May 2021 – ROI From Use of Global Control Plane for Expanding VDI Environments
This Server StorageIO® Industry Trends Perspective report looks at industry trend challenges and how to determine Pro?forma, Return on Investment (ROI) cost savings analysis of using a global control plane (Control Plane) for managing cloud?based virtual desktop infrastructures (VDI) environments.
A key driver for this analysis is that VDI has evolved from being a ‘second?class citizen’ commonly deployed for lower priority use?cases with lower resource requirements to higher performance, more demanding workloads, and users. In some cases, this includes mission?critical applications and their users requiring highly managed data infrastructures. This means that VDI has become an enterprise?class, tier?one workload in many environments that can cause new levels of management headaches and resource demands.
When it comes to making VDI cloud?related data infrastructure and associated resource decisions, avoid flying blind. Have good insight that includes technical, workload, and user productivity performance, and economic situational awareness. Leverage a fundamental Pro?forma financial analysis model for making informed decisions comparing VDI automated Management solutions using a global control plane vs. traditional manual management tools and scripts.
Read more in this Server StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) Report.
September 2018 – Cloud File Data Storage Consolidation and Economic Comparison Model
Distributed File Server and Consolidated Cloud Storage Economic Comparison
This Server StorageIO® Industry Trends Perspective white paper report looks at industry and customer trend challenges about remote (on?prem) distributed file?servers and cloud storage consolidation decision making.
IT data infrastructure resource (servers, storage, I/O network, hardware, software, services) decision making involves evaluating and comparing technical attributes (speeds, feeds, features) of a solution or service. Another aspect of data infrastructure resource decision making involves assessing how a solution or service will support and enable a given application workload from a Performance, Availability, Capacity, and Economic (PACE2) perspective.
Keep in mind that all application workloads have some amount of PACE resource requirements that may be high, low or various permutations. Performance, Availability (including data protection along with security) as well as Capacity are addressed via technical speeds, feeds, functionality along with workload suitability analysis. The E in PACE resource decision making is about the Economic analysis of various costs associated with different solution approaches.
Read more in this Server StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) Report.
January 2018 – Excelero NVMesh ? Enabling Database and DBaaS Productivity
Database and DBaaS Performance Productivity Scaling
This Server StorageIO® Industry Trends Perspective report looks at common issues, trends, and how to address various database (DB) and DB as a service (DBaaS) storage performance challenges. Continued growth with new (and existing) applications and workloads including IoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), cognitive computing, as well as analytics require scalable, high?performance database instances for their data repositories.
In this report, we look at Excelero NVMesh, a nextgeneration low?latency, software?defined storage solution that provides “local?like” performance of shared Non?Volatile Memory (NVM) at scale including Solid State Devices (SSD) for DBaaS accessed via NVM Express (NVMe).
Read more in this Server StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) Report compliments of Excelero.
June 2017 – Software Defined Data Infrastructure Essentials (CRC)
Software-Defined Data Infrastructures Essentials provides fundamental coverage of physical, cloud, converged, and virtual server storage I/O networking technologies, trends, tools, techniques, and tradecraft skills. From webscale, software-defined, containers, database, key-value store, cloud, and enterprise to small or medium-size business, the book is filled with techniques, and tips to help develop or refine your server storage I/O hardware, software, and services skills. Whether you are new to data infrastructures or a seasoned pro, you will find this comprehensive reference indispensable for gaining as well as expanding experience with technologies, tools, techniques, and trends.Hardcover hardcopy as well as electronic versions available via various global venues (Learn more and order your copy here).
Radically Simple Software Defined StorageThis Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective report looks at common issues, trends, and how to address different application server storage I/O challenges. In this report, we look at WekaIO Matrix, an elastic, flexible, highly?scalable easy to use (and manage) software?defined (e.g. software?based) storage solution. WekaIO Matrix enables flexible elastic scaling with stability and without compromise.Matrix is a new storage solution that:
- Installs on bare metal, virtual or cloud servers
- Has POSIX, NFS, SMB, and HDFS storage access
- Adaptable performance for little and big data
- Tiering of flash SSD and cloud object storage
- Distributed resilience without compromise
- Removes complexity of traditional storage
This Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective Report looks at the value of data center
infrastructure insight both as a technology as well as a business productivity enabler. Besides productivity,
having insight into how data infrastructure resources (servers, storage, networks, system software) are
used, enables informed analysis, troubleshooting, planning, forecasting as well as cost?effective
decision?making. In other words, data center infrastructure insight, based on infrastructure performance
analytics, enables you to avoid flying blind, having situational awareness for proactive Information
Technology (IT) management. Your return on innovation is increased, and leveraging insight awareness
along with metrics that matter drives return on investment (ROI) along with enhanced service delivery. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) Report compliments of Virtual Instruments.
This Server StorageIO Lab Review solutions brief looks at Enmotus (www.enmotus.com) MicroTiering FuzeDrive technology. In this solution brief, we look at data center and application performance, storage space capacity along with economic issues as well as how Enmotus address these and other challenges. Also included are hands?on test drive experiences and proof points using Enmotus FuzeDrive MicroTiering technologies with different application workloads. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper and Lab Review compliments of Enmotus.
Insight for Effective Server Storage I/O decision-making
This StorageIO® Industry Trends Perspectives Solution Brief and Lab Review looks at the Servers Direct (www.serversdirect.com) converged Content Solution platforms with Seagate (www.seagate.com) Enterprise Hard Disk Drive (HDDs). I was given the opportunity to do some hands-on testing running different application workloads with a 2U content solution platform along with various Seagate Enterprise 2.5” HDDs handle different application workloads. This includes Seagate’s Enterprise Performance HDDs with the enhanced caching feature. If you are in a hurry, simply jump to page 7 and view the results, otherwise, take your time and read the background material. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper and Lab Review compliments of ServersDirect and Seagate.
Cutting down SMB and ROBO virtualization cost by using less hardware
This Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective (ITP) thought leadership white paper looks at addressing the shared storage needs of small medium businesses (SMBs) and remote office branch offices (ROBOs) leveraging Microsoft Scale-Out File Server (SOFS). The focus is on how Microsoft Windows Server 2012 [as well as 2012 R2], Server Message Block version 3.0 (SMB 3.0) and SOFS (Scale-Out File Server) combined with StarWind Virtual SAN management software unlock the full value of server-based storage. Unlocking the value of server-based storage is particular important for ROBO and SMBs who have SQL Server databases and Hyper-V server virtualization. This approach provides a cost effective high-performance resilient storage option for small SMBs and ROBOs. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of StarWind Software.
July 2014 – Seagate 1200 12Gbps Enterprise SAS SSDs
Enterprise 12Gbps SAS and SSDs – Better Together – Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage Strategy
The question to ask yourself is not if flash Solid State Device (SSD) technologies are in your future. Instead the questions are when, where, using what, how to configure and related themes. SSD including traditional DRAM and NAND flash-based technologies are like real estate where location matters; however, there are different types of properties to meet various needs. This means leveraging different types of NAND flash SSD technologies in different locations in a complementary and cooperative aka hybrid manner. In This Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective thought leadership white paper we look at how enterprise class SSDs and 12Gbps SAS address current and next generation tiered storage for virtual, cloud, traditional Little and Big Data infrastructure environments. This includes providing proof points running various workloads including Database TPC-B, TPC-E and Microsoft Exchange in the StorageIO Labs along with cache software comparing SSD, SSHD and different HDDs. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of Seagate 1200 12Gbs SAS SSDs.
Cutting down SMB and ROBO cost by using less hardware with software defined storage management
This Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective thought leadership white paper looks at addressing the shared storage and business resiliency needs of small medium business (SMB), remote office branch office (ROBO) and service providers using VMware vSphere Hypervisor. The focus is on how software defined storage management solutions unlock the full value of server based storage for VMware server virtualization environments. Hyper-Convergence enables software defined storage management technology to be deployed with flexibility including in guest virtual machines (VMs) as a virtual storage appliance (VSA). VMware has demonstrated the viability of running storage in a VM as being good enough with their own VSA prior to the release of Virtual SAN in 2014. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of StarWind Software Virtual SAN (VSAN) for VMware vSphere.
Using less hardware with software defined storage management
There is no such thing as an information recession with more data being generated, processed, moved, stored and retained longer. In addition, people and data are living longer as well as getting larger. There are economic challenges requiring new outside of the box thinking boosting your return on innovation (the new ROI) and return on investment (traditional ROI). Key to support various types of business environments and their information technology (IT) / ITC applications are cost effective, flexible and resilient data infrastructures that support virtual machine (VM) centric solutions. This Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective thought leadership white paper looks at addressing the needs of Microsoft Hyper-V environments to address economic, service, growth, flexibility and technology challenges. The focus is on how software defined storage management solutions unlock the full value of server based storage for Hyper-V environments. Benefits include removing complexity to reduce cost while enhancing flexibility, service and business systems resiliency along with disaster recovery without compromise. Primary audiences include Small Medium Business (SMB), Remote Office Branch Office (ROBO) of larger organizations along with managed service providers (Cloud, Internet and Web) that are using Hyper-V as part of their solutions. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of StarWind Software Virtual SAN (VSAN) for Microsoft Hyper-V.
Enterprise SSHD and Flash SSD – Better Together – Part of an Enterprise Tiered Storage StrategyThe question to ask yourself is not if flash Solid State Device (SSD) technologies are in your future. Instead the questions are when, where, using what, how to configure and related themes. SSD including traditional DRAM and NAND flash-based technologies are like real estate where location matters; however, there are different types of properties to meet various needs. This means leveraging different types of NAND flash SSD technologies in different locations in a complementary and cooperative aka hybrid manner. In This Server StorageIO Industry Trends Perspective thought leadership white paper we look at how enterprise class Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHD) and how they address current and next generation tiered storage for virtual, cloud, traditional Little and Big Data infrastructure environments. This includes providing proof points running various workloads including Database TPC-B, TPC-E and Microsoft Exchange in the StorageIO Labs comparing SSHD, SSD and different HDDs. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of Seagate Enterprise Turbo SSHD.
Balancing Performance, Availability, Capacity, Energy for long-term data protection and retentionThere is no such thing as a data recession and no end in sight for the amount of data that will need to be stored and protected for longer periods of time. Organizations of all sizes are faced with a growing data footprint that results in more data to manage, protect and preserve for longer periods of time. Magnetic tape media (tape) is a data storage technology that has been routinely declared dead over the past couple of decades. With recently released tape roadmaps along with product enhancements, it is safe to say there is plenty of life left in this important data storage medium that enables more inactive data to be stored in a cost effective manner. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of Quantum.
Balancing Performance, Availability, Capacity, Energy (PACE) and Economic Effectiveness
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) is known as an interface for connecting hard disk drives (HDD) to servers and storage systems; it is also widely used for attaching storage systems to servers. This industry trends and perspective white paper describes how SAS is being used by small medium businesses (SMB) and by data centers for high performance enterprise storage connectivity. SAS has become a viable interconnect along side of Fibre Channel (FC), iSCSI, and InfiniBand (IB) for consolidating multiple servers to access and share storage. With the introduction of SAS switch products, SAS enables the connectivity scaling, functionality and performance expected of higher priced Storage Area Network (SAN) options. Read more about the business benefits of shared SAS storage for SMB, cloud, Big data and big bandwidth video and virtual environments in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of LSI.
October 2010 – End to End Systems Resource Analysis for Virtual, Cloud and Abstracted Environments
Importance of Situational Awareness for Virtual and Abstracted Environments
Many organizations are in the planning phase or already executing initiatives moving their IT applications and data to abstracted, cloud (public or private) virtualized or other forms of efficient, effective dynamic operating environments. Others are in the process of exploring where, when, why and how to use various forms of abstraction techniques and technologies to address various issues. Issues include opportunities to leverage virtualization and abstraction techniques that enable IT agility, flexibility, resiliency and salability in a cost effective yet productive manner.
An important need when moving to a cloud or virtualized dynamic environment is to have situational awareness of IT resources. This means having insight into how IT resources are being deployed to support business applications and to meet service objectives in a cost effective manner. Awareness of IT resource usage provides insight necessary for both tactical and strategic planning as well as decision making. Effective management requires insight into not only what resources are at hand but also how they are being used to decide where different applications and data should be placed to effectively meet business requirements. Learn more about the importance and opportunities associated with gaining situational awareness using E2E SRA for virtual, cloud and abstracted environments in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of SANpulse.
November 2010 – Driving IT Storage Effectiveness with Real-time Compression
Leveraging Data Footprint Reduction (DFR) and Storage Services Innovation
Storage services continue to evolve from RAID, to virtualization, thin or dynamic provisioning, local and remote data replication, space saving snapshots, access (block, file, object and cloud) along with tiering and data footprint reduction (DFR). A focus on storage services is enabling efficient and effective storage optimization, boosting both performance and productivity across all applications and tiers of storage while supporting more data in a denser footprint. Read more about how real-time compression enables these and other benefits in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of IBM Real-time compression.
What to look for and what to avoid.IT Organizations are faced with the constant demand to store more data, including multiple copies of the same or similar data, for longer periods of time. The result is an expanding data footprint resulting in increased IT expenses, both capital and operational, due to additional Infrastructure Resource Management activities to support and sustain given levels of application Quality of Service (QoS) delivery. Data de-duplication is a techniques that recognizes redundant data and uses reference pointers to eliminate the need to store the same data multiple times. It reduces the impact of expanding data footprints by optimizing disk storage requirements, and it reduces network bandwidth capacity needed to transmit data sets. The result for data sets like back-up, with high levels of redundancy, is that less space and bandwidth are needed to store or transmit a given amount of information. An important attribute of some de-dupe solutions is the ability to coexist with existing environments, leveraging installed technologies and maximizing investment protection while minimizing IT operations disruptions. Read more in this StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of Quantum
April 2010 – LTO and Magnetic Tapes Lively Roadmap
With a roadmap like this, how can tape be dead?
There is no such thing as a data recession and no end in sight for the amount of data that will need to be stored and protected for longer periods of time. IT organizations of all sizes contend with a growing data footprint with more data to manage, protect and preserve for longer periods of time. Tape is a technology that has been routinely declared dead over the past couple of decades. With the recently released LTO (Linear Tape Open) roadmap, it is safe to say there is plenty of life left in this data storage medium. The LTO roadmap shows a continuing trend of enabling more data to be safely protected and stored on an individual tape cartridge, helping to support continued data growth.
As is often the case with time proven technologies, magnetic tape has been declared dead at the hands of other emerging technologies and startup vendors – largely as a result of more marketing resources being applied. The reality is that more data is being stored on magnetic tape today than in the past in a denser, more efficient footprint. Click here to read more in This Server StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of FujiFilm TapePower.com.
November 2009 – Tape in the cloud
Magnetic Tapes Changing Role in support of Public and Private Clouds
Not to worry, it is not storm clouds in store for magnetic tape, or at least in the foreseeable future Despite continued hype about tapes demise, the venerable data storage medium is finding new roles as an ultra low-cost long term medium for data preservation and retention. Where and how tape is used or located can expect to continue to change along with being paired with complementary technology including disk to disk (D2D) backup, VTLs with replication and dedupe. Click here to read more in This Server StorageIO Industry Trends and Perspective (ITP) white paper compliments of FujiFilm TapePower.com.
August 2009 – (Updated) Data Protection Options for Virtualizes Servers
Demystifying Virtual Server Data Protection (Enhanced version of 2008 white paper)
There is no such thing as a data or data protection recession, however, organizations of all size need to balance the need to support and protect an increasing amount of data in the same or smaller footprint. This has led to a focus around data center optimization and efficiency, including server virtualization.
Server vitalization continues to be a popular industry focus, particularly to address IT data center power, cooling, floor space and environmental (PCFE) issues (commonly referred to as green IT computing) along with supporting next generation virtualizes data center environments. There are many challenges and options related to protecting data and applications in a virtual server environment. This in-depth report explains what your organization needs to know as it moves into a virtual realm.
The Changing and Evolving Role of Magnetic Tape
IT organizations of all sizes contend with a growing data footprint with more data to manage, protect and preserve for longer periods of time. Online primary storage, has focus a on fast low-latency, reliable access to data while near-line secondary storage has a focus on low cost and high capacity. Long term data retention requires a combination of ultra-low cost, good performance during storage and retrieval, and reduced footprint in terms of power, cooling, floor-space and economics (PCFE) – also known as a small green data footprint – for inactive data. This white paper looks at the evolving role of magnetic tape in a tiered data infrastructure.
ISBN-10: 1420086669 and ISBN-13: 978-1420086669
Hardcover • Approximately 376 pages • Over 100 Illustrations, Figures and Tables
The Green and Virtual Data Center examines issues and opportunities for enabling efficient, effective, optimized, economical and productive IT data centers for business sustainability with a by product of helping the environment. Addressing multiple technology domains and disciplines, this book looks at design and implementation tradeoffs using various best practices and technologies to sustain application and business growth while maximizing IT resources, such as power, cooling, floor space, storage, server performance, and network capacity along with management software tools.
Data Footprint Reduction with Quality of Service (QoS) for Data Protection
Organizations of all sizes are faced with the demands of storing more data, including multiple copies of the same or similar data, for longer periods of time. The result is an expanding data footprint that results in increased IT resource management costs to support and sustain given levels of application and information Quality of Service (QoS) delivery.An approach to providing relief from the pressures, costs and complexities associated with managing data protection for an expanding data footprint including reducing the amount of data transmitted over wide area network (WAN) links is data de-duplication (de-dupe).Data de-dupe reduces the impact of expanding data footprints by optimizing storage and network bandwidth capacity used to store protected data, enabling improved utilization and more information to be processed in a given time frame.
Demystifying Virtual Server Data Protection – Best Practices and Tips
Server vitalization continues to be a popular industry focus, particularly to address IT data center power, cooling, floor space and environmental (PCFE) issues (commonly referred to as green IT computing) along with supporting next generation virtualizes data center environments. There are many challenges and options related to protecting data and applications in a virtual server environment. This in-depth report explains what your organization needs to know as it moves into a virtual realm.
Clustered and Grid Bulk Storage and File Serving for scaling performance, availability and capacity.
Enabling Scalable Storage Performance, Availability and Capacity for unstructured data and Web 2.0 applications. The growth of structured and unstructured data continues at an explosive rate in most environments resulting in a constantly expanding data footprint requiring data and storage management resources. Similarly, the relative ease of use of NFS and Windows CIFS file sharing based storage, also known as Network Attached Storage (NAS), has led to a proliferation of NAS and Windows file servers (similar to how the ease of use of personal computers (PCs) has resulted in desktop and server sprawl) and a resulting urgency to consolidate to maximize resource usage and IT management tasks.
Intelligent Power Management (IPM) Energy Savings for Secondary and Near-line Storage
Not all Green Storage is created equal. There are business benefits to aligning the most energy efficient storage to meet different data and application requirements. All storage vendors are claiming some form of green or some power, cooling and floor space savings. This industry trends and perspectives brief looks at a category of storage using intelligent power management (IPM) to support secondary and near-line or off-line data needs, comparing performance with energy savings, to enable you to be the judge of who is the greenest of them all.
Leveraging SSD as part of tiered storage for server and storage consolidation and energy efficiency
Reducing energy consumption is an important topic for many IT data centers. While there is a lot of discussion about reducing energy by doing less, another form of energy efficiency is doing more with less power for green storage. This paper looks at how solid state disk (SSD) and, in particular, FLASH based SSD can be incorporated into an energy-efficiency or green storage strategy as part of a tiered storage architecture to address power and environmental concerns while reducing server and storage I/O performance bottlenecks.
December 2007 – The Many Faces of MAID Storage Technology
How Massive Array of Idle Disks (MAID) is evolving and being implemented in various storage solutions
This paper looks at MAID technology in general along with some current implementations along with benefits, caveats and what to look for and consider when evaluating MAID enabled technology to support primary, secondary and off-line data storage requirements to address energy efficiency and green storage needs.
Issues and solutions for complete data protection and application availability for virtual environments
Server and storage vitalization are complementary technologies that support day-to-day business along with high-availability, business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) needs in a virtual data center environment. This paper looks at the issues and requirements for comprehensive data protection beyond simple server crash consistent restart in a VMware environment and addresses the importance of application-aware enabling data protection technologies.
StorageIO perspective on the EPA Report to Congress addressing public law 109-431 pertaining to IT data center electrical power consumption – On August 1, 2007 the United States environmental protection agency (EPA) responding to public law 109-431 presented a 130 page report (plus 14 pages of executive summary and 67 pages of appendices and other supporting documents) to the U.S. congress addressing IT data center electrical energy consumption and associated issue. The EPA conducted a series of web casts on August 9th 2007 covering the report, its findings, recommendations and plans for moving forward. This is a synopsis of the EPA report to congress with comments by the StorageIO group as to what the EPA report means for green storage.
A look at why and how reducing your data footprint provides a positive benefit to your business
The information necessary to support your business in timely and effective decision making and in maintaining a competitive advantage has an impact on your data footprint. This paper looks at various techniques, and, in particular, how data compaction compression technologies can be applied to various types of data and IT functions to help reduce your data foot print to improve energy consumption and green storage and, enhance existing storage resource utilization while addressing other IT Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) inefficiencies as well as enhancing overall application service levels.
A look at data protection management (DPM and Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM)
Data protection management (DPM) provides timely insight and analysis of data protection activities, including cross domain event correlation and analysis for problem resolution and planning purposes to optimize IT resource management. This paper looks at the expanded focus and shifting landscape of DPM and its role in enabling cost effective IT Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) and service enhancement.
A look at the benefits of DPM for timely and effective data protection management
Backup reporting, cross domain event correlation, root cause analysis, modeling, performance and capacity planning, configuration and policy validation, data protection management (DPM), storage management software tools.
A look at I/O performance bottlenecks and their impact on time sensitive applications
Data center and I/O performance bottlenecks, storage and performance management, consolidation, improving time sensitive applications, I/O acceleration vs. bandwidth acceleration, SAN and NAS.