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VCE revisited, now & zen

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

Yesterday VCE and their proud parents announced revenues had reached an annual run rate of a billion dollars. Today VCE announced some new products along with enhancements to others.

Before going forward though, lets take go back for a moment to help set the stage to see where things might be going in the future. A little over a three years ago, back in November 2009 VCE was born and initially named ACADIA by its proud parents (Cisco, EMC, Intel and VMware). Here is a post that I did back then.

Btw the reference to Zen might cause some to think that I don’t how to properly refer to the Xen hypervisor. It is really a play from Robert Plants album Now & Zen and its song Tall Cool One. For those not familiar, click on the link and listen (some will have DejaVu, others might think its new and cool) as it takes a look back as well as present, similar to VCE.

Robert plant now & zen vs. Xen hypervisor

On the other hand, this might prompt the question of when will Xen be available on a Vblock? For that I defer you to VCE CTO Trey Layton (@treylayton).

VCE stands for Virtual Computing Environment and was launched as a joint initiative including products and a company (since renamed from Acadia to VCE) to bring all the pieces together. As a company, VCE is based in Plano (Richardson) Texas just north of downtown Dallas and down the road from EDS or what is now left of it after the HP acquisition  The primary product of VCE has been the Vblock. The Vblock is a converged solution comprising components from their parents such as VMware virtualization and management software tools, Cisco servers, EMC storage and software tools and Intel processors.

Not surprisingly there are many ex-EDS personal at VCE along with some Cisco, EMC, VMware and many other people from other organizations in Plano as well as other cites. Also interesting to note that unlike other youngsters that grow up and stay in touch with their parents via technology or social media tools, VCE is also more than a few miles (try hundreds to thousands) from the proud parent headquarters on the San Jose California and Boston areas.

As part of a momentum update, VCE and their parents (Cisco, EMC, VMware and Intel) announced annual revenue run rate of a billion dollars in just three years. In addition the proud parents and VCE announced that they have over 1,000 revenue shipped and installed Vblock systems (also here) based on Cisco compute servers, and EMC storage solutions.

The VCE announcement consists of:

  • SAP HANA database application optimized Vblocks (two modes, 4 node and 8 node)
  • VCE Vision management tools and middleware or what I have refered to as Valueware
  • Entry level Vblock (100 and 200) with Cisco C servers and EMC (VNXe and VNX) storage
  • Performance and functionality enhancements to existing Vblock models 300 and 700
  • Statement of direction for more specialized Vblocks besides SAP HANA


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

While VCE is known for their Vblock converged, stack, integrated, data center in a box, private cloud or among other descriptors, there is more to the story. VCE is addressing convergence of common IT building blocks for cloud, virtual, and traditional physical environments. Common core building blocks include servers (compute or processors), networking (IO and connectivity), storage, hardware, software, management tools along with people, processes, metrics, policies and protocols.

Storage I/O image of cloud and virtual IT building blocks

I like the visual image that VCE is using (see below) as it aligns with and has themes common to what I have discussing in the past.


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

VCE Vision is software with APIs that collects information about Vblock hardware and software components to give insight to other tools and management frameworks. For example VMware vCenter plug-in and vCenter Operations Manager Adapter which should not be a surprise. Customers will also be able to write to the Vision API to meet their custom needs. Let us watch and see what VCE does to add support for other software and management tools, along with gain support from others.


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

Vision is more than just an information source feed for VMware vCenter or VASA or tools and frameworks from others. Vision is software developed by VCE that will enable insight and awareness into the Vblock and applications, however also confirm and give status of physical and logical component configuration. This means the basis for setting up automated or programmatic remediation such as determining what software or firmware to update based on different guidelines.


Images courtesy with permission of VCE.com

Initially VCE Vision provides (information) inventory and perspective of how those components are in compliance with firmware or software releases, so stay tuned. VCE is indicating that Vision will continue to evolve after all this is the V1.0 release with future enhancements targeted towards taking action, controlling or active management.

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

Some trends, thoughts and perspectives

The industry adoption buzz is around software defined X where X can be data center (SDDC), or storage (SDS) or networking (SDN), or marketing (SDM) or other things. The hype and noise around software defined which in the case of some technologies is good. On the marketing hype side, this has led to some Software Defined BS (SDBS).

Thus, it was refreshing at least in the briefing session I was involved in to hear a minimum focus around software defined and more around customer and IT business enablement with technology that is shipping today.

VCE Vision is a good example of adding value hence what I refer to as Valueware around converged components. For those vendors who have similar solutions, I urge them to streamline, simplify and more clearly articulate their value proposition if they have valueware.

Vendors including VCE continue to evolve their platform based converged solutions by adding more valueware, management tools, interfaces, APIs, interoperability and support for more applications. The support for applications is also moving beyond simple line item ordering or part number skews to ease acquisition and purchasing. Some solutions include VCE Vblock, NetApp FlexPod that also uses Cisco compute servers, IBM PureSystems (PureFlex etc) and Dell vStart among others are extending their support and optimization for various software solutions. These software solutions range from SAP (including HANA), Microsoft (Exchange, SQLserver, Sharepoint), Citrix desktop (VDI), Oracle, OpenStack, Hadoop map reduce along with other little-data, big-data and big-bandwidth applications to name a few.

Additional and related reading:
Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment
Cloud conversations: Public, Private, Hybrid what about Community Clouds?
Cloud, virtualization, Storage I/O trends for 2013 and beyond
Convergence: People, Processes, Policies and Products
Hard product vs. soft product
Hardware, Software, what about Valueware?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Many faces of storage hypervisor, virtual storage or storage virtualization
The Human Face of Big Data, a Book Review
Why VASA is important to have in your VMware CASA

Congratulations to VCE, along with their proud parents, family, friends and partners, now how long will it take to reach your next billion dollars in annual run rate revenue. Hopefully it wont be three years until the next VCE revisited now and Zen ;).

Disclosure: EMC and Cisco have been StorageIO clients, I am a VMware vExpert that gets me a free beer after I pay for VMworld and Intel has named two of my books listed on their Recommended Reading List for Developers.

Ok, nuff said, time to head off to vBeers over in Minneapolis.

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)

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VMware buys virsto, is it about storage hypervisors?

StorageIO Industry trends and perspectives image

Yesterday VMware announced that it is acquiring the IO performance optimization and acceleration software vendor Virsto for an undisclosed amount.

Some may know Virsto due to their latching and jumping onto the Storage Hypervisor bandwagon as part of storage virtualization and virtual storage. On the other hand, some may know Virsto for their software that plugs into server virtualization Hypervisor  such as VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V. Then there are all of those who either did not or still don’t know of Virsto or their solutions yet they need to learn about it.

Unlike virtual storage arrays (VSAa), or virtual storage appliances, or storage virtualization software that aggregates storage, the Virsto software address the IO performance aggravation caused by aggregation.

Keep in mind that the best IO is the IO that you do not have to do. The second best IO is the one that has the least impact and that is cost effective. A common approach, or preached best practice by some vendors server virtualization and virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) that result in IO bottlenecks is to throw more SSD or HDD hardware at the problem.

server virtualization aggregation causing aggravation

Turns out that the problem with virtual machines (VMs) is not just aggregation (consolidation) causing aggravation, it’s also the mess of mixed applications and IO profiles. That is where IO optimization and acceleration tools come into play that are plugged into applications, file systems, operating systems, hypervisor’s or storage appliances.

In the case of Virsto (read more about their solution here), their technology plugs into the hypervisor  (e.g. VMware vSphere/ESX or Hyper-V) to group and optimize IO operations.

By using SSD as a persistent cache, tools such as Virsto can help make better use of underlying storage systems including HDD and SSD, while also removing the aggravation as a result of aggregation.

What will be interesting to watch is to see if VMware continues to support other hypervisor’s such as Microsoft Hyper-V or close the technology to VMware only.

It will also be interesting to see how VMware and their parent EMC can leverage Virsto technology to complement virtual SANs as well as VSAs and underlying hardware from VFcache to storage arrays with SSD and SSD appliances as opposed to compete with them.

With the Virsto technology now part of VMware, hopefully there will be less time on talking about storage hypervisor’s and more around server IO optimization and enablement to create broader awareness for the technology.

Congratulations to VMware (and EMC) along with Virsto.

Ok, nuff said.

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)

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Putting some VMware ESX storage tips together: (Part II)

In the first part of this post I showed how to use a tip from Dunacn Epping to fake VMware into thinking that a HHDD (Hybrid Hard Disk Drive) was a SSD.

Now lets look at using a tip from Dave Warburton to make an internal SATA HDD into an RDM for one of my Windows-based VMs.

My challenge was that I have a VM with a guest that I wanted to have a Raw Device Mapping (RDM) internal SATA HDD accessible to it, expect the device was an internal SATA device. Given that using the standard tools and reading some of the material available, it would have been easy to give up and quit since the SATA device was not attached to an FC or iSCSI SAN (such as my Iomega IX4 I bought from Amazon.com).

Image of internal RDM with vMware
Image of internal SATA drive being added as a RDM with vClient

Thanks to Dave’s great post that I found, I was able to create a RDM of an internal SATA drive, present it to the existing VM running Windows 7 ultimate and it is now happy, as am I.

Pay close attention to make sure that you get the correct device name for the steps in Dave’s post (link is here).

For the device that I wanted to use, the device name was:

From the ESX command line I found the device I wanted to use which is:

t10.ATA_____ST1500LM0032D9YH148_____Z110S6M5

Then I used the following ESX shell command per Dave’s tip to create an RDM of an internal SATA HDD:

vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/ t10.ATA_____ST1500LM0032D9YH148_____Z110S6M5
 /vmfs/volumes/dat1/rdm_ST1500L.vmdk

Then the next steps were to update an existing VM using vSphere client to use the newly created RDM.

Hint, Pay very close attention to your device naming, along with what you name the RDM and where you find it. Also, recommend trying or practicing on a spare or scratch device first, if something is messed up. I practiced on a HDD used for moving files around and after doing the steps in Dave’s post, added the RDM to an existing VM, started the VM and accessed the HDD to verify all was fine (it was). After shutting down the VM, I removed the RDM from it as well as from ESX, and then created the real RDM.

As per Dave’s tip, vSphere Client did not recognize the RDM per say, however telling it to look at existing virtual disks, select browse the data stores, and low and behold, the RDM I was looking for was there. The following shows an example of using vSphere to add the new RDM to one of my existing VMs.

In case you are wondering, why I want to make a non SAN HDD as a RDM vs. doing something else? Simple, the HDD in question is a 1.5TB HDD that has backups on that I want to use as is. The HDD is also bit locker protected and I want the flexibility to remove the device if I have to being accessible via a non-VM based Windows system.


Image of my VMware server with internal RDM and other items

Could I have had accomplished the same thing using a USB attached device accessible to the VM?

Yes, and in fact that is how I do periodic updates to removable media (HDD using Seagate Goflex drives) where I am not as concerned about performance.

While I back up off-site to Rackspace and AWS clouds, I also have a local disk based backup, along with creating periodic full Gold or master off-site copies. The off-site copies are made to removable Seagate Goflex SATA drives using a USB to SATA Goflex cable. I also have the Goflex eSATA to SATA cable that comes in handy to quickly attach a SATA device to anything with an eSATA port including my Lenovo X1.

As a precaution, I used a different HDD that contained data I was not concerned about if something went wrong to test to the process before doing it with the drive containing backup data. Also as a precaution, the data on the backup drive is also backed up to removable media and to my cloud provider.

Thanks again to both Dave and Duncan for their great tips; I hope that you find these and other material on their sites as useful as I do.

Meanwhile, time to get some other things done, as well as continue looking for and finding good work a rounds and tricks to use in my various projects, drop me a note if you see something interesting.

Ok, nuff said for now.

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)

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Putting some VMware ESX storage tips together (Part I)

Have you spent time searching the VMware documentation, on-line forums, venues and books to decide how to make a local dedicated direct attached storage (DAS) type device (e.g. SATA or SAS) be Raw Device Mappings (RDM)? Part two of this post looks at how to make an RDM using an internal SATA HDD.

Or how about how to make a Hybrid Hard disk drive (HHDD) that is faster than a regular Hard Disk Drive (HDD) on reads, however more capacity and less cost than a Solid State Device (SSD) actually appear to VMware as a SSD?

Recently I had these and some other questions and spent some time looking around, thus this post highlights some great information I have found for addressing the above VMware challenges and some others.

VMware vExpert image

The SSD solution is via a post I found on fellow VMware vExpert  Duncan Epping’s yellow-brick site which if you are into VMware or server virtualization in general, and particular a fan of high-availability in general or virtual specific, add Duncan’s site to your reading list. Duncan also has some great books to add to your bookshelves including VMware vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive (Volume 1) and VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive that you can find at Amazon.com.

VMware vSphere 5 Clustering Technical Deepdive book image

Duncan’s post shows how to fake into thinking that a HDD was a SSD for testing or other purposes. Since I have some Seagate Momentus XT HHDDs that combine the capacity of a traditional HDD (and cost) with the read performance closer to a SSD (without the cost or capacity penalty), I was interested in trying Duncan’s tip (here is a link to his tip). Essential Duncan’s tip shows how to use esxcli storage nmp satp and esxcli storage core commands to make a non-SSD look like a SSD.

The commands that were used from the VMware shell per Duncan’s tip:

esxcli storage nmp satp rule add –satp VMW_SATP_LOCAL –device mpx.vmhba0:C0:T1:L0 –option “enable_local enable_ssd”
esxcli storage core claiming reclaim -d mpx.vmhba0:C0:T1:L0
esxcli storage core device list –device=mpx.vmhba0:C0:T1:L0

After all, if the HHDD is actually doing some of the work to boost and thus fool the OS or hypervisor that it is faster than a HDD, why not tell the OS or hypervisor in this case VMware ESX that it is a SSD. So far have not seen nor do I expect to notice anything different in terms of performance as that already occurred going from a 7,200RPM (7.2K) HDD to the HHDD.

If you know how to decide what type of a HDD or SSD a device is by reading its sense code and model number information, you will recognize the circled device as a Seagate Momentus XT HHDD. This particular model is Seagate Momentus XT II 750GB with 8GB SLC nand flash SSD memory integrated inside the 2.5-inch drive device.

Normally the Seagate HHDDs appear to the host operating system or whatever it is attached to as a Momentus 7200 RPM SATA type disk drive. Since there are not special device drivers, controllers, adapters or anything else, essentially the Momentus XT type HHDD are plug and play. After a bit of time they start learning and caching things to boost read performance (read more about boosting read performance including Windows boot testing here).

Image of VMware vSphere vClient storage devices
Screen shot showing Seagate Momentus XT appearing as a SSD

Note that the HHDD (a Seagate Momentus XT II) is a 750GB 2.5” SATA drive that boost read performance with the current firmware. Seagate has hinted that there could be a future firmware version to enable write caching or optimization however, I have waited for a year.

Disclosure: Seagate gave me an evaluation copy of my first HHDD a couple of years ago and I then went on to buy several more from Amazon.com. I have not had a chance to try any Western Digital (WD) HHDDs yet, however I do have some of their HDDs. Perhaps I will hear something from them sometime in the future.

For those who are SSD fans or that actually have them, yes, I know SSD’s are faster all around and that is why I have some including in my Lenovo X1. Thus for write intensive go with a full SSD today if you can afford them as I have with my Lenovo X1 which enables me to save large files faster (less time waiting). However if you want the best of both worlds for lab or other system that is doing more reads vs. writes as well as need as much capacity as possible without breaking the budget, check out the HHDDs.

Thanks for the great tip and information Duncan, in part II of this post, read how to make an RDM using an internal SATA HDD.

 

Ok, nuff said (for now)…

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)

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Thanks for viewing StorageIO content and top 2012 viewed posts

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

2012 was a busy year (it was our 7th year in business) along with plenty of activity on StorageIOblog.com as well as on the various syndicate and other sites that pickup our content feed (https://storageioblog.com/RSSfull.xml).

Excluding traditional media venues, columns, articles, web casts and web site visits (StorageIO.com and StorageIO.TV), StorageIO generated content including posts and pod casts have reached over 50,000 views per month (and growing) across StorageIOblog.com and our partner or syndicated sites. Including both public and private, there were about four dozen in-person events and activities not counting attending conferences or vendor briefing sessions, along with plenty of industry commentary. On the twitter front, plenty of activity there as well closing in on 7,000 followers.

Thank you to everyone who have visited the sites where you will find StorageIO generated content, along with industry trends and perspective comments, articles, tips, webinars, live in person events and other activities.

In terms of what was popular on the StorageIOblog.com site, here are the top 20 viewed posts in alphabetical order.

Amazon cloud storage options enhanced with Glacier
Announcing SAS SANs for Dummies book, LSI edition
Are large storage arrays dead at the hands of SSD?
AWS (Amazon) storage gateway, first, second and third impressions
EMC VFCache respinning SSD and intelligent caching
Hard product vs. soft product
How much SSD do you need vs. want?
Oracle, Xsigo, VMware, Nicira, SDN and IOV: IO IO its off to work they go
Is SSD dead? No, however some vendors might be
IT and storage economics 101, supply and demand
More storage and IO metrics that matter
NAD recommends Oracle discontinue certain Exadata performance claims
New Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drive (SSD and HDD)
PureSystems, something old, something new, something from big blue
Researchers and marketers dont agree on future of nand flash SSD
Should Everything Be Virtualized?
SSD, flash and DRAM, DejaVu or something new?
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Why FC and FCoE vendors get beat up over bandwidth?
Why SSD based arrays and storage appliances can be a good idea

Moving beyond the top twenty read posts on StorageIOblog.com site, the list quickly expands to include more popular posts around clouds, virtualization and data protection modernization (backup/restore, HA, BC, DR, archiving), general IT/ICT industry trends and related themes.

I would like to thank the current StorageIOblog.com site sponsors Solarwinds (management tools including response time monitoring for physical and virtual servers) and Veeam (VMware and Hyper-V virtual server backup and data protection management tools) for their support.

Thanks again to everyone for reading and following these and other posts as well as for your continued support, watch for more content on the above and other related and new topics or themes throughout 2013.

Btw, if you are into Facebook, you can give StorageIO a like at facebook.com/storageio (thanks in advance) along with viewing our newsletter here.

Ok, nuff said.

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)

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Summary, EMC VMAX 10K, high-end storage systems stayin alive

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

This is a follow-up companion post to the larger industry trends and perspectives series from earlier today (Part I, Part II and Part III) pertaining to today’s VMAX 10K enhancement and other announcements by EMC, and the industry myth of if large storage arrays or systems are dead.

The enhanced VMAX 10K scales from a couple of dozen up to 1,560 HDDs (or mix of HDD and SSDs). There can be a mix of 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch devices in different drive enclosures (DAE). There can be 25 SAS based 2.5 inch drives (HDD or SSD) in the 2U enclosure (see figure with cover panels removed), or 15 3.5 inch drives (HDD or SSD) in a 3U enclosure. As mentioned, there can be all 2.5 inch (including for vault drives) for up to 1,200 devices, all 3.5 inch drives for up to 960 devices, or a mix of 2.5 inch (2U DAE) and 3.5 inch (3U DAE) for a total of 1,560 drives.

Image of EMC 2U and 3U DAE for VMAX 10K via EMC
Image courtesy EMC

Note carefully in the figure (courtesy of EMC) that the 2U 2.5 inch DAE and 3U 3.5 inch DAE along with the VMAX 10K are actually mounted in a 3rd cabinet or rack that is part of today’s announcement.

Also note that the DAE’s are still EMC; however as part of today’s announcement, certain third-party cabinets or enclosures such as might be found in a collocation (colo) or other data center environment can be used instead of EMC cabinets.  The VMAX 10K can however like the VMAX 20K and 40K support external storage virtualized similar to what has been available from HDS (VSP/USP) and HP branded Hitachi equivalent storage, or using NetApp V-Series or IBM V7000 in a similar way.

As mentioned in one of the other posts, there are various software functionality bundles available. Note that SRDF is a separate license from the bundles to give customers options including RecoverPoint.

Check out the three post industry trends and perspectives posts here, here and here.

Ok, nuff said.

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 2006-2024 Server StorageIO and UnlimitedIO LLC All Rights Reserved

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The Human Face of Big Data, a Book Review

The Human Face of Big Data, a Book Review

My copy of the new book The Human Face of Big Data created by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt arrived yesterday compliments of EMC (the lead sponsor). In addition to EMC, the other sponsors of the book are Cisco, VMware, FedEx, Originate and Tableau software.

To say this is a big book would be an understatement, then again, big data is a big topic with a lot of diversity if you open your eyes and think in a pragmatic way, which once you open and see the pages you will see. This is physically a big book (11x 14 inches) with lots of pictures, texts, stories, factoids and thought stimulating information of the many facets and dimensions of big data across 224 pages.

While Big Data as a buzzword and industry topic theme might be new, along with some of the related technologies, techniques and focus areas, other as aspects have been around for some time. Big data means many things to various people depending on their focus or areas of interest ranging from analytics to images, videos and other big files. A common theme is the fact that there is no such thing as an information or data recession, and that people and data are living longer, getting larger, and we are all addicted to information for various reasons.

Big data needs to be protected and preserved as it has value, or its value can increase over time as new ways to leverage it are discovered which also leads to changing data access and life cycle patterns. With many faces, facets and areas of interests applying to various spheres of influence, big data is not limited to programmatic, scientific, analytical or research, yet there are many current and use cases in those areas.

Big data is not limited to videos for security surveillance, entertainment, telemetry, audio, social media, energy exploration, geosciences, seismic, forecasting or simulation, yet those have been areas of focus for years. Some big data files or objects are millions of bytes (MBytes), billion of bytes (GBytes) or trillion of bytes (TBytes) in size that when put into file systems or object repositories, add up to Exabytes (EB – 1000 TBytes) or Zettabytes (ZB – 1000 EBs). Now if you think those numbers are far-fetched, simply look back to when you thought a TByte, GByte let alone a MByte was big or far-fetched future. Remember, there is no such thing as a data or information recession, people and data are living longer and getting larger.

Big data is more than hadoop, map reduce, SAS or other programmatic and analytical focused tool, solution or platform, yet those all have been and will be significant focus areas in the future. This also means big data is more than data warehouse, data mart, data mining, social media and event or activity log processing which also are main parts have continued roles going forward. Just as there are large MByte, GByte or TByte sized files or objects, there are also millions and billions of smaller files, objects or pieces of information that are part of the big data universe.

You can take a narrow, product, platform, tool, process, approach, application, sphere of influence or domain of interest view towards big data, or a pragmatic view of the various faces and facets. Of course you can also spin everything that is not little-data to be big data and that is where some of the BS about big data comes from. Big data is not exclusive to the data scientist, researchers, academia, governments or analysts, yet there are areas of focus where those are important. What this means is that there are other areas of big data that do not need a data science, computer science, mathematical, statistician, Doctoral Phd or other advanced degree or training, in other words big data is for everybody.

Cover image of Human Face of Big Data Book

Back to how big this book is in both physical size, as well as rich content. Note the size of The Human Face of Big Data book in the adjacent image that for comparison purposes has a copy of my last book Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking (CRC), along with a 2.5 inch hard disk drive (HDD) and a growler. The Growler is from Lift Bridge Brewery (Stillwater, MN), after all, reading a big book about big data can create the need for a big beer to address a big thirst for information ;).

The Human Face of Big Data is more than a coffee table or picture book as it is full of with information, factoids and perspectives how information and data surround us every day. Check out the image below and note the 2.5 inch HDD sitting on the top right hand corner of the page above the text. Open up a copy of The Human Face of Big Data and you will see examples of how data and information are all around us, and our dependence upon it.

A look inside the book The Humand Face of Big Data image

Book Details:
Copyright 2012
Against All Odds Productions
ISBN 978-1-4549-0827-2
Hardcover 224 pages, 11 x 0.9 x 14 inches
4.8 pounds, English

There is also an applet to view related videos and images found in the book at HumanFaceofBigData.com/viewer in addition to other material on the companion site www.HumanFacesofBigData.com.

Get your copy of
The Human Face of Big Data at Amazon.com by clicking here or at other venues including by clicking on the following image (Amazon.com).

Some added and related material:
Little data, big data and very big data (VBD) or big BS?
How many degrees separate you and your information?
Hardware, Software, what about Valueware?
Changing Lifecycles and Data Footprint Reduction (Data doesnt have to lose value over time)
Garbage data in, garbage information out, big data or big garbage?
Industry adoption vs. industry deployment, is there a difference?
Is There a Data and I/O Activity Recession?
Industry trend: People plus data are aging and living longer
Supporting IT growth demand during economic uncertain times
No Such Thing as an Information Recession

For those who can see big data in a broad and pragmatic way, perhaps using the visualization aspect this book brings forth the idea that there are and will be many opportunities. Then again for those who have a narrow or specific view of what is or is not big data, there is so much of it around and various types along with focus areas you too will see some benefits.

Do you want to play in or be part of a big data puddle, pond, or lake, or sail and explore the oceans of big data and all the different aspects found in, under and around those bigger broader bodies of water.

Bottom line, this is a great book and read regardless of if you are involved with data and information related topics or themes, the format and design lend itself to any audience. Broaden your horizons, open your eyes, ears and thinking to the many facets and faces of big data that are all around us by getting your copy of The Human Face of Big Data (Click here to go to Amazon for your copy) book.

Ok, nuff said.

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)

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Storage comments from the field and customers in the trenches

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

When I was in Europe presenting some sessions at conferences and doing some seminars last month I meet and spoke with one of the attendees at the StorageExpo Holland event. The persons name (Han Breemer) came up to visit with me after one of my presentations that include SSD is in your future: When, where, with what and how, and Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking industry trends and perspectives. Note you can find additional material from various conferences and events on the backup, restore, BC, DR and archiving accessible via the resources menu on the StorageIO web site.

As I always do, I invite attendees to feel free and follow-up via email, twitter, Linked In, Google+ or other venue with questions, comments, discussions and what they are seeing or running into in their environments.

Some of the many different items discussed during my StorageExpo presentations included:

Recently Hans followed up and sent me some comments and asked if I would be willing to share them with others such as who ever happens to read this. I also suggested to Hans that he also start a blog (here is link to his new blog), and that I would be happy to post his comments for others to see and join in the conversation which are shown below.

Hans Breemer wrote:

Hi Greg,

we met each other recently at the Dutch Storage Expo after one of your sessions. We briefly discussed the current trends in the storage market, and the “risks” or “threats” (read: challenges) it means to “us”, the storage guys. Often neglected by the sales guys…

Please allow me a few lines to elaborate a bit more and share some thoughts from the field. :-)

1. Bigger is not better?

Each iteration in the new disk technologies (SATA or SAS) means we get less IOPS for the bucks. Pound for pound that is. Of course the absolute amount of IOPS we can get from a HDD increases all the time. where 175 IOPS was top speed a few years ago, we sometimes see figures close to 220 IOPS per physical drive now. This looks good in the brochure, just as the increased capacity does. However, what the brochure doesn’t tell us that if we look at the IOPS/capacity ratio, we’re walking backwards. a few years ago we could easily sell over 1000 IOPS/TB. Currently we can’t anymore. We’re happy to reach 500 IOPS/TB. I know this has always been like that. However with the introduction of SATA in the enterprise storage world, I feel things have gotten even worse.

2. But how about SSD’s then?

True and agree. In the world of HDD’s growing bigger and bigger, we actually need SSD’s, and this technology is the way forward in an IOPS perspective. SSD’s have a great future ahead of them (despite being with us already for some time). I do doubt that at the moment SSD’s already have the economical ability to fill the gap though. They offer many of thousands of IOPS, and for dedicated high-end solutions they offer what we weren’t able to deliver for decades. More IOPS than you need! But what about the “1000 IOPS/TB” market? Let’s call it the middle market.

3. SSD’s as a lubricant?

You must have heard every vendor about Adaptive Storage Tiering, Auto Tiering etc. All based on the theorem that most of our IO’s come from a relative small disk section. Thus we can improve the total performance of our array by only adding a few percent of SSD. Smart technology identifies the hot tracks on our disks, and promotes these to SSD’s. We can even demote cold tracks to big SATA drives. Think green, think ecological footprint, etc. For many applications this works well. Regular Windows server, file servers, VMWare ESX server actually seems to like adaptive storage tiering ,and I think I know why, a positive tradeoff of using VMDK’s. (I might share a few lines about FAST VP do’s and dont’s next time if you don’t mind)

4. How about the middle market them you might ask? or, SSD’s as a band-aid?

For the middle market, the above developments is sort of disaster. Think SAP running on Sun Solaris, think the average Microsoft SQL Server, think Oracle databases. These are the typical applications that need “middle market” IOPS. Many of these applications have a freakish IO pattern. OLTP during daytime, backup in the evening and batch jobs at night. Not to mention end of month runs, DTA (Dev-Test-Acceptance) streets that sleep for two weeks or are constantly upgraded or restored. These applications hardly benefit from “smart technologies”. The IO behavior is too random, too unpredictable leading to saturated SATA pools, and EFD’s that are hardly doing more IO’s than the FC drives they’re supposed to relief. Add more SSD’s we’re told. Use less SATA we’re told. but it hardly works. Recently we acquired a few new Vmax arrays without EFD or FASTVP, for the sole purpose of hosting these typical middle market applications. Affordable, predictable performance. But then again, our existing Vmax 20k had full size 600GB 15rpm drives, with the Vmax 40k we’re “encouraged” to use small form factor 600GB 10krpm drives. Again a small step backwards?

5. The storage tiering debacle.

Last but not least, some words I’d like to share with you about storage tiering. We’re encouraged (again) to sell storage in different tiers. Makes sense. To some extent it does yes. Host you most IO eager application on expensive, SSD based storage. And host your DTA or other less business critical application on FC or SATA quality HDD’s. But what if the less business critical application needs to be backed up in the evening, and while doing so completely saturates your SATA pool? Or what if the Dev server creates just as many IO’s as the Prod environment does? People don’t seem to care it seems. To have people realize how much IO’s they actually need and use, we are reporting IO graphs for all servers in our environment. Our tiering model is based on IOPS/TB and IO response time.

Tier X would be expensive, offering 800 IOPS/TB @ avg 10ms
Tier Y would be the cheaper option offering 400 IOPS/TB @ avg 15 ms

The next step will be to implement front end controls an actually limit a host to some ceiling. for instance, 2 times the limit described in the tier description. thus allowing for peak loads and backups.

Do we need to? I think so…

Greg, this small message is slowly turning into a plea. And that is actually what it is, a plea to our storage vendors, and to our evangelists. If they want us to deliver, I feel they should talk to us, and listen to us (and you!).

Cheers,

Hans Breemer 

ps, I love my job, this world and my role to translate promises and demands into solutions that work for my customers. I do take care though not to create solution that will not work, despite what the brochure said.

pps, please feel free to share the above if needed.

Here is my response to Hans:

Hello Hans good to hear from you and thanks for the comments.

Great perspectives and in the course of talking with your peers around the world, you are not alone in your thinking.

Often I see disconnects between customers and vendors. Vendors (often driven by their market research) they know what the customer needs and issues are, and many actually do. However I often see a reliance on market research data with many degrees of separation as opposed to direct and candied insight. Likewise some vendors spend more time talking about how they listen to the customer vs. how time they actually do so.

On the other hand, I routinely see customers fall into the trap of communicating wants (nice to haves) instead of articulating needs (what is required). Then there is confusing industry adoption with customer deployment, not to mention concerns over vendor, technology or services lock-in.

Hope all else is well.

Cheers
gs

Check out Hans new blog and feel free to leave your comments and perspectives here or via other venues.

Ok, nuff said.

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)

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Podcast: vBrownbags, vForums and VMware vTraining with Alastair Cooke

Now also available via

This is a new episode in the continuing StorageIO industry trends and perspectives pod cast series (you can view more episodes or shows along with other audio and video content here) as well as listening via iTunes or via your preferred means using this RSS feed (https://storageio.com/StorageIO_Podcast.xml)

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

In this episode, we go virtual, both with the topic (virtualization) and communicating around the world via Skype. My guest is Alastair Cooke (@DemitasseNZ) who joins me from New Zealand to talk about VMware education, training and social networking. Some of the topics that we cover include vForums, vBrownbags, VMware VCDX certification, VDI, Autolab, Professional vBrownbag tech talks, coffee and more. If you are into server virtualization or virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI), or need to learn more, Alastair talks about some great resources. Check out Alastairs site www.demitasse.co.nz for more information about the AutoLab, VMware training and education, along with the vBrownbag podcasts that are also available on iTunes as well as the APAC Virtualisation podcasts.

Click here (right-click to download MP3 file) or on the microphone image to listen to the conversation with Alastair and myself.

StorageIO podcast

Also available via

Watch (and listen) for more StorageIO industry trends and perspectives audio blog posts pod casts and other upcoming events. Also be sure to heck out other related pod casts, videos, posts, tips and industry commentary at StorageIO.com and StorageIOblog.com.

Enjoy this episode vBrownbags, vForums and VMware vTraining with Alastair Cooke.

Ok, nuff said.

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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Trick or treat and vendor fun games

In the spirit of Halloween and zombies season, a couple of thoughts come to mind about vendor tricks and treats. This is an industry trends and perspectives post, part of an ongoing series looking at various technology and fun topics.

The first trick or treat game pertains to the blame game; you know either when something breaks, or at the other extreme, before you have even made a decision to buy something. The trick or treat game for decision-making goes something like this.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Vendor “A” says products succeed with their solution while failure results with a solution from “B” when doing “X”. Otoh, vendor “B” claims that “X” will fail when using a solution from vendor “A”. In fact, you can pick what you want to substitute for “X”, perhaps VDI, PCIe, Big Data, Little Data, Backup, Archive, Analytics, Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, eDiscovery you name it.

This is not complicated math or big data problem requiring a high-performance computing (HPC) platform. A HPC Zetta-Flop processing ability using 512 bit addressing of 9.9 (e.g. 1 nine) PettaBytes of battery-backed DRAM and an IO capability of 9.99999 (e.g. 5 9’s) trillion 8 bit IOPS to do table pivots or runge kutta numerical analysis, map reduce, SAS or another modeling with optional iProduct or Android interface are not needed.

image of StorageIO big data HPC cloud storageimage of StorageIO big data HPC cloud storage
StorageIO images of touring Texas Advanced Computing (e.g. HPC) Center

Can you solve this equation? Hint it does not need a PhD or any other advanced degree. Another hint, if you have ever been at any side of the technology product and services decision-making table, regardless of the costume you wore, you should know the answer.

Of course the question of would “X” fail regardless of who or what “A” or “B” let alone a “C”, “D” or “F”? In other words, it is not the solution, technology, vendor or provider, rather the problem or perhaps even lack thereof that is the issue. Or is it a case where there is a solution from “A”, “B” or any others that is looking for a problem, and if it is the wrong problem, there can be a wrong solution thus failure?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Another trick or treat game is vendors public relations (PR) or analyst relations (AR) people to ask for one thing and delivery or ask another. For example, some vendor, service provider, their marketing AR and PR people or surrogates make contact wanting to tell of various success and failure story. Of course, this is usually their success and somebody else’s failure, or their victory over something or someone who sometimes can be interesting. Of course, there are also the treats to get you to listen to the above, such as tempt you with a project if you meet with their subject, which may be a trick of a disappearing treat (e.g. magic, poof it is gone after the discussion).

There are another AR and PR trick and treat where they offer on behalf of their representative organization or client to a perspective or exclusive insight on their competitor. Of course, the treat from their perspective is that they will generously expose all that is wrong with what a competitor is saying about their own (e.g. the competitors) product.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Let me get this straight, I am not supposed to believe what somebody says about his or her own product, however, supposed to believe what a competitor says is wrong with the competition’s product, and what is right with his or her own product.

Hmm, ok, so let me get this straight, a competitor say “A” wants to tell me what somebody say from “B” has told me is wrong and I should schedule a visit with a truth squad member from “A” to get the record set straight about “B”?

Does that mean then that I go to “B” for a rebuttal, as well as an update about “A” from “B”, assuming that what “A” has told me is also false about themselves, and perhaps about “B” or any other?

Too be fair, depending on your level of trust and confidence in either a vendor, their personal or surrogates, you might tend to believe more from them vs. others, or at least until you been tricked after given treats. There may be some that have been tricked, or they tried applying to many treats to present a story that behind the costume might be a bit scary.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Having been through enough of these, and I candidly believe that sometimes “A” or “B” or any other party actually do believe that they have more or better info about their competitor and that they can convince somebody about what their competitor is doing better than the competitor can. I also believe that there are people out there who will go to “A” or “B” and believe what they are told by based on their preference, bias or interests.

When I hear from vendors, VARs, solution or service providers and others, it’s interesting hearing point, counterpoint and so forth, however if time is limited, I’am more interested in hearing from such as “A” about them, what they are doing, where success, where challenges, where going and if applicable, under NDA go into more detail.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Customer success stories are good, however again, if interested in what works, what kind of works, or what does not work, chances are when looking for G2 vs. GQ, a non-scripted customer conversation or perspective of the good, the bad and the ugly is preferred, even if under NDA. Again, if time is limited which it usually is, focus on what is being done with your solution, where it is going and if compelled send follow-up material that can of course include MUD and FUD about others if that is your preference.

Then there is when during a 30 minute briefing, the vendor or solution provider is still talking about trends, customer pain points, what competitors are doing at 21 minutes into the call with no sign of an announcement, update or news in site

Lets not forget about the trick where the vendor marketing or PR person reaches out and says that the CEO, CMO, CTO or some other CxO or Chief Jailable Officer (CJO) wants to talk with you. Part of the trick is when the CxO actually makes it to the briefing and is not ready, does not know why the call is occurring, or, thinks that a request for an audience has been made with them for an interview or something else.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

A treat is when 3 to 4 minutes into a briefing, the vendor or solution provider has already framed up what and why they are doing something. This means getting to what they are announcing or planning on doing and getting into a conversation to discuss what they are doing and making good follow-up content and resources available.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Sometimes a treat is when a briefer goes on autopilot nailing their script for 29 of a 30 minute session then use the last-minute to ask if there are any questions. The reason autopilot briefings can be a treat is when they are going over what is in the slide deck, webex, or press release thus affording an opportunity to get caught up on other things while talk at you. Hmm, perhaps need to consider playing some tricks in reward for those kind of treats? ;)

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Do not be scared, not everybody is out to trick you with treats, and not all treats have tricks attached to them. Be prepared, figure out who is playing tricks with treats, and who has treats without tricks.

Oh, and as a former IT customer, vendor and analyst, one of my favorites is contact information of my dogs to vendors who require registration on their websites for basic things such as data sheets. Another is supplying contact information of competing vendors sales reps to vendors who also require registration for basic data sheets or what should otherwise be generally available information as opposed to more premium treats. Of course there are many more fun tricks, however lets leave those alone for now.

Note: Zombie voting rules apply which means vote early, vote often, and of course vote for those who cannot include those that are dead (real or virtual).

Where To Learn More

View additiona related material 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

Watch out for tricks and treats, have a safe and fun Zombie (aka Halloween) season. See you while out and about this fall and don’t forget to take part in the ongoing zombie technology poll. Oh, and be safe with trick or treat and vendor fun games

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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Cloud, virtualization, storage and networking in an election year

My how time flies, seems like just yesterday (back in 2008) that I did a piece titled Politics and Storage, or, storage in an election year V2.008 and if you are not aware, it is 2012 and thus an election year in the U.S. as well as in many other parts of the world. Being an election year it’s not just about politicians, their supporters, pundits, surrogates, donors and voters, it’s also a technology decision-making and acquisition year (as are most years) for many environments.

Similar to politics, some technology decisions will be major while others will be minor or renewals so to speak. Major decisions will evolve around strategies, architectures, visions, implementation plans and technology selections including products, protocols, processes, people, vendors or suppliers and services for traditional, virtual and cloud data infrastructure environments.

Vendors, suppliers, service providers and their associated industry forums or alliances and trade groups are in various sales and marketing awareness campaigns. These various campaigns will decide who will be chosen by their customers or prospects for technology acquisitions ranging from hardware, software and services including servers, storage, IO and networking, desktops, power, cooling, facilities, management tools, virtualization and cloud products and services along with related items.

The politics of data infrastructures including servers, storage, networking, hardware, software and services spanning physical, cloud and virtual environments has similarities to other political races. These include many organizations in the form of inter departmental rivalry over budgets or funding, service levels, decision-making, turf wars and technology ownership not to mention the usual vendor vs. vendor, VAR vs. VAR, service provider vs. service provider or other match ups.

On the other hand, data and storage are also being used to support political campaigns in many ways across physical, virtual and cloud deployment scenarios.

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

Let us not forget about the conventions or what are more commonly known as shows, conferences, user group events in the IT world. For example EMCworld earlier this year, Dell Storage Forum, or the recent VMworld (or click here to view video from past VMworld party with INXS), Oracle Open World along with many vendor analyst, partner, press and media or blogger days.

Here are some 2012 politics of data infrastructure and storage campaign match-ups:

Speaking of networks vs. server and storage or software and convergence, how about Brocade vs. Cisco, Qlogic vs. Emulex, Broadcom vs. Mellanox, Juniper vs. HP and Dell (Force10) or Arista vs. others in the race for SAN LAN MAN WAN POTS and PANs.

Then there are the claims, counter claims, pundits, media, bloggers, trade groups or lobbyist, marketing alliance or pacs, paid for ads and posts, tweets and videos along with supporting metrics for traditional and social media.

Lets also not forget about polls, and more polls.

Certainly, there are vendors vs. vendors relying on their campaign teams (sales, marketing, engineering, financing and external surrogates) similar to what you would find with a politician, of course scope, size and complexity would vary.

Surrogates include analyst, bloggers, consultants, business partners, community organizers, editors, VARs, influencers, press, public relations and publications among others. Some claim to be objective and free of vendor influence while leveraging simple to complex schemes for renumeration (e.g. getting paid) while others simply state what they are doing and with whom.

Likewise, some point fingers at others who are misbehaving while deflecting away from what they are actually doing. Hmm, sounds like the pundit or surrogate two-step (as opposed to the Potomac two step) and prompts the question of who is checking the fact checkers and making disclosures (disclosure: this piece is being sponsored by StorageIO ;) )?

StorageIO industry trends cloud, virtualization and big data

What this all means?

Use your brain, use your eyes and ears, and use your nose all of which have dual paths to your senses.

In other words, if something sounds or looks too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

Likewise if something smells funny or does not feel right to your senses or common sense, it probably is not or at least requires a closer look or analysis.

Be an informed decision maker balancing needs vs. wants to make effective selections regardless of if for a major or minor item, technology, trend, product, process, protocol or service. Informed decisions also mean looking at both current and evolving or future trends, challenges and needs which for data infrastructures including servers, storage, networking, IO fabrics, cloud and virtualization means factoring in changing data and information life cycles and access or usage patterns. After all, while there are tough economic times on a global basis, there is no such thing as a data or information recession.

StorageIO and uncle sam want you for cloud virtualization and data storage networking

This also means gaining insight and awareness of issues and challenges, plus balancing awareness and knowledge (G2) vs. looks, appearances and campaign sales pitches (GQ) for your particular environment, priorities and preferences.

Keep in mind and in the spirit of legendary Chicago style voting, when it comes to storage and data infrastructure topics, technologies and decisions, spend early, spend often and spend for those who cannot to keep the vendors and their ecosystem of partners happy.

Note that this post is neither supported, influenced, endorsed or paid for by any vendors, VARs, service providers, trade groups, political action committees or Picture Archive Communication system (e.g. PACs), both of which deal with and in big data along with industry consortiums, their partners, customers or surrogates and neither would they probably approve of it anyway’s.

With that being said, I am Greg Schulz of StorageIO and am not running for or from anything this year and I do endorse the above post ;).

Ok, nuff said for now

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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More modernizing data protection, virtualization and clouds with certainty

This is a follow-up to a recent post about modernizing data protection and doing more than simply swapping out media or mediums like flat tires on a car as well as part of the Quantum protecting data with certainty event series.

As part of a recent 15 city event series sponsored by Quantum (that was a disclosure btw ;) ) titled Virtualization, Cloud and the New Realities for Data Protection that had a theme of strategies and technologies that will help you adapt to a changing IT environment I was asked to present a keynote at the events around Modernizing data protection for cloud, virtual and legacy environments (see earlier and related posts here and here).

Quantum data protection with certainty

Since late June (taking July and most of August off) and wrapping up last week, the event series has traveled to Boston, Chicago, Palo Alto, Houston, New York City, Cleveland, Raleigh, Atlanta, Washington DC, San Diego, Los Angeles, Mohegan Sun CT, St. Louis, Portland Oregon and King of Prussia (Philadelphia area).

The following are a series of posts via IT Knowledge Exchange (ITKE) that covered these events including commentary and perspectives from myself and others.

Data protection in the cloud, summary of the events
Practical solutions for data protection challenges
Big data’s new and old realities
Can you afford to gamble on data protection
Conversations in and around modernizing data protection
Can you afford not to use cloud based data protection

In addition to the themes in the above links, here are some more images, thoughts and perspectives from while being out and about at these and other events.

Datalink does your data center suck sign
While I was traveling saw this advertisement sign from Datalink (who is a Quantum partner that participated in some of the events) in a few different airports which is a variation of the Datadomain tape sucks attention getter. For those not familiar, that creature on the right is an oversized mosquito with the company logos on the lower left being Datalink, NetApp, Cisco and VMware.

goddess of data fertility
When in Atlanta for one of the events at the Morton’s in the Sun trust plaza, the above sculpture was in the lobby. Its real title is the goddess of fertility, however I’m going to refer to it as the goddess of data fertility, after all, there is no such thing as a data or information recession.

The world and storageio runs on dunkin donuts
Traveling while out and about is like a lot of things particular IT and data infrastructure related which is hurry up and wait. Not only does America Run on Dunkin, so to does StorageIO.

Use your imagination
When out and about, sometimes instead of looking up, or around, take a moment and look down and see what is under your feet, then let your imagination go for a moment about what it means. Ok, nuff of that, drink your coffee and let’s get back to things shall we.

Delta 757 and PW2037 or PW2040
Just like virtualization and clouds, airplanes need physical engines to power them which have to be energy-efficient and effective. This means being very reliable, good performance, fuel-efficient (e.g. a 757 on a 1,500 mile trip if full can be in the neighborhood of 65 plus miles per gallon per passenger with a low latency (e.g. fast trip). In this case, a Pratt and Whitney PW2037 (could be a PW2040 as Delta has a few of them) on a Delta 757 is seen powering this flight as it climbs out of LAX on a Friday morning after one of the event series session the evening before in LA.

Ambulance waiting at casino
Not sure what to make out of this image, however it was taken while walking into the Mohegan Sun casino where we did one of the dinner events at the Michael Jordan restaraunt

David Chapa of Quantum in bank vault
Here is an image from one of the events in this series which is a restaurant in Cleveland where the vault is a dinning room. No that is not a banker, well perhaps a data protection banker, it is the one and only (@davidchapa) David Chapa aka the Chief Technology Evangelist (CTE) of Quantum, check out his blog here.

Just before landing in portland
Nice view just before landing in Portland Oregon where that evenings topic was as you might have guessed, data protection modernization, clouds and virtualization. Don’t be scared, be ready, learn and find concerns to overcome them to have certainty with data protection in cloud, virtual and physical environments.
Teamwork
Cloud, virtualization and data protection modernization is a shared responsibility requiring team work and cooperation between service or solution provider and the user or consumer. If the customer or consumer of a service is using the right tools, technologies, best practices and having had done their homework for applicable levels of services with SLAs and SLOs, then a service provider with good capabilities should be in harmony with each other. Of course having the right technologies and tools for the task at hand is also important.
Underground hallway connecting LAX terminals, path to the clouds
Moving your data to the cloud or a virtualized environment should not feel like a walk down a long hallway, that is assuming you have done your homework, that the service is safe and secure, well taken care of, there should be less of concerns. Now if that is a dark, dirty, dingy, dilapidated dungeon like hallway, then you just might be on the highway to hell vs. stairway to heaven or clouds ;).

clouds along california coastline
There continues to be barriers to cloud adoption and deployment for data protection among other users.

Unlike the mountain ranges inland from the LA area coastline causing a barrier for the marine layer clouds rolling further inland, many IT related barriers can be overcome. The key to overcoming cloud concerns and barriers is identifying and understanding what they are so that resolutions, solutions, best practices, tools or work around’s can be developed or put into place.

The world and storageio runs on dunkin donuts
Hmm, breakfast of champions and road warriors, Dunkin Donuts aka DD, not to be confused with DDUP the former ticker symbol of Datadomain.

Tiered coffee
In the spirit of not treating everything the same, have different technology or tools to meet various needs or requirements, it only makes sense that there are various hot beverage options including hot water for tea, regular and decaffeinated coffee. Hmm, tiered hot beverages?


On the lighter side, things including technology of all type will and do break, even with maintenance, so having a standby plan, or support service to call can come in handy. In this case the vehicle on the right did not hit the garage door that came off of its tracks due to wear and tear as I was preparing to leave for one of the data protection events. Note to self, consider going from bi-annual garage door preventive maintenance to annual service check-up.

Some salesman talking on phone in a quiet zone

While not part of or pertaining to data protection, clouds, virtualization, storage or data infrastructure topics, the above photo was taken while in a quiet section of an airport lounge waiting for a flight to one of the events. This falls in the class of a picture is worth a thousand words category as the sign just to the left of the sales person talking loudly on his cell phone about his big successful customer call says Quiet Zone with symbol of no cell phone conversations.

How do I know the guy was not talking about clouds, virtualization, data infrastructure or storage related topics? Simple, his conversation was so loud me and everybody else in the lounge could hear the details of the customer conversation as it was being relayed back to sales management.

Note to those involved in sales or customer related topics, be careful of your conversations in public and pseudo public places including airports, airport lounges, airplanes, trains, planes, hotel lobbies and other places, you never know who you will be broadcasting to.

Here is a link to a summary of the events along with common questions, thoughts and perspectives.

Quantum data protection with certainty

Thanks to everyone who participated in the events including attendees, as well as Quantum and their partners for sponsoring this event series, look forward to see you while out and about at some future event or venue.

Ok, nuff said.

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)

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What does new EMC and Lenovo partnership mean?

EMC and EMCworld

The past several weeks have been busy with various merger, acquisitions and collaborating activity in the IT and data storage world. Summer time often brings new relationships and even summer marriages. The most recent is EMC and Lenovo announcing a new partnership that includes OEM sourcing of technology, market expansion and other initiatives. Hmm, does anybody remember who EMCs former desktop and server partner was, or who put Lenovo out for adoption several years ago?

Here is the press release from EMC and Lenovo that you can read yourself vs. me simply paraphrasing it:

Lenovo and EMC Team Up In Strategic Worldwide Partnership
A Solid Step in Lenovo’s Aspiration to Be a Player in Industry Standard Servers and Networked Storage with EMC’s Leading Technology; EMC Further Strengthens Ability to Serve Customers’ Storage Solutions Needs in China and Other Emerging Markets; Companies Agree to Form SMB-Focused Storage Joint Venture
BEIJING, China – August 1, 2012
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) and EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today announced a broad partnership that enhances Lenovo’s position in industry standard servers and networked storage solutions, while significantly expanding EMC’s reach in China and other key, high-growth markets. The new partnership is expected to spark innovation and additional R&D in the server and storage markets by maximizing the product development talents and resources at both companies, while driving scale and efficiency in the partners’ respective supply chains.
The partnership is a strong strategic fit, leveraging the two leading companies’ respective strengths, across three main areas:

  • First, Lenovo and EMC have formed a server technology development program that will accelerate and extend Lenovo’s capabilities in the x86 industry-standard server segment. These servers will be brought to market by Lenovo and embedded into selected EMC storage systems over time.
  • Second, the companies have forged an OEM and reseller relationship in which Lenovo will provide EMC’s industry-leading networked storage solutions to its customers, initially in China and expanding into other global markets in step with the ongoing development of its server business.
  • Finally, EMC and Lenovo plan to bring certain assets and resources from EMC’s Iomega business into a new joint venture which will provide Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems to small/medium businesses (SMB) and distributed enterprise sites.

“Today’s announcement with industry leader EMC is another solid step in our journey to build on our foundation in PCs and become a leader in the new PC-plus era,” said Yuanqing Yang, Lenovo chairman and CEO. “This partnership will help us fully deliver on our PC-plus strategy by giving us strong back-end capabilities and business foundation in servers and storage, in addition to our already strong position in devices. EMC is the perfect partner to help us fully realize the PC-plus opportunity in the long term.”
Joe Tucci, chairman and CEO of EMC, said, “The relationship with Lenovo represents a powerful opportunity for EMC to significantly expand our presence in China, a vibrant and very important market, and extend it to other parts of the world over time. Lenovo has clearly demonstrated its ability to apply its considerable resources and expertise not only to enter, but to lead major market segments. We’re excited to partner with Lenovo as we focus our combined energies serving a broader range of customers with industry-leading storage and server solutions.”
In the joint venture, Lenovo will contribute cash, while EMC will contribute certain assets and resources of Iomega. Upon closing, Lenovo will hold a majority interest in the new joint venture. During and after the transition from independent operations to the joint venture, customers will experience continuity of service, product delivery and warranty fulfillment. The joint venture is subject to customary closing procedures including regulatory approvals and is expected to close by the end of 2012.
The partnership described here is not considered material to either company’s current fiscal year earnings.
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $US30 billion personal technology company and the world’s second largest PC company, serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the former IBM Personal Computing Division, the Company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information, see www.lenovo.com.
About EMC
EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

What is my take?

Disclosures
I have been buying and using Lenovo desktop and laptop products for over a decade and currently typing this post from my X1 ThinkPad equipped with a Samsung SSD. Likewise I bought an Iomega IX4 NAS a couple of years ago (so I am a customer), am a Retrospect customer (EMC bought and then sold them off), used to be a Mozy user (now a former customer) and EMC has been a client of StorageIO in the past.

Lenovo Thinkpad
Some of my Lenovo(s) and EMC Iomega IX4

Let us take a step back for a moment, Lenovo was the spinout and sale from IBM who has a US base in Raleigh North Carolina. While IBM still partners with Lenovo for desktops, IBM over the past years or decade(s) has been more strategically focused on big enterprise environments, software and services. Note that IBM has continued enhancing its own Intel based servers (e.g. xSeries), propriety Power processor series, storage and technology solutions (here, here, here and here among others). However, for the most part, IBM has moved away from catering to the Consumer, SOHO and SMB server, storage, desktop and related technology environments.

EMC on the other hand started out in the data center growing up to challenge IBMs dominance of data storage in big environments to now being the industry maker storage player for big and little data, from enterprise to cloud to desktop to server, consumer to data center. EMC also was partnered with Dell who competes directly with Lenovo until that relationship ended a few years ago. EMC for its part has been on a growth and expansion strategy adding technologies, companies, DNA and ability along with staff in the desktop, server and other spaces from a data, information and storage perspective not to mention VMware (virtualization and cloud), RSA (security) among others such as Mozy for cloud backup. EMC is also using more servers in its solutions ranging from Iomega based NAS to VNX unified storage systems, Greenplum big data to Centera archiving, ATMOS and various data protection solutions among other products.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

Note that this is an industry wide trend of leveraging Intel Architecture (IA) along with AMD, Broadcom, and IBM Power among other general-purpose processors and servers as platforms for running storage and data applications or appliances.

Overall, I think that this is a good move for both EMC and Lenovo to expand their reach into different adjacent markets leveraging and complimenting each other strengths.

Ok, lets see who is involved in the next IT summer relationship, nuff said for now.

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)

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Oracle, Xsigo, VMware, Nicira, SDN and IOV: IO IO its off to work they go

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

In case you missed it, VMware recently announced spending $1.05 billion USD acquiring startup Nicira for their virtualization and software technology that enables software defined networks (SDN). Also last week Oracle was in the news getting its hands slapped by for making misleading advertisement performance claims vs. IBM.

On the heals of VMware buying Nicira for software defined networking (SDN) or what is also known as IO virtualization (IOV) and virtualized networking, Oracle is now claiming their own SDN capabilities with their announcement of intent to acquire Xsigo. Founded in 2004, Xsigo has a hardware platform combined with software to enable attachment of servers to different Fibre Channel (SAN) and Ethernet based (LAN) networks with their version of IOV.

Now its Oracle who has announced that it will be acquiring IO, networking, virtualization hardware and software vendor Xsigo founded in 2004 for an undisclosed amount. Xsigo has made its name in the IO virtualization (IOV) and converged networking along with server and storage virtualization space over the past several years including partnerships with various vendors.

Buzz word bingo

Technology buzzwords and buzz terms can often be a gray area leaving plenty of room for marketers and PR folks to run with. Case in point AaaS, Big data, Cloud, Compliance, Green, IaaS, IOV, Orchestration, PaaS and Virtualization among other buzzword bingo or XaaS topics. Since Xsigo has been out front in messaging and industry awareness around IO networking convergence of Ethernet based Local Area Networks (LANs) and Fibre Channel (FC) based Storage Area Networks (SANs), along with embracing InfiniBand, it made sense for them to play to their strength which is IO virtualization (aka IOV).

Too me and among others (here and here and here) it is interesting that Xsigo has not laid claims to being part of the software defined networking (SDN) movement or the affiliated OpenFlow networking initiatives as happens with Nicira (and Oracle for that matter). In the press release that the Oracle marketing and PR folks put out on a Monday morning, some of the media and press, both trade industry, financial and general news agency took the Oracle script hook line and sinker running with it.

What was effective is how well many industry trade pubs and their analysts simply picked up the press release story and ran with it in the all too common race to see who can get the news or story out first, or before it actually happens in some cases.

Image of media, news papers

Too be clear, not all pubs jumped including some of those mentioned by Greg Knieriemen (aka @knieriemen) over at SpeakinginTech highlights. I know some who took the time to call, ask around, leverage their journalistic training to dig, research and find out what this really meant vs. simply taking and running with the script. An example of one of those calls that I had was with Beth Pariseu (aka @pariseautt) that you can read her story here and here.

Interesting enough, the Xsigo marketers had not embraced the SDN term sticking with the more known (at least in some circles) VIO and VIO descriptions. What is also interesting is just last week Oracle marketing had their hands slapped by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) NAD after IBM complained about unfair performance based advertisements on ExaData.

Oracle Exadata

Hmm, I wonder if the SDN police or somebody else will lodge a similar complaint with the BBB on behalf of those doing SDN?

Both Oracle and Xsigo along with other InfiniBand (and some Ethernet and PCIe) focused vendors are members of the Open Fabric initiative, not to be confused with the group working on OpenFlow.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

Here are some other things to think about:

Oracle has a history of doing different acquisitions without disclosing terms, as well as doing them based on earn outs such as was the case with Pillar.

Oracle use Ethernet in the servers and appliances as well as has been an adopter of InfiniBand primarily for node to node communication, however also for server to application.

Oracle is also an investor in Mellanox the folks that make InfiniBand and Ethernet products.

Oracle has built various stacks including ExaData (Database machine), Exalogic, Exalytics and Database Appliance in addition to their 7000 series of storage systems.

Oracle has done earlier virtualization related acquisitions including Virtual Iron.

Oracle has a reputation with some of their customers who love to hate them for various reasons.

Oracle has a reputation of being aggressive, even by other market leader aggressive standards.

Integrated solution stacks (aka stack wars) or what some remember as bundles continues and Oracle has many solutions.

What will happen to Xsigo as you know it today (besides what the press releases are saying).

While Xsigo was not a member of the Open Networking Forum (ONF), Oracle is.

Xsigo is a member of the Open Fabric Alliance along with Oracle, Mellanox and others interested in servers, PCIe, InfiniBand, Ethernet, networking and storage.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

What’s my take?

While there are similarities in that both Nicira and Xsigo are involved with IO Virtualization, what they are doing, how they are doing it, who they are doing it with along with where they can play vary.

Not sure what Oracle paid however assuming that it was in the couple of million dollars or less, cash or combination of stock, both they and the investors as well as some of the employees, friends and family’s did ok.

Oracle also gets some intellectual property that they can combine with other earlier acquisitions via Sun and Virtual Iron along with their investment in InfiniBand (also now Ethernet) vendor Mellanox

Likewise, Oracle gets some extra technology that they can leverage in their various stacked or integrated (aka bundled) solutions for both virtual and physical environments.

For Xsigo customers the good news is that you now know who will be buying the company, however and should be questions about the future beyond what is being said in press releases.

Does this acquisition give Oracle a play in the software defined networking space like Nicira gives to VMware I would say no given their hardware dependency, however it does give Oracle some extra technology to play with.

Likewise while important and a popular buzzword topic (e.g. SDN), since OpenFlow comes up in conversations, perhaps that should be more of the focus vs. if a solution is all software or hardware and software.

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

I also find it entertaining how last week the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and NAD (National Advertising Division) slapped Oracles hands after IBM complaints of misleading performance claims about Oracle ExaData vs. IBM. The reason I find it entertaining is not that Oracle had its hands slapped or that IBM complained to the BBB, rather how the Oracle marketers and PR folks came up with a spin around what could be called a proprietary SDN (hmm, pSDN ?) story feed it to the press and media who then ran with it.

Im not convinced that this is an all our launch of a war by Oracle vs. Cisco let alone any of the other networking vendors as some have speculated (makes for good headlines though). Instead Im seeing it as more of an opportunistic acquisition by Oracle most likely at a good middle of summer price. Now if Oracle really wanted to go to battle with Cisco (and others), then there are others to buy such as Brocade, Juniper, etc etc etc. However there are other opportunities for Oracle to be focused (or side tracked on right now).

Oh, lets also see what Cisco has to say about all of this which should be interesting.

Additional related links:
Data Center I/O Bottlenecks Performance Issues and Impacts
I/O, I/O, Its off to Virtual Work and VMworld I Go (or went)
I/O Virtualization (IOV) Revisited
Industry Trends and Perspectives: Converged Networking and IO Virtualization (IOV)
The function of XaaS(X) Pick a letter
What is the best kind of IO? The one you do not have to do
Why FC and FCoE vendors get beat up over bandwidth?

StorageIO industry trends and perspectives

If you are interested in learning more about IOV, Xisgo, or are having trouble sleeping, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, or here (I think that’s enough links for now ;).

Ok, nuff said for now as I have probably requalified for being on the Oracle you know what list for not sticking to the story script, opps, excuse me, I mean press release message.

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