Tag: vmware

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Acadia VCE: VMware + Cisco + EMC = Virtual Computing Environment

Was today the day the music died? (click here or here if you are not familar with the expression)

Add another three letter acronym (TLA) to your IT vocabulary if you are involved with server, storage, networking, virtualization, security and related infrastructure resource management (IRM) topics.

That new TLA is Virtual Computing Environment (VCE), a coalition formed by EMC and Cisco along with partner Intel called Acadia that was announced today. Of course, EMC who also happens to own VMware for virtualization and RSA for security software tools bring those to the coalition (read press release here).

For some quick fun, twittervile and the blogosphere have come up with other meanings such as:

VCE = Virtualization Communications Endpoint
VCE = VMware Cisco EMC
VCE = Very Cash Efficient
VCE = VMware Controls Everything
VCE = Virtualization Causes Enthusiasm
VCE = VMware Cisco Exclusive

Ok, so much for some fun, at least for now.

With Cisco, EMC and VMware announcing their new VCE coalition, has this signaled the end of servers, storage, networking, hardware and software for physical, virtual and clouding computing as we know it?

Does this mean all other vendors not in this announcement should pack it up, game over and go home?

The answer in my perspective is NO!

No, the music did not end today!

NO, servers, storage and networking for virtual or cloud environments has not ended.

Also, NO, other vendors do not have to go home today, the game is not over!

However a new game is on, one that some have seen before, for others it is something new, exciting perhaps revolutionary or an industry first.

What was announced?
Figure 1 shows a general vision or positioning from the three major players involved along with four tenants or topic areas of focus. Here is a link to a press release where you can read more.

CiscoVirtualizationCoalition.png
Figure 1: Source: Cisco, EMC, VMware

General points include:

  • A new coalition (e.g. VCE) focused on virtual compute for cloud and non cloud environments
  • A new company Acadia owned by EMC and Cisco (1/3 each) along with Intel and VMware
  • A new go to market pre-sales, service and support cross technology domain skill set team
  • Solution bundles or vblocks with technology from Cisco, EMC, Intel and VMware

What are the vblocks and components?
Pre-configured (see this link for a 3D model), tested, and supported with a single throat to choke model for streamlined end to end management and acquisition. There are three vblocks or virtual building blocks that include server, storage, I/O networking, and virtualization hypervisor software along with associated IRM software tools.

Cisco is bringing to the game their Unified Compute Solution (UCS) server along with Nexus 1000v and Multilayer Director (MDS) switches, EMC is bringing storage (Symmetrix VMax, CLARiiON and unified storage) along with their RSA security and Ionix IRM tools. VMware is providing their vSphere hypervisors running on Intel based services (via Cisco).

The components include:

  • EMC Ionix management tools and framework – The IRM tools
  • EMC RSA security framework software – The security tools
  • EMC VMware vSphere hypervisor virtualization software – The virtualization layer
  • EMC VMax, CLARiiON and unified storage systems – The storage
  • Cisco Nexus 1000v and MDS switches – The Network and connectivity
  • Cisco Unified Compute Solution (UCS) – The physical servers
  • Services and support – Cross technology domain presales, delivery and professional services

CiscoEMCVMwarevblock.jpg
Figure 2: Source: Cisco vblock (Server, Storage, Networking and Virtualization Software) via Cisco

The three vblock models are:
Vblock0: entry level system due out in 2010 supporting 300 to 800 VMs for initial customer consolidation, private clouds or other diverse applications in small or medium sized business. You can think of this as a SAN in a CAN or Data Center in a box with Cisco UCS and Nexus 1000v, EMC unified storage secured by RSA and VMware vSphere.

Vblock1: mid sized building block supporting 800 to 3000 VMs for consolidation and other optimization initiatives using Cisco UCS, Nexus and MDS switches along with EMC CLARiiON storage secured with RSA software hosting VMware hypervisors.

Vblock2 high end supporting up 3000 to 6000 VMs for large scale data center transformation or new virtualization efforts combing Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS), Nexus 1000v and MDS switches and EMC VMax Symmetix storage with RSA security software hosting VMware vSpshere hypervisor.

What does this all mean?
With this move, for some it will add fuel to the campfire that Cisco is moving closer to EMC and or VMware with a pre-nuptial via Acadia. For others, this will be seen as fragmentation for virtualization particularly if other vendors such as Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and Microsoft among others are kept out of the game, not to mention their channels of vars or IT customers barriers.

Acadia is a new company or more precisely, a joint venture being created by major backers EMC and Cisco with minority backers being VMware and Intel.

Like any other joint ventures, for examples those commonly seen in the airline industry (e.g. transportation utility) where carriers pool resources such as SkyTeam whose members include Delta who had a JV with Airframe owner of KLM who had a antitrust immunity JV with northwest (now being digested by Delta).

These joint ventures can range from simple marketing alliances like you see with EMC programs such as their Select program to more formal OEM to ownership as is the case with VMware and RSA to this new model for Acadia.

An airline analogy may not be the most appropriate, yet there are some interesting similarities, least of which that air carriers rely on information systems and technologies provided by members of this collation among others. There is also a correlation in that joint ventures are about streamlining and creating a seamless end to end customer experience. That is, give them enough choice and options, keep them happy, take out the complexities and hopefully some cost, and with customer control come revenue and margin or profits.

Certainly there are opportunities to streamline and not just simply cut corners, perhaps that’s another area or analogy with the airlines where there is a current focus on cutting, nickel and dimming for services. Hopefully the Acadia and VCE are not just another example of vendors getting together around the campfire to sing Kumbaya in the name of increasing customer adoption, cost cutting or putting a marketing spin on how to sell more to customers for account control.

Now with all due respect to the individual companies and personal, at least in this iteration, it is not as much about the technology or packaging. Likewise, while important, it is also not just about bundling, integration and testing (they are important) as we have seen similar solutions before.

Rather, I think this has the potential for changing the way server, storage and networking hardware along with IRM and virtualization software are sold into organizations, for the better or worse.

What Im watching is how Acadia and their principal backers can navigate the channel maze and ultimately the customer maze to sell a cross technology domain solution. For example, will a sales call require six to fourteen legs (e.g. one person is a two legged call for those not up on sales or vendor lingo) with a storage, server, networking, VMware, RSA, Ionix and services representative?

Or, can a model to drive down the number of people or product specialist involved in a given sales call be achieved leveraging people with cross technology domain skills (e.g. someone who can speak server and storage hardware and software along with networking)?

Assuming Acadia and VCE vblocks address product integration issues, I see the bigger issue as being streamlining the sales process (including compensation plans) along with how partners are dealt with not to mention customers.

How will the sales pitch be to the Cisco network people at VARs or customer sites, or too the storage or server or VMware teams, or, all of the above?

What about the others?
Cisco has relationships with Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle/Sun among others that they will be stepping even more on the partner toes than when they launched the UCS earlier this year. EMC for its part if fairly diversified and is not as subservient to IBM however has a history of partnering with Dell, Oracle and Microsoft among others.

VMware has a smaller investment and thus more in the wings as is Intel given that both have large partnership with Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft. Microsoft is of interest here because on one front the bulk of all servers virtualized into VMware VMs are Windows based.

On the other hand, Microsoft has their own virtualization hypervisor HyperV that depending upon how you look at it, could be a competitor of VMware or simply a nuisance. Im of the mindset that its still to early and don’t judge this game on the first round which VMware has won. Keep in mind the history such as desktop and browser wars that Microsoft lost in the first round only to come back strong later. This move could very well invigorate Microsoft, or perhaps Oracle, Citrix among others.

Now this is far from the first time that we have seen alliances, coalitions, marketing or sales promotion cross technology vendor clubs in the industry let alone from the specific vendors involved in this announcement.

One that comes to mind was 3COMs failed attempt in the late 90s to become the first traditional networking vendor to get into SANs, that was many years before Cisco could spell SAN let alone their Andiamo startup incubated. The 3COM initiative which was cancelled due to financial issues literally on the eve of rollout was to include the likes of STK (pre-sun), Qlogic, Anchor (People were still learning how to spell Brocade), Crossroads (FC to SCSI routers for tape), Legato (pre-EMC), DG CLARiiON (Pre-EMC), MTI (sold their patents to EMC, became a reseller, now defunct) along with some others slated to jump on the bandwagon.

Lets also not forget that while among the traditional networking market vendors Cisco is the $32B giant and all of the others including 3Com, Brocade, Broadcom, Ciena, Emulex, Juniper and Qlogic are the seven plus dwarfs. However, keep the $23B USD Huawei networking vendor that is growing at a 45% annual rate in mind.

I would keep an eye on AMD, Brocade, Citrix, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Huawei, Juniper, Microsoft, NetApp, Oracle/Sun, Rackable and Symantec among many others for similar joint venture or marketing alliances.

Some of these have already surfaced with Brocade and Oracle sharing hugs and chugs (another sales term referring to alliance meetings over beers or shots).

Also keep in mind that VMware has a large software (customer business) footprint deployed on HP with Intel (and AMD) servers.

Oh, and those VMware based VMs running on HP servers also just happen to be hosting in their neighbor of 80% or more Windows based guests operating systems, I would say its game on time.

When I say its game on time, I dont think VMware is brash enough to cut HP (or others) off forcing them to move to Microsoft for virtualization. However the game is about control, control of technology stacks and partnerships, control of vars, integrators and the channel, as well as control of customers.

If you cannot tell, I find this topic fun and interesting.

For those who only know me from servers they often ask when did I learn about networking to which I say check out one of my books (Resilient Storage Networks-Elsevier). Meanwhile for others who know me from storage I get asked when did I learn about or get into servers to which I respond about 28 years ago when I worked in IT as the customer.

Bottom line on Acadia, vblocks and VCE for now, I like the idea of a unified and bundled solution as long as they are open and flexible.

On the other hand, I have many questions and even skeptical in some areas including of how this plays out for Cisco and EMC in terms of if it can be a unifier or polarized causing market fragmentation.

For some this is or will be dejavu, back to the future, while for others it is a new, exciting and revolutionary approach while for others it will be new fodder for smack talk!

More to follow soon.

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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Should Everything Be Virtualized?

Storage I/O trends

Should everything, that is all servers, storage and I/O along with facilities, be virtualized?

The answer not surprisingly should be it depends!

Denny Cherry (aka Mrdenny) over at ITKE did a great recent post about applications not being virtualized, particularly databases. In general some of the points or themes we are on the same or similar page, while on others we slightly differ, not by very much.

Unfortunately consolidation is commonly misunderstood to be the sole function or value proposition of server virtualization given its first wave focus. I agree that not all applications or servers should be consolidated (note that I did not say virtualized).

From a consolidation standpoint, the emphasis is often on boosting resource use to cut physical hardware and management costs by boosting the number of virtual machines (VMs) per physical machine (PMs). Ironically, while VMs using VMware, Microsoft HyperV, Citrix/Xen among others can leverage a common gold image for cloning or rapid provisioning, there are still separate operating system instances and applications that need to be managed for each VM.

Sure, VM tools from the hypervisor along with 3rd party vendors help with these tasks as well as storage vendor tools including dedupe and thin provisioning help to cut the data footprint impact of these multiple images. However, there are still multiple images to manage providing a future opportunity for further cost and management reduction (more on that in a different post).

Getting back on track:

Some reasons that all servers or applications cannot be consolidated include among others:

  • Performance, response time, latency and Quality of Service (QoS)
  • Security requirements including keeping customers or applications separate
  • Vendor support of software on virtual or consolidated servers
  • Financial where different departments own hardware or software
  • Internal political or organizational barriers and turf wars

On the other hand, for those that see virtualization as enabling agility and flexibility, that is life beyond consolidation, there are many deployment opportunities for virtualization (note that I did not say consolidation). For some environments and applications, the emphasis can be on performance, quality of service (QoS) and other service characteristics where the ratio of VMs to PMs will be much lower, if not one to one. This is where Mrdenny and me are essentially on the same page, perhaps saying it different with plenty of caveats and clarification needed of course.

My view is that in life beyond consolidation, many more servers or applications can be virtualized than might be otherwise hosted by VMs (note that I did not say consolidated). For example, instead of a high number or ratio of VMs to PMs, a lower number and for some workloads or applications, even one VM to PM can be leveraged with a focus beyond basic CPU use.

Yes you read that correctly, I said why not configure some VMs on a one to one PM basis!

Here’s the premise, todays current wave or focus is around maximizing the number of VMs and/or the reduction of physical machines to cut capital and operating costs for under-utilized applications and servers, thus the move to stuff as many VMs into/onto a PM as possible.

However, for those applications that cannot be consolidated as outlined above, there is still a benefit of having a VM dedicated to a PM. For example, by dedicating a PM (blade, server or perhaps core) allows performance and QoS aims to be meet while still providing the ability for operational and infrastructure resource management (IRM), DCIM or ITSM flexibility and agility.

Meanwhile during busy periods, the application such as a database server could have its own PM, yet during off-hours, some over VM could be moved onto that PM for backup or other IRM/DCIM/ITSM activities. Likewise, by having the VM under the database with a dedicated PM, the application could be moved proactively for maintenance or in a clustered HA scenario support BC/DR.

What can and should be done?
First and foremost, decide how VMs is the right number to divide per PM for your environment and different applications to meet your particular requirements and business needs.

Identify various VM to PM ratios to align with different application service requirements. For example, some applications may run on virtual environments with a higher number of VMs to PMs, others with a lower number of VMs to PMs and some with a one VM to PM allocation.

Certainly there will be for different reasons the need to keep some applications on a direct PM without introducing a hypervisors and VM, however many applications and servers can benefit from virtualization (again note, I did not say consolation) for agility, flexibility, BC/DR, HA and ease of IRM assuming the costs work in your favor.

Additional general to do or action items include among others:

  • Look beyond CPU use also factoring in memory and I/O performance
  • Keep response time or latency in perspective as part of performance
  • More and fast memory are important for VMs as well as for applications including databases
  • High utilization may not show high hit rates or effectiveness of resource usage
  • Fast servers need fast memory, fast I/O and fast storage systems
  • Establish tiers of virtual and physical servers to meet different service requirements
  • See efficiency and optimization as more than simply driving up utilization to cut costs
  • Productivity and improved QoS are also tenants of an efficient and optimized environment

These are themes among others that are covered in chapters 3 (What Defines a Next-Generation and Virtual Data Center?), 4 (IT Infrastructure Resource Management), 5 (Measurement, Metrics, and Management of IT Resources), as well as 7 (Servers—Physical, Virtual, and Software) in my book “The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) that you can learn more about here.

Welcome to life beyond consolidation, the next wave of desktop, server, storage and IO virtualization along with the many new and expanded opportunities!

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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I/O, I/O, Its off to Virtual Work and VMworld I Go (or went)

Ok, so I should have used that intro last week before heading off to VMworld in San Francisco instead of after the fact.

Think of it as a high latency title or intro, kind of like attaching a fast SSD to a slow, high latency storage controller, or a fast server attached to a slow network, or fast network with slow storage and servers, it is what it is.

I/O virtualization (IOV), Virtual I/O (VIO) along with I/O and networking convergence have been getting more and more attention lately, particularly on the convergence front. In fact one might conclude that it is trendy to all of a sudden to be on the IOV, VIO and convergence bandwagon given how clouds, soa and SaaS hype are being challenged, perhaps even turning to storm clouds?

Lets get back on track, or in the case of the past week, get back in the car, get back in the plane, get back into the virtual office and what it all has to do with Virtual I/O and VMworld.

The convergence game has at its center Brocade emanating from the data center and storage centric I/O corner challenging Cisco hailing from the MAN, WAN, LAN general networking corner.

Granted both vendors have dabbled with success in each others corners or areas of focus in the past. For example, Brocade as via acquisitions (McData+Nishan+CNT+INRANGE among others) a diverse and capable stable of local and long distance SAN connectivity and channel extension for mainframe and open systems supporting data replication, remote tape and wide area clustering. Not to mention deep bench experience with the technologies, protocols and partners solutions for LAN, MAN (xWDM), WAN (iFCP, FCIP, etc) and even FAN (file area networking aka NAS) along with iSCSI in addition to Fibre Channel and FICON solutions.

Disclosure: Here’s another plug ;) Learn more about SANs, LANs, MANs, WANs, POTs, PANs and related technologies and techniques in my book “Resilient Storage Networks – Designing Flexible Scalable Data Infrastructures" (Elsevier).

Cisco not to be outdone has a background in the LAN, MAN, WAN space directly, or similar to Brocade via partnerships with product and experience and depth. In fact while many of my former INRANGE and CNT associates ended up at Brocade via McData or in-directly, some ended up at Cisco. While Cisco is known for general networking, the past several years they have gone from zero to being successful in the Fibre Channel and yes, even the FICON mainframe space while like Brocade (HBAs) dabbling in other areas like servers and storage not to mention consumer products.

What does this have to do with IOV and VIO, let alone VMworld and my virtual office, hang on, hold that thought for a moment, lets get the convergence aspect out of the way first.

On the I/O and networking convergence (e.g. Fibre Channel over Ethernet – FCoE) scene both Brocade (Converged Enhanced Ethernet-CEE) and Cisco (Data Center Ethernet – DCE) along with their partners are rallying around each others camps. This is similar to how a pair of prize fighters maneuvers in advance of a match including plenty of trash talk, hype and all that goes with it. Brocade and Cisco throwing mud balls (or spam) at each other, or having someone else do it is nothing new, however in the past each has had their core areas of focus coming from different tenets in some cases selling to different people in an IT environment or those in VAR and partner organizations. Brocade and Cisco are not alone nor is the I/O networking convergence game the only one in play as it is being complimented by the IOV and VIO technologies addressing different value propositions in IT data centers.

Now on to the IOV and VIO aspect along with VMworld.

For those of you that attended VMworld and managed to get outside of session rooms, or media/analyst briefing or reeducation rooms, or out of partner and advisory board meetings walking the expo hall show floor, there was the usual sea of vendors and technology. There were the servers (physical and virtual), storage (physical and virtual), terminals, displays and other hardware, I/O and networking, data protection, security, cloud and managed services, development and visualization tools, infrastructure resource management (IRM) software tools, manufactures and VARs, consulting firms and even some analysts with booths selling their wares among others.

Likewise, in the onsite physical data center to support the virtual environment, there were servers, storage, networking, cabling and associated hardware along with applicable software and tucked away in all of that, there were also some converged I/O and networking, and, IOV technologies.

Yes, IOV, VIO and I/O networking convergence were at VMworld in force, just ask Jon Torr of Xsigo who was beaming like a proud papa wanting to tell anyone who would listen that his wares were part of the VMworld data center (Disclosure: Thanks for the T-Shirt).

Virtensys had their wares on display with Bob Nappa more than happy to show the technology beyond an UhiGui demo including how their solution includes disk drives and an LSI MegaRAID adapter to support VM boot while leveraging off-the shelf or existing PCIe adapters (SAS, FC, FCoE, Ethernet, SATA, etc.) while allowing adapter sharing across servers, not to mention, they won best new technology at VMworld award.

NextIO who is involved in the IOV / VIO game was there along with convergence vendors Brocade, Cisco, Qlogic and Emulex among others. Rest assured, there are many other vendors and VARs in the VIO and IOV game either still in stealth, semi-stealth or having recently launched.

IOV and VIO are complimentary to I/O and networking convergence in that solutions like those from Aprius, Virtensys, Xsigo, NextIO and others. While they sound similar, and in fact there is confusion as to if Fibre Channel N_Port Virtual ID (FC_NPVID) and VMware virtual adapters are IOV and VIO vs. solutions that are focused on PCIe device/resource extension and sharing.

Another point of confusion around I/O virtualization and virtual I/O are blade system or blade center connectivity solutions such as HP Virtual Connect or IBM Fabric Manger not to mention those form Engenera add confusion to the equation. Some of the buzzwords that you will be hearing and reading more about include PCIe Single Root IOV (SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IOV (MR-IOV). Think of it this way, within VMware you have virtual adapters, and Fibre Channel Virtualization N_Port IDs for LUN mapping/masking, zone management and other tasks.

IOV enables localized sharing of physical adapters across different physical servers (blades or chassis) with distances measured in a few meters; after all, it’s the PCIe bus that is being extended. Thus, it is not a replacement for longer distance in the data center solutions such as FCoE or even SAS for that matter, thus they are complimentary, or at least should be considered complimentary.

The following are some links to previous articles and related material including an excerpt (yes, another plug ;)) from chapter 9 “Networking with you servers and storage” of new book “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC). Speaking of virtual and physical, “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (CRC) was on sale at the physical VMworld book store this week, as well as at the virtual book stores including Amazon.com

The Green and Virtual Data Center

The Green and Virtual Data Center (CRC) on book shelves at VMworld Book Store

Links to some IOV, VIO and I/O networking convergence pieces among others, as well as news coverage, comments and interviews can be found here and here with StorageIOblog posts that may be of interest found here and here.

SearchSystemChannel: Comparing I/O virtualization and virtual I/O benefits – August 2009

Enterprise Storage Forum: I/O, I/O, It’s Off to Virtual Work We Go – December 2007

Byte and Switch: I/O, I/O, It’s Off to Virtual Work We Go (Book Chapter Excerpt) – April 2009

Thus I went to VMworld in San Francisco this past week as much of the work I do is involved with convergence similar to my background, that is, servers, storage, I/O networking, hardware, software, virtualization, data protection, performance and capacity planning.

As to the virtual work, well, I spent some time on airplanes this week which as is often the case, my virtual office, granted it was real work that had to be done, however I also had a chance to meet up with some fellow tweeters at a tweet up Tuesday evening before getting back in a plane in my virtual office.

Now, I/O, I/O, its back to real work I go at Server and StorageIO , kind of rhymes doesnt it!

I/O, I/O, Its off to Virtual Work and VMworld I Go (or went)

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March and Mileage Mania Wrap-up

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the common themes include:

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

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

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

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

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

    Cheers gs

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

    twitter @storageio

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

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    Out and About Update

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

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

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

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

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

    Cheers – gs

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

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    Is There a Data and I/O Activity Recession?

    Storage I/O trends

    With all the focus on both domestic and international economic woes and discussion of recessions and depressions and possible future rapid inflation, recent conversations with IT professionals from organizations of all size across different industry sectors and geographies prompted the question, is there also a data and I/O activity recession?

    Here’s the premise, if you listen to current economic and financial reports as well as employment information, the immediate conclusion is that yes, there should also be an I recession in the form of contraction in the amount of data being processed, moved and stored which would also impact I/O (e.g. DAS,, LAN, SAN, FAN or NAS, MAN, WAN) networking activity as well. After all, the server, storage, I/O and networking vendors earnings are all being impacted right?

    As is often the case, there is more to the story, certainly vendor earnings are down and some vendors are shipping less product than during corresponding periods from a year or more ago. Likewise, I continue to hear from both IT organizations, vars and vendors of lengthened sales cycles due to increased due diligence and more security of IT acquisitions meaning that sales and revenue forecasts continue to be very volatile with some vendors pulling back on their future financial guidance.

    However, does that mean fewer servers, storage, I/O and networking components not to mention less software is being shipped? In some cases there is or has been a slow down. However in other cases, due to pricing pressures, increased performance and capacity density where more work can be done by fewer devices, consolidation, data footprint reduction, optimization, virtualization including VMware and other techniques, not to mention a decrease in some activity, there is less demand. On the other hand, while some retail vendors are seeing their business volume decrease, others such as Amazon are seeing continued heavy demand and activity.

    Been on a trip lately through an airport? Granted the airlines have instituted capacity management (e.g. capacity planning) and fleet optimization to align the number of flights or frequency as well as aircraft type (tiering) to the demand. In some cases smaller planes, in other cases larger planes, for some more stops at a lower price (trade time for money) or in other cases shorter direct routes for a higher fee. The point being is that while there is an economic recession underway, and granted there are fewer flights, many if not most of those flights are full which means transactions and information to process by the airlines reservations and operational as well as customer relations and loyalty systems.

    Mergers and acquisitions usually mean a reduction or consolidation of activity resulting in excess and surplus technologies, yet talking with some financial services organizations, over time some of their systems will be consolidated to achieve operating efficiency and synergies, near term, in some cases, there is the need for more IT resources to support the increased activity of supporting multiple applications, increased customer inquiry and conversion activity.

    On a go forward basis, there is the need to support more applications and services that will generate more I/O activity to enable data to be moved, processed and stored. Not to mention, data being retained in multiple locations for longer periods of time to meet both compliance and non regulatory compliance requirements as well as for BC/DR and business intelligence (BI) or data mining for marketing and other purposes.

    Speaking of the financial sector, while the economic value of most securities is depressed, and with the wild valuation swings in the stock markets, the result is more data to process, move and store on a daily basis, all of which continues to place more demand on IT infrastructure resources including servers, storage, I/O networking, software, facilities and the people to support them.

    Dow Jones Trading Activity Volume
    Dow Jones Trading Activity Volume (Courtesy of data360.org)

    For example, the amount of Dow Jones trading activity is on a logarithmic upward trend curve in the example chart from data360.org which means more transactions selling and buying. The result of more transactions is that there are also an increase in the number of back-office functions for settlement, tracking, surveillance, customer inquiry and reporting among others activities. This means that more I/Os are generated with data to be moved, processed, replicated, backed-up with additional downstream activity and processing.

    Shifting gears, same things with telephone and in particular cell phone traffic which indirectly relates on IT systems particular for support email and other messaging activity. Speaking of email, more and more emails are sent every day, granted many are spam, yet these all result in more activity as well as data.

    What’s the point in all of this?

    There is a common awareness among most IT professionals that there is more data generated and stored every year and that there is also an awareness of the increased threats and reliance upon data and information. However what’s either not as widely discussed is the increase in I/O and networking activity. That is, the space capacity often gets talked about, however, the I/O performance, response time, activity and data movement can be forgotten about or its importance to productivity diminished. So the point is, keep performance, response time, and latency in focus as well as IOPS and bandwidth when looking at, and planning IT infrastructure to avoid data center bottlenecks.

    Finally for now, what’s your take, is there a data and/or I/O networking recession, or is it business and activity as usual?

    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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    On The Road Again: An Update

    A while back, I posted about a busy upcoming spring schedule of activity and events, and then a few weeks ago, posted an update, so this can be considered the latest "On The Road Again" update. While the economy continues to be in rough condition and job reductions or layoffs continuing, or, reduction in hours or employees being asked to take time off without pay or to take sabbaticals, not to mention the race to get the economic stimulus bill passed, for many people, business and life goes on.

    Airport parking lots have plenty of cars in them, airplanes while not always full, are not empty (granted there has been some fleet optimization aka aligning capacity to best suited tier of aircraft and other consolidation or capacity improvements). Many organizations cutting back on travel and entertainment (T&E) spending, either to watch the top and bottom line, avoid being perceived or seen on the news as having employees going on junkets when they may in fact being going to conferences, seminars, conventions or other educational and related events to boost skills and seek out ways to improve business productivity.

    One of the reason that I have a busy travel schedule in addition to my normal analyst and consulting activities is that many events and seminars are being scheduled close to, or in the cities where IT professionals are located who might otherwise have T&E restrictions or other constraints from traveling to industry events, some of which are or will be impacted by recent economic and business conditions.

    Last week I was invited to attend and speak at the FujiFilm Executive Seminar, no private jets were used or seen, travel was via scheduled air carriers (coach air-fare). FujiFilm has a nice program for those interested in or involved with tape whether for disk to tape backup, disk to disk to tape, long term archive, bulk storage and other scenarios involving the continued use and changing roles of tape as a green data storage medium for in-active or off-line data. Check out FujiFilm TapePower Center portal.

    This past week I was in the big "D", that’s Dallas Texas to do another TechTarget Dinner event around the theme of BC/DR, Virtualization and IT optimization. The session was well attended by a diverse audience of IT professionals from around the DFW metroplex. Common themes included discussions about business and economic activity as well as the need to keep business and IT running even when budgets are being stretched further and further. Technology conversations included server and storage virtualization, tiered storage including SSD, fast FC and SAS disk drives, lower performance high capacity "fat" disk drives as well as tape not to mention tiered data protection, tiered servers and other related items.

    The Green Gap continues to manifest itself in that when asked, most people do not have Green IT initiatives, however, when asked they do have power, cooling, floor-space, environmental (PCFE) or business economic sustainability concerns, aka, the rest of the Green story.

    While some attendees have started to use some new technologies including dedupe technology, most I find are still using a combination of disk and tape with some considering dedupe for the future for certain applications. Other technologies and trends being watched, however also ones with concerns as to their stability and viability for enterprise use include FLASH based SSD, Cloud computing and thin provisioning among others. Common themes I hear from IT professionals are that these are technologies and tools to keep an eye on, or, use on a selective basis and are essentially tiered resources to have in a tool box of technologies to apply to different tasks to meet various service requirements. Hopefully the Cowboys can put a fraction of the amount of energy and interest into and improving their environment that the Dallas area IT folks are applying to their environments, especially given the strained IT budgets vs. the budget that the Cowboys have to work with for their player personal.

    I always find it interesting when talking to groups of IT professionals which tend to be enterprise, SME and SMB hearing what they are doing and looking at or considering which often is in stark contrast to some of the survey results on technology adoption trends one commonly reads or hears about. Hummm, nuff said, what say you?

    Hope to see you at one of the many upcoming events perhaps coming to a venue near you.

    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

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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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    Vendors Who Dont’ Want to Be Virtualized?

    Storage I/O trends

    This past week I did a couple of keynote and round table discussions in Plano (Dallas) at Jaspers and in Boston at Smith and Wollensky with a theme of BC/DR for Virtualized environments. In both locations, where we had great participate involvement and discussions, audience members discussed the various merits and their experiences with server virtualization, and one of the many common themes was vendors whose do not support their vertical applications in virtualized environments.

    Say it so Joe (or Jane), especially with so many vendors tripping over themselves to show how their software can be stuffed into a VM in order to jump on the VM bandwagon. How could it be so that some vendors dont’ want to be virtualized?

    It’s true, there are some independent software vendors (ISV) whose vertical packages are commonly deployed in environments of all size who do not for various reasons want nor support their software running in a virtualized environment.

    The reasons some vendors of vertical specific applications do not support their software in virtualized environments can vary from quality of service (QoS), performance, contention and response time or availability concerns, desire to continue selling physical servers and other hardware with their applications, to the desire to keep their application on a server platform that they can control the QoS by insuring that no other applications or changes are made to the server and associated operating system environment.

    Yet another example can be that the vendor has simply not had a chance to test or, to test in various permutations and thus take the route of not supporting their solutions in a virtualized, or, what they may perceive as in a consolidated environment.

    This is in no way a new trend as for decades vendors of vertical software have often take a stance of not allowing other applications to be installed on a server where their software is installed in order for them to maintain QoS and service level agreement (SLA) levels and support guarantees.

    In some cases such as specialized applications including hospital patient care or related systems, this can make sense as well as perhaps complying with regulatory requirements. However there are plenty of other applications where vendors drag their feet or resist supporting virtualized environments without realizing that not all virtualized environments need to be consolidated. That is, a stepping stone or baby step can be to 1st install their software on a VM that has a dedicate physical machine (PM) to validate that their are no instabilities or QoS impacts of running in a VM.

    After some period of time and comfort levels, then the application and its associated VM could be placed along side some other number of VMs in an incremental and methodical manner to determine what if any impacts occur.

    The bottom line is this, not all applications and servers lend themselves to being consolidated for various reasons, however, many of those applications and servers can be virtualized to enable management transparency including facilitating movement to other servers during upgrades or maintenance as well as BC/DR (e.g. life beyond consolidation), a topic that I cover in more detail in my new book “The Green and Virtual Data Center” (Auerbach).

    Likewise, there are some applications that truly for security, QoS, availability, politics, software or hardware dependencies or compatibility among other reasons that should be left alone for now. However there are also many applications where vendors need to re-think or look at why they do not support a virtualized server environment and better articulate those issues to their customers, or, start the testing and qualifications as well as put together best practices guides on how to deploy their applications into virtualized environments.

    Thanks for all of those who ventured out this week in Plano and Boston and participating in the discussion, look forward to seeing and hearing from you again in the not so distant future.

    Ok, nuff said.

    Cheers gs

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

    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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    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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    Data Proteciton for Virtual Environments at VMware VMworld

    Storage I/O trends

    Data protection for virtual environments including protecting virtual servers and virtual storage as well as using virtualization techniques to protect applications and data on non consolidated servers is gaining plenty of attention building on past, recent and this weeks as well as other forthcoming announcements during VMworld 2008 taking place now in Las Vegas. The last month or so has been busy with the usual analyst pre-briefing sessions for some of the items now announced as well as others that are still in the wings.

    Here are a few links, one to a recent webcast (Industry Trends and Perspectives: Data Protection for Virtual Server Environments) along with another to an industry trends and perspective white paper titled “Data Protection Options for Virtual Servers”.

    Now its time to get ready to travel off to New Orleans where I will be speaking about data protection and other related topics for virtual server and storage environments tonight at an event and then later this week in Chicago.

    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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    Links to Upcoming and Recent Webcasts and Videocasts

    Here are links to several recent and upcoming Webcast and video casts covering a wide range of topics. Some of these free Webcast and video casts may require registration.

    Industry Trends & Perspectives – Data Protection for Virtual Server Environments

    Next Generation Data Centers Today: What’s New with Storage and Networking

    Hot Storage Trends for 2008

    Expanding your Channel Business with Performance and Capacity Planning

    Top Ten I/O Strategies for the Green and Virtual Data Center

    Cheers
    Greg Schulz – StorageIO

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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