Tag: virtualization

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Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?

Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Server Storage I/O Network Virtualization Whats Next?
Updated 9/28/18

There are many faces and thus functionalities of virtualization beyond the one most commonly discussed which is consolidation or aggregation. Other common forms of virtualization include emulation (which is part of enabling consolidation) which can be in the form of a virtual tape library for storage to bridge new disk technology to old software technology, processes, procedures and skill sets. Other forms of virtualization functionality for life beyond consolidation include abstraction for transparent movement of applications or operating systems on servers, or data on storage to support planned and un-planned maintenance, upgrades, BC/DR and other activities.

So the gist is that there are many forms of virtualization technologies and techniques for servers, storage and even I/O networks to address different issues including life beyond consolidation. However the next wave of consolidation could and should be that of reducing the number of logical images, or, the impact of the multiple operating systems and application images, along with their associated management costs.

This may be easier said than done, however, for those looking to cut costs even further than from what can be realized by reducing physical footprints (e.g. going from 10 to 1 or from 250 to 25 physical servers), there could be upside however it will come at a cost. The cost is like that of reducing data and storage footprint impacts with such as data management and archiving.

Savings can be realized by archiving and deleting data via data management however that is easier said than done given the cost in terms of people time and ability to decide what to archive, even for non-compliance data along with associated business rules and policies to be defined (for automation) along with hardware, software and services (managed services, consulting and/or cloud and SaaS).

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

Ok, nuff said, for now.

Gs

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

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

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Dutch StorageExpo Recap

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote talk (“Storage Industry Trends and Perspectives: Beyond Hype and Green Washing”) at the Dutch StorageExpo (produced by VNU Exhibitions Europe) event in Utrecht the Netherlands which was co-located in the ultra large Jaarbeurs congress center (e.g. convention center) along with concurrent shows for Linux, Security and networking making for a huge show and exhibition, almost a mini scaled down version of cebit or VMworld or EMCworld like event.

Dutch StorageExpo

Congratulations and many thanks to Marloes van den Berg of VNU Exhibitions and her team who put together a fantastic and well attended event, not to mention their warm and gracious Dutch hospitality.

European shows and events are different than those in the U.S. in that at European events, the focus is more on meeting, building and maintaining relationships and less on “Uui Gui” demos or marketing sales pitches involving complex demos and technology displays found at many U.S. events.

Granted, their are indeed product demos and technology to look at and talk about, and rest assured, the conversations and discussions when involving technology get right to the point and often much more direct. There is also a more relaxed aspect as seen in the many booths or stands as they are called, many of which have bars that serve up coffee in the morning as well as snacks and other beverages (the Hienken in Holland is much better than what is shipped to the U.S.) over which to discuss and have conversations about various topics, issues and technolgies.

Many of the issues being faced by the Europeans are similar to those being faced by IT organizations in North America as well as elsewhere in the world including limits or issues around power, cooling, floor-space footprints, economics, doing more with less to boost productivity and enhance efficieinecy while sustaining business growth without impacting service delivery or service levels. BC/DR, data proteciton and data security, virtualizaiton were all topics of interest and points of discussions among others.

I had the opportunity to meet several new people both from IT organizations, vars or resellers, consultants, vendors and media along with putting a face to a name of people I had meet virtually in the past not to mention re-connect with others that I have known from the past whom it was great to have had a chance to re-connect with.

Thanks to all of those who attended both the key note session on Wednesday afternoon as well as to those who were at Monday’s all day seminar organized by Gert Brouwer or Brouwer consultancy in Nijkerk, I really enjoyed the conversations and perspectives of everyone I had a chance to meet with this past week and look forward to future conversations.

Cheers gs

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

twitter @storageio

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

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HP Storage Virtualization Services Platform (SVSP)

Storage I/O trends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cheers – gs

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

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CMG, Enabling “The Green and Virtual Data Center”

Storage I/O trends

Last week I was invited to by Tom Becchetti and the Minneapolis CMG folks to keynote at their session hosted at the Brocade facity in Minneapolis along with other speakers from Brocade, IBM, Teamquest and Sun.

The theme of my talk was “The Green and Virtual Data Center and The Importance of Metrics” which can be downloaded here.

I have been a member of CMG for many years as a former performance and capacity planning analyst when I worked in IT organizations and having presented at many CMG events around the world. While CMG has been around for many decades and has seen its share of ups and downs. With a current focus on boosting use, maximizing resource usage, improving service delivery and performance while using less energy in smaller footprints, now is the perfect opportunity for CMG to re-invent itself and show relevance as the organization that knows how to measure, watch, model and manage resource usage and service delivery effectiveness across different technology domains including servers, storage, networks, applications, operating systems and facilities. There is a golden opportunity for CMG members to step up and leverage their skills across different technology domains working with others to establish metrics, models and baselines.

In my new book, “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (Auerbach) I include a chapter on metrics and measurement as well as many other topics and themes that tie into the notion of effective and efficient data centers need to carry out Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) which is also a chapter in the book, that includes performance and capacity planning across technology domains.

Watch for more on this topic.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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SMB capacity planning; Focusing on energy conservation

Storage I/O trends

Here’s a link to a new tip I wrote that is posted over at SearchSMBStorage on Capacity Planning and energy conservation.

Here are some added links to other recent tips I wrote and posted at a SearchSMBStorage:

Improve your storage energy efficiency

Data protection for virtual server environments

Data footprint reduction for SMBs

Is clustered NAS for SMBs?

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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Data Proteciton for Virtual Environments

Storage I/O trends

Server virtualization continues to be a popular industry focus, particularly to discuss IT data center power, cooling, floor space and environmental (PCFE) issues commonly called green computing along with supporting next generation virtualized data center environments. There are many challenges and options related to protecting data and applications in a virtual server environment.

Here’s a link to a new white paper by myself that looks at various issues, challenges and along with various approaches for enabling data protection for virtual environments. This in-depth report explains what your organization needs to know as it moves into a virtual realm. Topics include background and issues, glossary of common virtual terms, re-architecting data protection, technologies and techniques, virtual machine movement, industry trends and much more …

The report is called Data Protection Options for Virtualized Servers: Demystifying Virtual Server Data Protection, Have a look for yourself.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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More on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)

Here’s a link to a new StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective on the emerging “Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) technology”.

Ok, nuff said.

Cheers gs

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

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

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StorageIO Spring Keynote and Speaking tour V2.008

Several new keynote and speaking engagements involving myself have been added to the StorageIO events page including among others:

April 8th, 2008 – SNW Orlando FL
Beyond Green-Wash:
IT Data Center Power, Cooling, Floor Space and Environmental (PCFE) Topics and Trends V2.008
This talk will move past what are the issues and reasons for going green and get right to the point of what you can do today leveraging various technologies, techniques and best practices to address PCFE and green environmental issues including EHS, low power and economic sustainment in an environmental friendly manner as well as what to include in a long term green strategy for your data center.

Chicago, May 13th-15th – StorageDecisions
Clustered Storage:
From SMB, to Scientific, to Social Networking and Web 2.0
The growth of structured and unstructured data continues at an explosive rate in most environments resulting in a constantly expanding data footprint requiring data and storage management resources. Similarly, the relative ease of use of NFS and Windows CIFS file sharing based storage, also known as Network Attached Storage (NAS), has led to a proliferation of NAS and Windows file servers which are not all that different from how the ease of use of personal computers (PCs) resulted in desktop and server sprawl. With the focus of many IT organizations today to do more with less, or, do more with what you have, clustered storage and clustered file serving have become a popular option to support modular, scalable and flexible growth. Clustered storage including clustered file serving, grid and web 2.0 based storage solutions are no longer confined to the specific high performance scientific applications they are commonly associated. Clustered storage serving is commonly being deployed to support a wide diversity of applications including commercial, entertainment or media, Web 2.0 and social networking along with grid, cloud and traditional scientific needs.

This session takes a look at among other topics:
? Look at what different clustered storage vendors are claiming and how their solutions differ
? Fact vs. Fiction, Myths and Realties of clustered storage
o Grid vs. Clusters, Cluster vs. Grid, what?s the differences
o Clustered storage is only for ultra large environments like Google
o Clustered file serving is only for high performance (HPC) environments
o SMBs and bulk storage applications can not benefit from clustered storage
? What are the caveats to be aware of when deploying clustered storage?
? What are some emerging trends and solutions to keep an eye on for clustered storage
? What are some questions that some vendors do not want you to ask about their solutions!

Green and Environmental Friendly Storage:
Practical Ways to Achieve Energy Efficiency
Green is in-and every storage vendor out there has a green story to tell. Despite the vendor and industry hyperbole about the environmental benefits of their products, there are still no standard metrics by which to measure and compare power consumption or energy efficiency claims. The challenge is sorting out and closing the gap between vendor green messaging and IT data center issues including power, cooling, floor space and other environmental topics including RoHS and e-waste disposal. This session looks at several practical techniques and technologies that you can leverage today to achieve an energy efficiency data center to sustain business growth in an economical and ecological friendly manner.

Topics that will be covered include among others:
? How truthful are vendor claims and what is ?Green wash?
? Facts and Fiction, Myths and Realities:
o Storage is cheaper to buy than to power
o Power avoidance vs. energy efficiency
o Are Solid State Devices (SSD) the silver bullet?
o Dedupe vs. Archive vs. Compression vs. Consolidation
? What?s real and achievable today, what are your options?
? Measuring and determining energy efficiency with emerging metrics
? How to do more with what you have and avoid forklift upgrades
? Who is the ?Greenest of them all? and where to learn more

I will also be keynoting at several TechTarget seminar series events around the U.S. including
StorageIO events page located here.

Cheers
GS