some industry de-facto standard tools or workload generators that need a fee to get and use.

    Where Diskspd could be improved (Cons)

    For some users a GUI or configuration wizard would make the tool easier to get started with, on the other hand (oth), I tend to use the command capabilities of tools. Would also be nice to specify ranges as part of a single command such as stepping through an IO size range (e.g. 4K, 8K, 16K, 1MB, 10MB) as well as read write percentages along with varying random sequential mixes. Granted this can easily be done by having a series of commands, however I have become spoiled by using other tools such as vdbench.

    Summary

    Server and storage I/O performance toolbox

    Overall I like Diskspd and have added it to my Server Storage I/O workload and benchmark tool-box

    Keep in mind that the best benchmark or workload generation technology tool will be your own application(s) configured to run as close as possible to production activity levels.

    However when that is not possible, the an alternative is to use tools that have the flexibility to be configured as close as possible to your application(s) workload characteristics. This means that the focus should not be as much on the tool, as opposed to how flexible is a tool to work for you, granted the tool needs to be robust.

    Having said that, Microsoft Diskspd is a good and extensible tool for benchmarking, simulation, validation and comparisons, however it will only be as good as the parameters and configuration you set it up to use.

    Check out Microsoft Diskspd and add it to your benchmark and server storage I/O tool-box like I have done.

    Ok, nuff said (for now)

    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

    I/O, I/O how well do you know good bad ugly server storage I/O iops?

    How well do you know good bad ugly I/O iops?

    server storage i/o iops activity data infrastructure trends

    Updated 2/10/2018

    There are many different types of server storage I/O iops associated with various environments, applications and workloads. Some I/Os activity are iops, others are transactions per second (TPS), files or messages per time (hour, minute, second), gets, puts or other operations. The best IO is one you do not have to do.

    What about all the cloud, virtual, software defined and legacy based application that still need to do I/O?

    If no IO operation is the best IO, then the second best IO is the one that can be done as close to the application and processor as possible with the best locality of reference.

    Also keep in mind that aggregation (e.g. consolidation) can cause aggravation (server storage I/O performance bottlenecks).

    aggregation causes aggravation
    Example of aggregation (consolidation) causing aggravation (server storage i/o blender bottlenecks)

    And the third best?

    It’s the one that can be done in less time or at least cost or effect to the requesting application, which means moving further down the memory and storage stack.

    solving server storage i/o blender and other bottlenecks
    Leveraging flash SSD and cache technologies to find and fix server storage I/O bottlenecks

    On the other hand, any IOP regardless of if for block, file or object storage that involves some context is better than those without, particular involving metrics that matter (here, here and here [webinar] )

    Server Storage I/O optimization and effectiveness

    The problem with IO’s is that they are a basic operations to get data into and out of a computer or processor, so there’s no way to avoid all of them, unless you have a very large budget. Even if you have a large budget that can afford an all flash SSD solution, you may still meet bottlenecks or other barriers.

    IO’s require CPU or processor time and memory to set up and then process the results as well as IO and networking resources to move data too their destination or retrieve them from where they are stored. While IO’s cannot be eliminated, their impact can be greatly improved or optimized by, among other techniques, doing fewer of them via caching and by grouping reads or writes (pre-fetch, write-behind).

    server storage I/O STI and SUT

    Think of it this way: Instead of going on multiple errands, sometimes you can group multiple destinations together making for a shorter, more efficient trip. However, that optimization may also mean your drive will take longer. So, sometimes it makes sense to go on a couple of quick, short, low-latency trips instead of one larger one that takes half a day even as it accomplishes many tasks. Of course, how far you have to go on those trips (i.e., their locality) makes a difference about how many you can do in a given amount of time.

    Locality of reference (or proximity)

    What is locality of reference?

    This refers to how close (i.e., its place) data exists to where it is needed (being referenced) for use. For example, the best locality of reference in a computer would be registers in the processor core, ready to be acted on immediately. This would be followed by levels 1, 2, and 3 (L1, L2, and L3) onboard caches, followed by main memory, or DRAM. After that comes solid-state memory typically NAND flash either on PCIe cards or accessible on a direct attached storage (DAS), SAN, or NAS device. 

    server storage I/O locality of reference

    Even though a PCIe NAND flash card is close to the processor, there still remains the overhead of traversing the PCIe bus and associated drivers. To help offset that impact, PCIe cards use DRAM as cache or buffers for data along with meta or control information to further optimize and improve locality of reference. In other words, this information is used to help with cache hits, cache use, and cache effectiveness vs. simply boosting cache use.

    SSD to the rescue?

    What can you do the cut the impact of IO’s?

    There are many steps one can take, starting with establishing baseline performance and availability metrics.

    The metrics that matter include IOP’s, latency, bandwidth, and availability. Then, leverage metrics to gain insight into your application’s performance.

    Understand that IO’s are a fact of applications doing work (storing, retrieving, managing data) no matter whether systems are virtual, physical, or running up in the cloud. But it’s important to understand just what a bad IO is, along with its impact on performance. Try to identify those that are bad, and then find and fix the problem, either with software, application, or database changes. Perhaps you need to throw more software caching tools, hypervisors, or hardware at the problem. Hardware may include faster processors with more DRAM and faster internal busses.

    Leveraging local PCIe flash SSD cards for caching or as targets is another option.

    You may want to use storage systems or appliances that rely on intelligent caching and storage optimization capabilities to help with performance, availability, and capacity.

    Where to gain insight into your server storage I/O environment

    There are many tools that you can be used to gain insight into your server storage I/O environment across cloud, virtual, software defined and legacy as well as from different layers (e.g. applications, database, file systems, operating systems, hypervisors, server, storage, I/O networking). Many applications along with databases have either built-in or optional tools from their provider, third-party, or via other sources that can give information about work activity being done. Likewise there are tools to dig down deeper into the various data information infrastructure to see what is happening at the various layers as shown in the following figures.

    application storage I/O performance
    Gaining application and operating system level performance insight via different tools

    windows and linux storage I/O performance
    Insight and awareness via operating system tools on Windows and Linux

    In the above example, Spotlight on Windows (SoW) which you can download for free from Dell here along with Ubuntu utilities are shown, You could also use other tools to look at server storage I/O performance including Windows Perfmon among others.

    vmware server storage I/O
    Hypervisor performance using VMware ESXi / vsphere built-in tools

    vmware server storage I/O performance
    Using Visual ESXtop to dig deeper into virtual server storage I/O performance

    vmware server storage i/o cache
    Gaining insight into virtual server storage I/O cache performance

    Wrap up and summary

    There are many approaches to address (e.g. find and fix) vs. simply move or mask data center and server storage I/O bottlenecks. Having insight and awareness into how your environment along with applications is important to know to focus resources. Also keep in mind that a bit of flash SSD or DRAM cache in the applicable place can go along way while a lot of cache will also cost you cash. Even if you cant eliminate I/Os, look for ways to decrease their impact on your applications and systems.

    Where To Learn More

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

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

    Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials Book SDDC

    What This All Means

    >Keep in mind: SSD including flash and DRAM among others are in your future, the question is where, when, with what, how much and whose technology or packaging.

    Ok, nuff said, for now.

    Gs

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

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