tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52242909672477887262024-03-14T01:17:30.706-07:00Storage BuzzNews and Trends in Storage and NetworkingMatt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.comBlogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-74282317137806540942016-03-23T05:27:00.002-07:002016-03-23T05:28:47.659-07:00March 2016<span style="color: red;"><b>It's been a great and long journey - but it comes to an end!</b></span><br />
I had started that blog in<b> mid 2007</b> - which seems ages ago, but only yesterday at the same time.<br />
One of my topics back then was "<a href="http://www.sanbuzz.blogspot.de/2007/08/san-buzz-for-august.html" target="_blank">the comeback of solid-state-storage</a>" - and I'm kind of proud to realize, that I was not too far off in summer 2007, considering all the buzz around flash today and the fact, that IDC just declared that "<i>..the adoption of flash was remarkably quick during the year, with flash systems, both HFA and AFA, overtaking HDD-only systems and representing <b>51% of total value shipped in 2015 </b>versus 40% in 2014"</i>!<br />
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Now, LinkedIn was initially launched in 2003, Twitter started off in 2006 and <b>these two are the main reason why <span style="color: #cc0000;">I feel that investing time to write up my blog does no longer make sense.</span></b><br />
And make no mistake:<b> the area of storage and networking is more exciting than ever and our industry is changing by the day, so there would be no lack of news to report!</b><br />
But typically, by the time I get to summarize my thoughts here, these news nowadays are common knowledge and almost outdated.<br />
<br />
<b>So if you are interested to follow my view and ideas on storage and the technologies related</b> to it, please look me up in <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/activities/0_1om-xAwMd5nVLdO1KtQJv8?trk=hp-identity-wvmu" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/MattWernerCH" target="_blank">Twitter</a> ( @MattWernerCH )<br />
<br />
Best regards<br />
Matthias Werner<br />
<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-57841697062987325832015-09-08T23:12:00.001-07:002015-09-09T00:00:12.392-07:00SeptemberA hot summer season comes to an end - with temperatures in Zurich below 10C for the first time since probably May.<br />
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Only a few quick updates today, <b>mostly around hyper-converged infrastructures and Software-defined datacenter. Two trends that obviously go hand in hand. Plus some hot Flash-memory news at the end.</b><br />
<br />
That very topic is discussed in this great overview by <b>George Crump of Storage Switzerland</b>: <i>"A core component of a HCA is SDS. Most HCA solutions are scale-out SDS
solutions that run on each node in a hypervisor cluster. They then
aggregate the storage in each node to create a shared storage pool
accessible by all the virtual machines in the cluster. The value of HCA
is that it eliminates a specialized storage network and significantly
reduces the cost of storage, since a dedicated shared storage system is
not needed. Like any other SDS solution, these HCA solutions then
provide most of the necessary storage services like snapshots and
cloning but many are missing key services like data protection and
replication. For small organizations, a HCA may be all the business
needs."</i> <br />
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Read the details <a href="http://storageswiss.com/2015/08/17/hyper-converged-architecture-vs-software-defined-storage/" target="_blank">here</a>!<br />
And for short video to put things into perspective and make sure hype does not go thru the roof, watch this <a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/video/The-different-faces-of-software-defined-storage-vendors" target="_blank">Toigo-clip here</a>!<br />
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<b>SDDC also was one of the major topics during the recent VMworld conference</b> which took place in San Francisco: actually VMware renamed their previously discussed EVO:Rack product into <a href="http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Unveils-the-Easiest-Way-to-Deploy-and-Operate-the-Software-Defined-Data-Center-at-Scale/1984725#sf40638508" target="_blank">EVO SDDC</a> - to my knowledge the first real product being released under that name.<br />
The related marketing lingo sounds as follows: <i>"With our vision for SDDC, VMware has led the way to the
next-generation data center architecture. We believe the SDDC is the
best architecture for the cloud. By adopting a software-driven,
automated approach to data center design and management, organizations
gain the IT efficiency, agility and control they need to compete and
innovate while achieving tremendous savings — IT organizations can slash
CAPEX by as much as 49 percent. (1)</i><br />
<i>
</i><i>The value of an SDDC-based private cloud has been well recognized by
our customers who are asking us for way to accelerate their journey.
With EVO SDDC, we are taking a major step forward in providing a turnkey
solution that will help our customers to stand up a complete SDDC in a
matter of hours and more efficiently manage it at data center scale."</i><br />
<br />
Lastly: the race and journey to "storage after spinning rust" is in full swing. <b><a href="http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/" target="_blank">The Flash Memory Summit</a> -</b>which takes place in August- currently is the storage event to be and got a lot of attention from the industry and customers.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VzhUAGJ36wA/Ve7jQO6D0uI/AAAAAAAAAl8/-vh5THJFgRo/s1600/FlashMemLogo_Anniversary_300dpi.tif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VzhUAGJ36wA/Ve7jQO6D0uI/AAAAAAAAAl8/-vh5THJFgRo/s320/FlashMemLogo_Anniversary_300dpi.tif" width="320" /></a></div>
As you can read in <a href="http://www.hgst.com/company/media-room/press-releases/HGST-to-Demo-InMemory-Flash-Fabric-and-Lead-Discussions?sthash.abrOduz3.mjjo" target="_blank">this press release</a> from HGST, much of the R&D investments go into research focusing on non-volatile memory ""post NAND-flash: <i>"In-memory computing is one of today's hottest data center trends.
Gartner Group projects that software revenue alone for this market will
exceed US $9B by the end of 2018<sup>3</sup>. In-memory computing
enables organizations to gain business value from real-time insights by
offering faster performance and greater scalability than legacy
architectures."</i><br />
<br />
And to conclude today's news on a local note: <a href="http://ibmresearchnews.blogspot.de/2015/09/eureka-moments-lead-to-radical-new.html" target="_blank">IBM Zurich Research</a> made an important step<i> </i>to eliminate "drift" in PCM (phase change memory) devices: <span style="font-size: small;"><i>"<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Phase change
memory (PCM) devices have been investigated since the early 1970s and in the
past 12 months IBM scientists have made tremendous progress with this
technology publishing a number of milestone papers which demonstrate multiple
bits per cell, <b>making the technology extremely competitive with Flash.</b></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"></span></i></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>
<span lang="NL" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">But PCM doesn</span><span lang="FR" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">’</span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">t come without some drawbacks<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">—</span> </span> a primary culprit being resistance drift. Drift is the change in resistance of the stored
levels over time. Essentially the data moves causing your text document or your
photo to eventually become corrupted and unusable </span><span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">—</span> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">a very bad characteristic
for a storage technology."</span></i></span><br />
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
VMware
EVO SDDC (previously code named VMware EVO: RACK™), will be a fully
automated software suite for delivering the software-defined data center
as an integrated system. Enterprises and service providers will be able
to use VMware EVO SDDC to deploy a software-defined data center at
scale. With VMware EVO SDDC, IT organizations can meet key data center
scale initiatives, ranging from application and infrastructure delivery
automation to business mobility to high availability and resilient
infrastructure, without compromising security, control or choice. - See
more at:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Unveils-the-Easiest-Way-to-Deploy-and-Operate-the-Software-Defined-Data-Center-at-Scale/1984725#sf40638508 </div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
VMware
EVO SDDC (previously code named VMware EVO: RACK™), will be a fully
automated software suite for delivering the software-defined data center
as an integrated system. Enterprises and service providers will be able
to use VMware EVO SDDC to deploy a software-defined data center at
scale. With VMware EVO SDDC, IT organizations can meet key data center
scale initiatives, ranging from application and infrastructure delivery
automation to business mobility to high availability and resilient
infrastructure, without compromising security, control or choice. - See
more at:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Unveils-the-Easiest-Way-to-Deploy-and-Operate-the-Software-Defined-Data-Center-at-Scale/1984725#sf40638508</div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
VMware
EVO SDDC (previously code named VMware EVO: RACK™), will be a fully
automated software suite for delivering the software-defined data center
as an integrated system. Enterprises and service providers will be able
to use VMware EVO SDDC to deploy a software-defined data center at
scale. With VMware EVO SDDC, IT organizations can meet key data center
scale initiatives, ranging from application and infrastructure delivery
automation to business mobility to high availability and resilient
infrastructure, without compromising security, control or choice. - See
more at:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Unveils-the-Easiest-Way-to-Deploy-and-Operate-the-Software-Defined-Data-Center-at-Scale/1984725#sf40638508</div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
VMware
EVO SDDC (previously code named VMware EVO: RACK™), will be a fully
automated software suite for delivering the software-defined data center
as an integrated system. Enterprises and service providers will be able
to use VMware EVO SDDC to deploy a software-defined data center at
scale. With VMware EVO SDDC, IT organizations can meet key data center
scale initiatives, ranging from application and infrastructure delivery
automation to business mobility to high availability and resilient
infrastructure, without compromising security, control or choice. - See
more at:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Unveils-the-Easiest-Way-to-Deploy-and-Operate-the-Software-Defined-Data-Center-at-Scale/1984725#sf40638508</div>
<div id="stcpDiv" style="left: -1988px; position: absolute; top: -1999px;">
VMware
EVO SDDC (previously code named VMware EVO: RACK™), will be a fully
automated software suite for delivering the software-defined data center
as an integrated system. Enterprises and service providers will be able
to use VMware EVO SDDC to deploy a software-defined data center at
scale. With VMware EVO SDDC, IT organizations can meet key data center
scale initiatives, ranging from application and infrastructure delivery
automation to business mobility to high availability and resilient
infrastructure, without compromising security, control or choice. - See
more at:
http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-newsfeed/VMware-Unveils-the-Easiest-Way-to-Deploy-and-Operate-the-Software-Defined-Data-Center-at-Scale/1984725#sf40638508</div>
Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-82242626229681296462015-07-02T01:39:00.000-07:002015-07-02T01:45:22.527-07:00JulyThe first heat wave is on us this week with temperature forecasts of up to 37C in <b>Zurich </b>- and with it starts <b>Summer vacation time!</b> So if you are headed for the beach or the mountains: Enjoy and don't worry about business during these lazy days of Summer!<br />
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<br />
If you, like myself, enjoy reading, I can recommend <a href="http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/mgi/no_ordinary_disruption" target="_blank">"No Ordinary Disruption"</a> by Dobbs, Manyika, and Woetzel - a team of McKinsey researchers. It summarizes and explains the four major disruptive trends for the early 21st century which are:<br />
<ol>
<li>Urbanization </li>
<li>Accelerating Technology Change</li>
<li>An Aging World (changing demographics)</li>
<li>Global Connections<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2SopcXvyvIs/VZT1oGqBVAI/AAAAAAAAAlQ/kWJ0QuL-F8k/s1600/NOD_small_book_thumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2SopcXvyvIs/VZT1oGqBVAI/AAAAAAAAAlQ/kWJ0QuL-F8k/s1600/NOD_small_book_thumb.jpg" /></a></div>
</li>
</ol>
As you can guess, at least two of them have a very close relationship to our industry (Technology Change and Global Connections) and the authors provide a clear and sometimes scary view of how these disruptions will change our world in the years to come.<br />
<br />
<b>Couple news around storage base technologies - HDD and SDD:</b><br />
<br />
IDC just released the <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25666715" target="_blank">Q1 2015 worldwide storage revenue numbers</a>. As every quarter since Carter was president of the U.S., the capacity sold grew double digit: <i>"Total capacity shipments were up 41.1% year over year to 28.3 exabytes during the quarter."</i><br />
<b>Somewhat hidden in the charts is the fact that "ODM" </b>(which IDC defines as ".. storage systems sales by original design
manufacturers (ODM's) selling directly to hyperscale datacenter
customers)<b> accounted for 12.6% of global spending during the quarter - an increase of 23% compared to Q1 2014. Which means in my own terms that "the cloud" is the 3rd biggest storage vendor in Q1 2015! Agree?</b><br />
<br />
Capacity-wise, the first <b>10TB disk drives</b> are on the horizon:<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/09/hgst_packs_shingles_to_make_10tb_drive/" target="_blank"> HGST announced </a>a helium-based SMR drive (shingled magnetic recording) to be available later this year. As you may know, SMR drives lend themselves to "write-once type" of usage patterns. Read the above article for the detailed technical reasons for that behavior!<br />
<br />
<i>"SSDs are expected to eventually dominate HDDs in laptops and desktops,
but that isn't expected to happen for years. At the end of last year,
SSDs were only in about 15% of new notebooks.</i><br />
<i>
And, prices for SSDs are many times higher than that of HDDs.
</i><br />
<i>
For example, a data center-class HDD with 6TB of capacity sells for $185
today and will drop to about $165 by the end of the year -- about 3
cents per gigabyte, according to market research firm Gartner. A 4TB HDD
for a laptop sells for $95 to computer manufacturers or about 2 cents
per gigabyte"
</i><br />
Read <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2939438/data-storage-solutions/the-rise-of-ssds-over-hard-drives-debunked.html" target="_blank">this great summary</a> (Computerworld) on the race for capacity and price between the various HDD and SSD technologies!<br />
<br />
Lastly, <b>switching to the topic of hyperconverged</b>: Nutanix has <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/09/nutanix_scale_out_fileserver_coming_q4_2015/" target="_blank">made some waves</a> about an upcoming new solution: <i>"Nutanix is working on a scale-out file server and thinks it will set the
cat among the pigeons in array-land, especially NetApp's filer
business."</i><br />
They are positioning themselves for an upcoming IPO as you can see <a href="http://diginomica.com/2015/06/10/exclusive-nutanix-ceo-dheeraj-pandey-on-post-legacy-it-never-buy-big-stuff-again/" target="_blank">from these comments</a> in the finance industry, so obviously try to dress up for Wall St. these days!<br />
<br />
My company <b>Avnet</b>, by the way, is greatly positioned to help our clients and partners to grow into the era of "Converged" or "Hyperconverged" and take advantage of the cost, ease of use and flexibility benefits of these solutions. <b>Watch this short video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n1jA4YmW-s" target="_blank">here</a> to see what Avnet can do for you!</b>Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-45601904054080751242015-05-29T04:34:00.005-07:002015-05-29T04:34:59.387-07:00June<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Errandum - talking about the perceived demise of Fibre Channel in my last post: meanwhile <b>CISCO</b> just quietly announced a new, compact 96-port 16 Gbps SAN switch , the <b>MDS 9396S</b> (in CISCO speak the "S" stands for 16 Gbps). Base configuration starts at 48 ports with SW/license upgrades in 12-port increments up to 96 ports.</div>
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Read the details <a href="http://blogs.cisco.com/datacenter/cisco-broadens-san-portfolio-mds9396s?_ga=1.264530319.1246859414.1432280956" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/4500246758/Cisco-expands-FC-converged-Ethernet-storage-switching" target="_blank">here</a> and find the product home <a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/storage-networking/mds-9396s-16g-multilayer-fabric-switch/index.html" target="_blank">here</a>!</div>
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At the other end of the San Jose networking-neighborhood, at "130 Holger Way" (where <b>Brocade</b> is located), an almost flat SAN revenue was <a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/financial-results/brocade-fiscal-2q15-financial-results/" target="_blank">reported</a> for their Q2 of FY2015: <i>"SAN product revenue was $314 million, down 2% year over year. The
decline was primarily the result of softer storage demand and
operational issues at certain OEM partners.".</i></div>
Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-46663993665244949572015-05-21T06:33:00.000-07:002015-05-21T06:36:02.424-07:00May IIToday, I have a <b>bunch of networking news</b> for you and try to give you some insight on where the industry is moving in terms of <b>SDN</b> (software defined networking).<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YPrAu-m9wcg/VV2Eo28fZLI/AAAAAAAAAkA/4gCkPB6W9yg/s1600/Jerry-SofwareDefinedSink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YPrAu-m9wcg/VV2Eo28fZLI/AAAAAAAAAkA/4gCkPB6W9yg/s320/Jerry-SofwareDefinedSink.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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But make no mistake: while marketing slides and vendor presentations suggest that everything "SD" is magic and easy, this is certainly not the case! <b>"SD" at its best may enhance flexibility</b> (customer choice of common hardware building blocks) and provide lower TCO, but the underlying mechanics and infrastructure still needs to provide the functions and performance levels of today's specialized products! So -as always- there's no free lunch here!<br />
Point in case: <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2920152/cisco-subnet/cisco-aci-users-up-tco-down.html" target="_blank">read this article</a> about the claimed TCO's for the <b>CISCO ACI</b> solution! <br />
<br />
<b>Good old Ethernet</b> -as a protocol- is currently undergoing a major boost in terms of standardized speeds and -as a result- increased number of use cases. One of them is the new segment of "<b>Ethernet disk drives</b>". A very promising way of providing access to HDDs directly attached to standard Ethernet (thus no SATA, SAS, ...) as "The Register" writes in <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/24/seagate_to_opensource_kinetics_at_openstack_summit/" target="_blank">this article</a> about a recent Seagate announcement here: <i>"Kinetic is the object storage platform Seagate has built to make it
possible to so useful work with its Ethernet-equipped disk drives.
Seagate's ambition is to cut arrays out of the loop, allowing software
to talk directly to disks. By cutting arrays and file systems out
of the loop, Seagate reckons it can save users some cash and also speed
things up."</i><br />
To accommodate the increasing performance requirements of today's networks, the <b>Ethernet Alliance</b> has recently issued an <a href="http://www.ethernetalliance.org/roadmap/" target="_blank">updated roadmap</a> including native 25 Gb/s which is supposed to be productized as early as 2015!<i> </i><br />
<i>"The Ethernet Alliance recently released its <a href="http://www.ethernetalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Ethernet-Roadmap-2sides-Final-5Mar.pdf" target="_blank">2015 roadmap</a>, which outlines Ethernet’s response to the <a href="http://www.ethernetalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/EthernetAlliance_Roadmap_whitepaper_FINAL-032015-21.pdf" target="_blank">ongoing desire for more bandwidth</a>
in data centers by adding new speeds for both in-rack and backbone
connections. The roadmap calls for some eye-popping speeds in the
future, but also charts out a plan for the low end of the market,
representing an unprecedented level of activity for Ethernet." </i><br />
Read the complete article <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/ethernet-roadmap-a-raft-of-new-speeds/a/d-id/1320048" target="_blank">here!</a><br />
<br />
With my longterm <b>Fibre Channel</b> background, I was wondering of course where this leaves the storage protocol which is still dominating most of the datacenter connectivity between compute and storage: For a number of agreeable reasons, as outlined in this great article <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/fibre-channel-really-is-dead/a/d-id/1320090?" target="_blank">here</a>, you may argue that FC has a somehow limited future: <i>"Pundits have long predicted the demise of Fibre Channel, but this time
it's real. In fact, the decline has already begun and now that RoCE is
routable, this decline will accelerate. The last years <a href="http://www.delloro.com/news/cloud-changing-buying-behavior-in-san-fibre-channels-strongest-segment-enterprise">Dell’ Oro SAN report</a>
highlighted a 3% year over year decline in Fibre Channel revenues,
citing the need for “distributed scale-out and object-based storage” and
a preference for "Ethernet speeds and converged infrastructure.""</i><br />
Would you agree?<br />
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<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-14965588550357091872015-05-05T00:53:00.001-07:002015-05-05T01:46:26.861-07:00May IIt's May - which means that global IT flocks to Vegas for their spring pow-wow's. Starting this week is <b>EMC</b> with <b>IBM</b> next week and others to follow.<br />
So for today, let me focus on the <b>most recent EMC announcements</b> and give you a couple hints on where to find the details.<br />
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First, read an <b>overview</b> and summary of the <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/emc-innovations-redefine-performance-efficiency-160500873.html" target="_blank">Day 1</a> announcements <a href="http://www.infotechlead.com/networking/emc-brings-major-new-platforms-for-cios-29849" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/04/emc_extremio/" target="_blank">here</a>!<br />
One of the more exciting - but less visible news seems to be the <b>vVNX</b> (read: <a href="http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2015/05/emc-world-day-1-vvnx-project-liberty-and-vnxe-3200-update.html" target="_blank">virtual VNX</a> or software-only entry storage) offer which shows up in the EMC store - check it out <a href="https://store.emc.com/ch/Product-Family/EMC-VNX-Products/EMC-vVNX-Virtual-Unified-Storage/p/EMC-vVNX-Virtual-Storage-Software?cmp=soc-cor-glbl-us-sprinklr-TWITTER--EMCcorp-174556660&linkId=13956855" target="_blank">here</a>! <br />
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A slightly older <a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/4500244394/Burton-EMC-main-storage-investments-focus-on-ViPR-storage-software" target="_blank">post by EMC president Jeremy Burton</a> from two weeks ago also helps to position and understand the strategy behind these announcements as well as his take on how and when last year's <a href="http://searchsolidstatestorage.techtarget.com/news/4500244385/EMCs-Burton-calls-DSSD-flash-an-insane-server-attached-flash-thing" target="_blank">DSSD acquisition</a> ("..an insane server-attached flash thing..") will start to be visible in products.<br />
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Big news also on the <b>VCE</b> side of the EMC federation: they use the EMCworld platform to make noise about the <b>VxRack</b> (based on VMware EVO:Rack) solution to be shipped around Q3 this year.<br />
Read the overview <a href="http://www.vce.com/about/media/news?id=tcm:20-31180" target="_blank">here</a> and some insights by VCE CTO Trey Layton <a href="https://blog.vce.com/2015/05/04/the-journey-to-rack-scale/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
Lastly, for an understanding what's under the hood in terms of VMware technology, you'll have to scroll back to this VMworld blog entry from last year by VMware Fellow Raj Yavatkar <a href="http://blogs.vmware.com/cto/evo-rack-tech-preview-vmworld-2014/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Now wait, before we all get too excited about this, <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/04/hyperconvergence_hype_de_hyped/?page=4" target="_blank">let's put this into perspective</a>: <i>"...Thus hyper-convergence is a special class of server SANs where VM workloads run alongside the storage workloads. It was conceived of to be cheaper, denser and more appealing than legacy convergence. Data centre convergence is a special class of hyper-convergence." </i><br />
And lastly, there is (always) the issue of pricing, as is outlined <a href="http://blog.snsltd.co.uk/vmware-changes-evorail-licensing-but-still-gets-it-all-wrong/" target="_blank">here</a>.Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-25014678356233884462015-04-17T04:15:00.003-07:002015-04-17T04:15:30.312-07:00AprilLet's start with base technology today: we are <b>slowly approaching the 10TB capacity</b> point for 3.5" HDDs.<br />
After Western Digital / HGST (which has been selling a helium-based 8Tb drive for a couple months already), Seagate has <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2599020/cloud-storage/seagate-scoffs-at-helium-ships-world-s-first-8tb-hard-drive.html" target="_blank">announced a 8TB drive as well</a>: Not using helium to allow more platters inside the 3.5" form factor - but obviously basing their product on SMR (shingled magnetic recording) to achieve the required density.<br />
This also explains the specific use case outlined in the announcement, described as "backup and objects": <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingled_magnetic_recording" target="_blank">SMR disks</a> use track overlay to reduce track width and thus have a limited capability to perform write updates to existing data / tracks. This is explained very well in this Wikipedia article<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingled_magnetic_recording" target="_blank"> here</a>. Also refer to my previous <a href="http://sanbuzz.blogspot.de/2013/11/november-ii.html" target="_blank">blog-entry from November 2013</a>!<br />
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There was other breaking news regarding storage capacity last week: The teams of <b>IBM Research Zurich</b> and Fujifilm have demonstrated an areal recording density of 123 billion bits of
uncompressed data per square inch on low cost, particulate <b>magnetic
tape</b>, a breakthrough which represents the equivalent of a <b>220 terabyte
tape cartridge</b> that could fit in the palm of your hand ! Read the details <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/46554.wss" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Moving up the solution stack, let's talk about " <b>SAN" and it's younger sibling "VSAN"</b>: while SAN's have been around for some twenty years now, the current trend has been reversed and storage seems to move back into the server as a "virtualized" resource to be shared by multiple instances of the virtualized servers (VMware, Hyper-V, ....).<br />
<a href="http://storagegaga.com/the-reverse-wars-das-vs-nas-vs-san/?utm_content=bufferd12b4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer" target="_blank">Here's a look back at SAN's</a> and a thorough analysis of the capabilities (and limitations!) of VSAN!<br />
VSAN is also one of the building blocks of VMware EVO:Rail and with the recent wave of <b>EVO:Rail appliances hitting the market </b>(among them the EMC VSPEX Blue) I found the <a href="https://www.vmguru.com/2014/10/vmware-evorail-datacenter-deployment-evolution-style-know/" target="_blank">article here</a> to be a great summary and overview of this architecture/technology. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Converged System circa 1977"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Which brings us to the <b>"converged topic"</b> and related material which is plentiful these days! Let's first look at the Q4 2014 market numbers as presented by IDC. The surprising #2 vendor for EMEA for the integrated infrastructure (with a <b>triple-digit growth</b> compared to Q4 2013!) is <b>HP</b>:<br />
<ul>
<li>The <span class="bodybkbd"><b>EMEA</b> "<b>Integrated Infrastructure and Platform Revenue</b>" report for all of 2014 can be found <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUK25525515" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></li>
<li>The <b>worldwide</b> "Integrated Infrastructure and Platform Revenue" report for Q4 2014 can be found <a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/market-reportsresearch/ww-integrated-infrastructure-and-platforms-revenue-increases-19-in-4q14-idc/" target="_blank">here</a>.</li>
</ul>
As many of you certainly already figured out, "converged" is nothing new - it's rather the inversion of what started in the late 80ies and early 90ies as "<b>client-server</b>" architecture. Read this amusing story <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/04/14/the_appeal_of_appliances/?page=1" target="_blank">here!</a><br />
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<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-26817040055552515432015-03-27T07:32:00.000-07:002015-03-27T07:34:14.347-07:00MarchSpring greets us with the latest <b>IDC numbers about Q4 storage market details</b>. I have compiled a couple of the reports below:<br />
<b><a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/market-reportsresearch/emea-external-storage-market-up-just-1-4-in-4q14-from-4q13-idc/" target="_blank"></a></b><br />
The one really stunning fact in the <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25451215" target="_blank"><b>IDC worldwide external storage report</b></a> (besides the not-so unexpected drop of 24% for IBM) is the <b>40% increase of revenue for ODM direct! </b>You won't find ODM as a company - IDC adds up sales to all types of "managed service providers" under that category: overall, external storage shipments to ODM's account for 12.8% of the worldwide revenue in Q4! See details <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/09/directbuying_hyperscalers_grow_storage/" target="_blank">here<b>.</b></a><br />
<b>And for EMEA: IDC EMEA external storage market </b><b><a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/market-reportsresearch/emea-external-storage-market-up-just-1-4-in-4q14-from-4q13-idc/" target="_blank">report.</a></b><br />
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<b>IDC worldwide PBBA</b> (if you don't remember PBBA: purpose built backup appliance) <a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/market-reportsresearch/ww-purpose-built-backup-appliance-revenue-breaks-1-billion-mark-in-4q14-idc/" target="_blank">report</a>. Not much of a surprise there, EMC DataDomain has a very comfortable lead with over 60% share in that market - which is not really growing in terms of revenue as you can read in the report.<br />
Where is this massive amount of storage going? Read <a href="http://searchcloudstorage.techtarget.com/news/2240242291/Google-tries-to-melt-Amazon-Glaciers-lead-in-cold-data-storage?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_40804116&utm_campaign=20150317_Google%20takes%20on%20Amazon%20Glacier%20in%20cold%20data%20storage_esullivan&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1822&ad=899552" target="_blank">here</a> about the <b>recent price offensive of Google</b> for low-cost storage!<br />
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And don't forget to <b>forward the clock on Sunday morning</b>-if you live in Europe that is!<br />
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<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-72890872220103879172015-02-03T08:05:00.002-08:002015-02-03T08:05:36.695-08:00February<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: white;">VSPEX Blue </span></span>is the one hot topic today and is <b>EMC's entry into the HCIA</b> (hyper-converged infrastructure appliance) market! Based on VMware EVO:Rail and VSAN<b> </b>and preconfigured with RecoverPoint and EMC CloudArray software (among others).<br />
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<b>Please read the official press release <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/emc-redefines-simplicity-with-vspex-blue-hyper-converged-infrastructure-appliance-300029791.html" target="_blank">here</a> and read Avnet's release <a href="http://www.ts.avnet.com/ch/hersteller/emc/vspex_blue/" target="_blank">here</a>!</b><br />
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You may be slightly confused (as I still am) about the <a href="http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2013/07/vsan-vs-scaleio-fight.html" target="_blank">positioning of EVO:Rail VSAN and EMC ScaleIO</a> from EMC which seem to address a very similar market and problem. I found <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/21/vmware_says_anyone_not_just_emcs_scaleio_can_play_with_its_best_bits/" target="_blank"> that article</a> from "The Register" to be very helpful in understanding where which makes sense and what the similarities are.<br />
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Add <b>Flash storage</b> to the equation and <a href="http://www.purestorage.com/blog/vvols-and-evo-rail-foretelling-the-flash-vs-hyper-converged-storage-debate/" target="_blank">read </a>how PureStorage sees EVO.Rail and Flash and how they may or may not be combined in the future in <b>AFHCIA's</b> (all-flash hyper-converged infrastructure appliances).</div>
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Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-37861898479855940992015-01-05T07:31:00.001-08:002015-01-05T07:36:52.520-08:00January<span style="color: red;"><b>Happy New Year!</b></span><br />
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I have summarized a couple of 2015 predictions, wish-lists and trends at the beginning of the year for you below. Of course they represent my personal beliefs about where the IT and Storage industry will be heading in the next 12 months - so feel free to disagree!<br />
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First let me revisit the <b>state of the art in HDD</b> capacity as of January 2015, <a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/rubriques/hard-disk-drives/for-6gb-hdds-wd-better-than-seagate-hgst-8tb-helium-unit-too-expensive/" target="_blank">here's</a> a great writeup of what is available today: As you can see, we are rapidly approaching the 10 TB capacity limit - but data access performance remains an ever bigger problem with those huge disk drives. Related to that, RAID protection becomes less practical with every TB we add for single drives, so the industry is looking into new ways to protect data as you can read <a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/erasure-coding?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_ERU_37834946&utm_campaign=20141222_ERU%20Transmission%20for%2012/22/2014%20%28UserUniverse:%201266786%29_myka-reports@techtarget.com&utm_source=ERU&src=5342020" target="_blank">here!</a><br />
And for the SSD segment of enterprise storage, <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/29/bringing_afa_san_orphans_in_house/" target="_blank">read the 2015 wish list for AFA's</a> (all-flash arrays).<br />
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Second, here's a number of <b>analyst predictions</b> for top 2015 storage trends and market developments:<br />
<a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/feature/Hot-data-storage-technologies-for-2015" target="_blank">Hot storage technologies</a> for 2015 (most notably Cloud-based disaster recovery or DRaaS among them) and <a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/2240237252/10-data-storage-startups-to-watch-in-2015?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_ERU_38011146&utm_campaign=20141226_ERU%20Transmission%20for%2012/26/2014%20%28UserUniverse:%201278713%29_myka-reports@techtarget.com&utm_source=ERU&src=5343717" target="_blank">top storage start-ups</a> (many of them supporting flavors of SSDs to maximize performance) to watch this year!<br />
And lastly from the <b>NetApp CTO and industry veteran Jay Kidd</b>, here's his <a href="https://community.netapp.com/t5/Company/2015-CTO-Predictions/ba-p/98431?ref_source=smc-udf--16844" target="_blank">personal view on 2015 trends</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3QqImug65_g/VKpGZoTx6hI/AAAAAAAAAhg/q5VcbDXjB9I/s1600/fbbb494a7eef5f9278c6967b6072ca3e_400x400.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3QqImug65_g/VKpGZoTx6hI/AAAAAAAAAhg/q5VcbDXjB9I/s1600/fbbb494a7eef5f9278c6967b6072ca3e_400x400.png" height="200" width="200" /></a>Third: meet <b>"Docker", the next big thing after hypervisors</b>! Or as is explained in <a href="https://www.docker.com/whatisdocker/" target="_blank">this paragraph on docker.com</a>: <i>"Docker is an open platform for developers and sysadmins to build, ship, and
run distributed applications".</i> It may be a smart thing to start to learn about Docker early in 2015 - so I have listed the link to a four part summary/basic overview from "The Register" <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/28/docker_part_1_the_history_of_docker/" target="_blank">here</a>. Enjoy!</div>
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<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-77294718759383678042014-12-19T03:39:00.000-08:002014-12-19T03:39:04.830-08:00DecemberIt has been a busy time for me and while I have continuously followed what's going on in the IT market, I did not have time to sit down and digest. So before <b>2014 is over</b>, let's have a look at some recent news and how they fit into current trends:<br />
If I had to summarize what I see going on right now is <b>three major areas</b> of excitement and start-up-activity:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Converged and Hyper-Converged Systems</b>, goes hand in hand with the "software defined datacenter" topics and the Server-side SAN solutions.</li>
<li><b>Flash Storage </b>and the question how a future "memory" or "storage" hierarchy will look like?</li>
<li><b>Cloud </b>and all kinds of "managed services". Combined with the question which parts of IT will be on-premises - and what will be off-premises in a future scenario?</li>
</ul>
Along these lines, here's a writeup of recent news: The article <a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/opinion/Deconstructing-the-storage-algorithm?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_ERU_37552852&utm_campaign=20141215_ERU%20Transmission%20for%2012/15/2014%20%28UserUniverse:%201250375%29_myka-reports@techtarget.com&utm_source=ERU&src=5338494" target="_blank">here</a> is a great analysis by<b> industry veteran Jon Toigo</b> about the n<span style="background-color: black;"></span>ew storage hype around <b>server-SANs</b> and the proclaimed death of the storage array as we know it. He states that <i>"...there's no such thing as a true storage network, at least not one that
fits the ISO model of networks. We have storage fabrics with switched
DAS (<b>SANs</b>), and we have DAS <span style="background-color: black;"></span>with thin file server appliances (<b>NAS</b>). So,
the idea that virtual servers won't work with anything but server-side
direct attachment is silly."</i><br />
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It's impossible to understand server-SANs without knowing some details about VMware <b><a href="http://searchvirtualstorage.techtarget.com/answer/What-are-VMware-VVOLs-and-how-do-they-work" target="_blank">VVOLs</a> (and <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/14/vmwares_virty_volume_volcano/" target="_blank">here</a>), <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/2608637/data-center/data-center-review-vmware-virtual-san-turns-storage-inside-out.html" target="_blank">VSANs</a> (see also <a href="http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2014/10/vsan-for-direct-attach-storage-and-vvol-for-enterprise-storage.html" target="_blank">here</a>), and most recently <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/08/26/vmwares_high_wire_balancing_act/" target="_blank">EVO:Rail</a>. </b><i><b> </b></i>Check the respective links for an explanation of each!<br />
Please see my <a href="http://www.sanbuzz.blogspot.de/2013/09/september.html" target="_blank">blogpost from Sept. 2013</a> as well, plus a great <b>comparison of Hyper-Converged</b> solutions <a href="http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.datacenterzombie.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F09%2Ftrain-tracks-620x350.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.datacenterzombie.com%2Fhyper-converged-infrastructure-comparison%2F&h=350&w=620&tbnid=Av_D0tJXeU5rNM%3A&zoom=1&docid=6t87Aeky0lPrvM&ei=yfmTVLDDGqLOygO0loFg&tbm=isch&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=503&page=4&start=74&ndsp=23&ved=0CL8CEK0DMFo" target="_blank">here</a>! <br />
<br />
<span style="color: blue;"><span style="background-color: #cc0000;"><b><span style="background-color: white;">So while VSANs let's you control direct attached server storage from VMware, VVOLs provides a new construct (beyond NAS and LUNs) to manage external/SAN storage from VMware. And <a href="http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/evorail/vmware-evorail-introduction.pdf" target="_blank">EVO.Rail </a>(based on VSAN technology) is a complete software bundle from VMware which enables vendors (Dell, HP, and others have announced intents) to build their own "hyper-converged" appliances.</span></b></span></span><br />
<br />
Reminds me of good old days of <b>IBM mainframes</b> where the "IO subsystem" was defined and under control of the base operating system. VMware obviously wants to gain control over the storage side of the datacenter and -in my opinion- they have a fair chance of winning that bet.<br />
<br />
On to Flash: <b>Combining the converged and flash hype </b>will result in solutions like the one <a href="http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/10/16/nutanix-launches-nx-9000-all-flash-appliance-and-metro-availability/" target="_blank">here</a>: <i>"<b>Nutanix</b> introduced a new all-flash storage appliance and a new
feature that enables continuous availability across data centers."</i><br />
And last week from Flash-leader <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/11/cisco_pure_storage_partnership/" target="_blank">PureStorage</a>: <i>"Pure and Cisco have dreamed up FlashStack converged infrastructure (CI). This is
a combination of combine Pure’s 400 Series arrays, Cisco UCS Blade Servers,
Nexus switches, VMware vSphere 5 and Horizon 6".</i><br />
However, this is mostly an unilateral attempt from Pure to hook up with CISCO - you will not find that specific solution on the CISCO CVD (CISCO validated design) site. No surprise; as they already have Invicta (to be integrated into UCS) and have created solutions <a href="http://www.nimblestorage.com/alliances/cisco.php" target="_blank">with Nimble</a> as well.<i> </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Closing todays comments with very <a href="http://searchcloudstorage.techtarget.com/news/2240236705/With-Amazon-Zocalo-and-Glacier-AWS-held-off-tough-competition-in-2014?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_37638596&utm_campaign=20141216_AWS%20holds%20off%20competitors%20with%20Amazon%20Zocalo%20and%20Glacier_esullivan&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1822&ad=897781" target="_blank">recent news on AWS (Amazon web services):</a> <br />
<i>"Amazon added storage features at its AWS
re:Invent conference in November. They include support for larger and faster
volumes on its Elastic Block Store (<a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/definition/Amazon-EBS-Amazon-Elastic-Block-Store">EBS</a>).
The enhancements center on <a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240227609/AWS-EBS-volumes-ratchet-up-throughput">solid-state
drive (SSD)-backed EBS</a>, which was launched back in June in all AWS regions.
Amazon calls <a href="http://searchaws.techtarget.com/news/2240236999/AWS-tools-that-turned-heads-in-2014">SSD
EBS</a> the fastest-adopted service in its Amazon Web Services portfolio."</i><br />
<br />
What if - someday we may start over with a very disruptive and new way of computing? While dating back to Summer, the vision of "<a href="http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/206401-with-the-machine-hp-may-have-invented-a-new-kind-of-computer" target="_blank">The Machine</a>" sounds somewhat appealing to me!<i> </i>Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-55853276037108410582014-09-25T05:11:00.000-07:002014-09-25T05:11:11.182-07:00SeptemberNetworking news this month: Will <b>25 Gbps Ethernet</b> be the next speed of choice? Read <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-centers/25-gbe-a-big-deal-that-will-arrive/a/d-id/1297615" target="_blank">here</a> why there's a couple good reasons to think so: <i>"The next generation of Intel "Grantley" CPUs are due to ship in the
third quarter, and servers with these processors will be able to forward
data faster than 10 Gbit/s. In the high-density server farms of cloud
providers like Google and Microsoft, using multiple 10 GbE would require
twice as many Ethernet switches with their associated space, power, and
cooling costs."</i><br />
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And on the <b>Fibre Channel</b> side of the market, CISCO quietly (and maybe reluctantly?) roles out a bunch of <b>16 Gbps</b> products:<br />
A new low-cost 16 Gbps switch (<a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/storage-networking/mds-9148s-16g-multilayer-fabric-switch/index.html" target="_blank">MDS9148S</a>) and a smaller model of the MDS 9710 director (<a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/storage-networking/mds-9700-series-multilayer-directors/index.html" target="_blank">MDS 9106</a>), a 192-port director in a 9U form factor!<br />
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<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-11696970369150071492014-08-12T01:20:00.001-07:002014-08-12T01:20:46.118-07:00AugustLazy summer days - <b>mostly wet and rainy this year.</b> So lots of time to read blogs and follow the IT News-tickers!<br />
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Here's what I found to be interesting news in the last couple weeks - sorted by "level of excitement".<br />
First sighting of<b> phase-change memory (PCM) for commercial use in SSD's:</b> at the 2014 <a href="http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/" target="_blank">"Flash Summit Conference</a>" HGST (subsidiary of Western Digital) did showcase a blazingly fast SSD device <i>not</i> based on Flash memory but PCM, as Computerworld reports <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9250151/Storage_maker_builds_fast_SSD_to_prepare_for_life_after_NAND_flash?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">here</a>:<br />
<i>" The device, which can be plugged into a server's PCIe slot like any SSD,
isn't a new storage product but a platform for demonstrating a <b>
low-latency interface</b> that the company developed with future solid-state
media in mind. It implemented the experimental communications protocol
in a Linux driver on the server and in the SSD's embedded software."</i><br />
<i>"Where <b>NAND Flash takes about 70 microseconds</b> to respond to a request for data,
PCM can do so in about <b>1 microsecond</b>. However, <b>it will take
two to three years of hardware development before PCM gets dense and
cheap enough </b>to compete head-on with flash"</i><br />
<br />
Also read the stories on that same subject in "<a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/05/hgst_changes_phase_for_3_million_iops/" target="_blank">The Register</a>" and the related <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hgst-research-demonstrates-worlds-fastest-090000010.html" target="_blank">HGST Press Release</a>.<br />
<br />
As noted above, new low-latency technology like PCM will require new architectures and will have to reside "right next to the CPU" to actually take advantage of the available speed!<br />
To that end, HGST has developed a new <b>low-latency interface dubbed "DC express". </b><br />
Watch this excellent 15' video clip <a href="https://2459d6dc103cb5933875-c0245c5c937c5dedcca3f1764ecc9b2f.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/fast14/vucinic.mp4" target="_blank">here</a>! <br />
<br />
<b>So you should really think of PCM as a lower cost DRAM rather than a high performance Flash Array. Will be interesting how this will affect "storage tiers"!?</b><br />
<br />
Now, don't count Flash SSD's out yet: As reported <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/28/hgst_ssd_store_more_read_faster_but_write_slower/" target="_blank">here</a>, there is a whole family of bigger (up to <b>1.6TB</b>) and faster (<b>12 Gbit/s SAS</b>) SSD's entering the market these days!Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-48239614778417704172014-07-25T05:13:00.001-07:002014-07-25T05:13:11.912-07:00JulyIt's about time to resume blogging and edit an update to my Blog.<b> I have been "out of IT" for a few month - between Jobs - and now back to the grind.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-beBoLBQ9tBI/U9JHf4jWI8I/AAAAAAAAAf4/t0bioHemRSc/s1600/photo.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-beBoLBQ9tBI/U9JHf4jWI8I/AAAAAAAAAf4/t0bioHemRSc/s1600/photo.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>One of my off-IT activities: Travel Maui</b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</b><br />
Good thing is that I realized during my time off: there's plenty of great things to do and think outside of IT; sad thing is, I also realized that only in IT, I have enough marketable skills to be able to pay my bills. <br />
So back to IT business...<br />
<b>Topic today is pretty straightforward. Cloud and Flash!</b><br />
I think those are pretty much the buzzwords that, as someone looking into our industry in summer 2014 would realize, are discussed most frequently.<br />
<br />
Now looking at these trends and the technologies cooking in the labs, I've come to the conclusion that the two can be combined in what I believe to be a true statement:<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: blue;">"<b>By 2020, all data will be either stored on Flash or in the Cloud" </b></span></span><br />
There's a couple reasons why I think this statement may become true, listed below are a couple market and technology trends from the last couple weeks which seem to point into that direction.<br />
But the very basic physical reason for it is "latency": Response time for any IO from the cloud is always measured in <b>milliseconds</b> (at least - try a PING if you don't agree) while response time for any IO from a Flash System is always measured in <b>microseconds</b>. Means that <b>Flash will <i>always</i> sit either in the server or right next to it (next like: a couple meters away)!</b><br />
<br />
Let's start with <b>Flash</b>: See these two great articles about <a href="http://storageswiss.com/2014/07/18/flash-performance-vs-flash-features/" target="_blank">function and design of all-flash arrays </a> (by George Crump of Storage Switzerland) vs. <a href="http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2014/07/popular-storage-trends-that-will-go-away-afa-and-efss.html" target="_blank">advantages of hybrid storage arrays</a> (by HDS CTO Hu Yoshida). And then add this news from the Samsung lab (Samsung being the #1 provider of NAND Flash) about <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9249959/Newegg_takes_pre_orders_for_Samsung_s_first_3D_Pro_SSD?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">first shipments of 3D Flash</a>.<br />
<br />
On to the <b>Cloud</b>: As the Register article <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/10/the_cloud_gateway/" target="_blank">here</a> states: <i>"CIOs will likely increasingly say: dump the data center hardware ship and ship
the data up into the cloud."</i><br />
A couple vendors actually announced functions and plans to that end in the past couple weeks: <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9249760/NetApp_Private_Storage_adds_an_Azure_cloud_option?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">Netapp ties in with the Microsoft Azure</a> cloud (more details <a href="http://www.ntapgeek.com/2014/07/nps-for-azure.html" target="_blank">here</a>);<br />
while mighty EMC announced (among a <a href="http://www.emc.com/about/news/press/2014/20140708-01.htm" target="_blank">flood</a> of other solutions, plans, products, and the intend to acquire <a href="http://www.twinstrata.com/" target="_blank">Twinstrata</a>) the availability of a <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/2452040/emc-looks-to-the-clouds-with-twinstrata-and-new-vmax3-array.html" target="_blank">cloud gateway option for the new VMAX3.</a><br />
<br />
As discussed above, cloud data storage will most likely <i>not</i> be based on relatively expensive and fast Flash technology for the years to come. The <b>most obvious candidate for efficient, cheap and reliable cloud storage</b> is rotating disks - <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9249861/Western_Digital_jumps_to_6TB_in_budget_hard_drives_with_299_Red?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">HDD</a>. And a second, surprising -but also likely candidate- is good old <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/07/16/flape/" target="_blank">Tape</a>!<br />
In case you missed the <b>May announcement</b> about IBM's <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/19/ibm_demos_154tb_tape/" target="_blank">154TB-Tape demo</a>: Listen to the details <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftBRxAxgmzs" target="_blank">here</a>!<br />
<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-74896535594562155932014-04-23T02:51:00.000-07:002014-04-23T02:51:29.048-07:00AprilWell, some of you know that <b>I'm on a two month sabbatical </b>now - away from my previous job at IBM.<br />
So I have not been following the storage market very closely these days - but have focused on other (more?) important things in life - like mountain biking and enjoying hikes with my family.<br />
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The great thing is that we had a beautiful spring this year in Zurich with lots of sunshine and warm weather, as you can see in the weather report for March <a href="http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/startseite/sehr-sonnig-deutlich-zu-warm-und-vielerorts-sehr-trocken-1.7485428" target="_blank">here</a>!<br />
<br />
Still, there was a couple things that caught my attention and<b> they are around SDN (software defined networking):</b> While I was doing online research and was trying to figure out, where the industry is going in relation to this topic, I found a great series of blog posts and articles over at the InformationWeek site (thanks folks!).<br />
<br />
I have summarized these for you:<br />
First, start <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/sdn-strategies-part-1-vendors-vie-for-market-mindshare/a/d-id/1234736?" target="_blank">here</a> with an <b>industry overview</b> and download the <a href="http://reports.informationweek.com/abstract/6/11255/Data-Center/2013-SDN-Survey:-Growing-Pains.html" target="_blank">SDN market report</a> (login required).<br />
Then, you can read a <b>detailed analysis by vendor</b> - what their strategies and solutions are:<br />
<a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/sdn-strategies-part-2-cisco-arista-hp/a/d-id/1234739?" target="_blank">Part 2</a>: <b>CISCO</b>, Arista and HP<br />
<i>Details for <b>CISCO ACI</b> (application centric infrastructure), <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-centers/cisco-aci-solves-all-your-data-center-network-problems/a/d-id/1234526?" target="_blank">part 1</a> and <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-centers/cisco-aci-proceed-at-your-peril/a/d-id/1234585?" target="_blank">part 2</a>.</i><br />
<a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/sdn-strategies-part-3-juniper-dell-brocade-alcatel-lucent/a/d-id/1234742?" target="_blank">Part 3</a>: <b>Juniper, Brocade</b>, Dell<br />
<a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/networking/sdn-strategies-part-4-big-switch-avaya-ibmvmware/a/d-id/1234744?" target="_blank">Part 4</a>: <b>VMware</b>, Avaya<br />
<br />
<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-17081983656001487502014-03-03T07:12:00.000-08:002014-03-03T07:13:57.572-08:00MarchTwo major topics today: Object storage and cloud. And YES, I believe the two are in fact very closely related: Objects (defined as unstructured and permanent, unchanged data) seem to be by far the best fit for data to be stored in the cloud!<br />
To get us started - and if your are like myself still trying to come to grips with the object Hype - <span id="goog_1034167941"></span><span id="goog_1034167937"></span><a href="http://storageswiss.com/2013/12/11/object-storage-101/" target="_blank">h<span id="goog_1034167932"></span><span id="goog_1034167933"></span>ere</a>'s<span id="goog_1034167942"></span><span id="goog_1034167938"></span> a great <strong>Object Storage 101</strong> for your reference (thanks George Crump!) <br />
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And Chris Mellor -over at <strong>the Register</strong>- points out that object storage is <em>".. headed towards mainstream status, with ViPR, Black Pearl and EVault leading the way. Others, though, held back. As of the year end, we saw IBM doing nothing much with objects, NetApp apparently standing still with its StorageGRID, and Dell exiting the field." </em>Read <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/23/coming_of_age_object_storage_in_2013" target="_blank">the details here</a>!<br />
<em></em><br />
Now, expanding the focus and looking beyond objects and storage only, using cloud services may not be the nirvana many CxO's are dreaming about: <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2014/01/27/how-to-manage-your-new-data-center-the-entire-internet/" target="_blank">Forbes recently had a great article</a> about this and made the point very well by listing the following checkmark items for cloud management:<br />
<br />
<em>This means that at any moment a CIO must be able to answer the following questions:</em><br />
<ol>
<li><em>Are all the applications and services in our control running properly?</em></li>
<li><em>Are all the applications and services running in the cloud or as SaaS running properly?</em></li>
<li><em>Is there a network problem in the network under our control?</em></li>
<li><em>Is there a network problem in the public Internet?</em></li>
<li><em>Is there a network problem in the network of the cloud or SaaS provider?</em></li>
</ol>
I like numbers 2. and 4.!<br />
<br />
Still, cloud becomes more popular and less expensive by the week - as the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245712/Amazon_and_Microsoft_drop_cloud_storage_prices_by_up_to_50_" target="_blank">most recent price war</a> between the cloud "behemoths" Amazon and Microsoft shows:<br />
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<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-43011310910074084512014-02-19T07:12:00.005-08:002014-02-19T07:15:08.231-08:00FebruaryTwo articles on the long-running competition between FC and FCoE caught my attention this past weeks:<br />
The major argument for high-speed 16 Gbps native FC connections these days are high-performance (and more importantly: low-latency) SSD and Flash storage systems: Evaluator Group recently did a benchmark to compare the two technologies with a series of state-of-the-art SSD Systems and <a href="http://www.evaluatorgroup.com/evaluator-group-bench-fibre-channel-vs-fcoe/" target="_blank">here's</a> what they found:<br />
<em>"The resulting validation found the FC environment provided 2 to 10 times faster responses as workloads surpassed 80% SAN utilization and 20-30% less CPU utilization than FCoE."</em><br />
for the complete Report, please refer to the Website <a href="http://www.evaluatorgroup.com/document/comparing-enterprise-storage-networking-options-fc-vs-fcoe/" target="_blank">here</a> (registration required).<br />
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At the same time, the adoption of 10 GbE is obviously picking up speed (as reported <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/data-networking-management/will-2014-be-the-year-of-10-gigabit-eth/240165578" target="_blank">here</a>), so -as so many times before in our industry- the lower cost datacenter connectivity (10 GbE) may be just "good enough" in the long run!Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-87240529485263167592014-01-06T00:31:00.000-08:002014-01-06T00:31:01.294-08:00January 2014<b>Welcome to 2014 (or MMXIV)!</b><br />
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I'll spare you another round of forecasts about what might and might not happen in the storage industry in 2014, there have been plenty of those <a href="http://www.infostor.com/storage-management/virtualization/storage-startups-to-watch-in-2014-1.html" target="_blank">lists</a> published in the past couple weeks!<br />
Instead, let me summarize a couple noteworthy news for you - which of course is also a way to hint at what -I personally believe- will be important trends in 2014!<br />
One battle certainly to continue is the battle over the control over storage or rather the "location of the intelligence" in storage: remember 10 years ago: common wisdom was that most of the intelligence would be located in the SAN and the back-end storage would be mere commodity (EMC Invista!). Well, it turned out that customers preferred to invest in sophisticated storage controllers while the network became a commodity...<br />
Fast forward to 2013: There is a lot of <a href="http://www.esg-global.com/blogs/software-defined-everything-is-a-server-bye-bye-storage-bye-bye-networking/" target="_blank">hype around SDS</a> (Software Defined Storage), which would relegate the "intelligence" to some "open source" storage controller running on a commodity server.<br />
Hypervisor vendors like VMware and Microsoft on the other hand are integrating more of the storage controls into their hypervisors and hope to make storage intelligence obsolete. And obviously related to that is the discussion and battle about block or file access to storage.<br />
The article <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage-networking-management/vmware-has-to-step-up-on-nfs/240163350" target="_blank">here</a> outlines reasons why VMware needs to step up efforts on<b> NFS</b>!<br />
But watch out, on the block side of the protocol segment, the <a href="http://www.fibrechannel.org/" target="_blank">FCIA</a> is finalizing 32Gbps Fibre Channel - or <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244512/Fibre_Channel_hits_key_landmark_on_the_way_to_32Gbps?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">Gen6 Fibre Channel</a> as they are going to call it.<br />
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According to "The Register", 2013 was the year <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/29/a_year_of_tape_tittle_tattle/" target="_blank">"..when Google made Tape cool again"</a>!<br />
Now there is more exciting news to be expected in 2014: Read this <a href="http://www.drunkendata.com/?p=4282" target="_blank">summary</a> from the Fujitsu "IT Global Summit" and the "<a href="http://www.fujifilmusa.com/products/tape_data_storage/innovations/barium_ferrite/index.html" target="_blank">Nanocubic coating"</a> being introduced for magnetic tape!<br />
So watch this space for announcements from IBM during 2014!<br />
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Talking about<b> IBM</b>, there's two recent news that clearly show the direction my company is taking: First, the beta availability of <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244607/IBM_lays_plans_to_be_a_cloud_storage_broker" target="_blank">ICStore</a>, a unique implementation of "cloud gateway" technology for our Storwize platform providing data protection <i>" ..that will allow organizations to use multiple cloud storage services
interchangeably, reducing dependence on any single cloud vendor and ensuring
that data remains available even during service outages."</i><br />
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And second, the rollout of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/technology/ibm-to-announce-more-powerful-watson-via-the-internet.html?_r=1&" target="_blank">WaaS</a> ("<b>Watson as a Service</b>") in late 2013: <br />
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<i>“The next generation will look back and see 2013 as a year of monumental change,” said Stephen Gold, vice president of the Watson project at IBM. </i></div>
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<i>“<b>This is the start of a shift in the way people interact with computers.” </b></i></div>
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<i>IBM is wielding Watson in a fight to control the world of cloud computing — huge collections of computer servers connected over the Internet — with other big technology companies like Amazon.com, Google and Microsoft. It is no coincidence that IBM discussed its Watson news the same week Amazon was hosting clients at a conference here to pitch its own computing cloud, called Amazon Web Services or A.W.S."</i></div>
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This is definitely a key element of IBM's plans to <a href="http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/12/17/is-ibms-watson-fools-gold.aspx#.UspjtXc2bi4" target="_blank">resume revenue growth in 2014</a>!<i> </i></div>
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And by the way: Probably the last acquisition <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244895/IBM_gets_fast_file_transfers_with_Aspera_acquisition?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">IBM made in 2013</a> is immediately related to cloud services: <b>Aspera</b>, a company with <i>".. an Emmy-award-winning, high-speed bulk data transfer protocol."</i></div>
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So all the best to you for 2014 and let's hope that the European economy continues on the <a href="http://snseurope.info/article/30956/Western-Europe-leads-EMEA-External-Disk-Storage-Systems-market-to-slight-recovery" target="_blank">positive trend that we seem to have started in Q3 2013!</a><br />
<br />Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-79958842734541769202013-12-06T06:30:00.001-08:002013-12-06T06:30:50.579-08:00DecemberHot off the press: <br />
IDC's Q3 "<span class="bodybkbd"><strong>Worldwide External Disk Storage Systems Factory Revenue</strong>" </span>numbers. <br />
"<em>Despite the revenue contraction in the third quarter, we see strong
demand for offerings targeted at heavily virtualized environments, such as
integrated infrastructure</em>," said Eric Sheppard, research director, IDC
storage. "<em>However, this demand has been offset by several factors: reduced
spending from the U.S. government, increased use of storage efficiency
technologies, increased investment in public cloud capacity, and general price
pressures associated with increased competitive environments.</em>"<br />
See the detailed report <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24476613" target="_blank">here</a>!Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-62776742692614141502013-11-19T02:15:00.001-08:002013-11-20T05:56:58.837-08:00November IIIt has been quite a while since the last announcement of bigger HDDs: <strong>We have had 4 TB disk drives available for about 24 months now</strong>! In the past couple weeks however, there seems to be renewed activity in the segment of high-capacity HDDs with HGST (Hitachi Global Storage; subsidiary of Western Digital) starting sale of the much-anticipated <a href="http://www.hgst.com/press-room/press-releases/hgst-announces-radically-new-helium-filled-hard-disk-drive-platform" target="_blank">6 TB Helium-drive</a> (add <a href="http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/enterprise-hard-drives/enterprise-sas-drives/ultrastar-he6" target="_blank">two more platters</a>; same areal density!). <br />
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Western Digital (WD) adding to the buzz with their plans (no product yet!) to <strong>provide increased areal density using </strong><a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244052/Western_Digital_s_HAMR_tech_could_increase_disk_capacity_five_fold?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank"><strong>HAMR</strong></a><strong> (heat assisted magnetic recording),</strong> a technology which is in development over at Seagate as well!<br />
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The third promising candidate in the race to <strong>squeeze more bits into a 3.5 inch real-estate</strong> is "shingled magnetic recording" dubbed as <strong>SMR</strong>, details are outlined<a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/disk/seagate-shingled-magnetic-recording" target="_blank"> here</a>. <br />
While this technology basically uses hardware that is available today, it kind of changes some of the very characteristics of HDDs: <strong>In-place updates become impractical to impossible</strong> with the shingled, intertwined tracks (by the way: we have used this approach in tape drives for many years!). Means that HDDs using that technology will be used preferably for <strong>data which is not updated</strong>, so archive-type of usages! That's the reason why vendors are actually looking into <strong>using LTFS</strong> (linear tape file system) to access and manage SMR type of disk drives! See details from SNIA and WD <a href="http://www.snia.org/sites/default/files2/SDC2013/presentations/Hardware/AlbertChenMalina_Addressing_Shingled_Magnetic_Recording.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>!<br />
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I have not figured out yet which technologies can be combined and which ones don't go together - but to me it certainly looks like as if the next wave of capacity increases for HDD is upon us! The <strong>question remains if the costs will be at an acceptable level</strong>: with the consumer market (tablets, smartphones) using mostly flash storage, the volumes for these new technology HDDs will probably remain lower than what we have been used to in the age of desktops and laptops?<br />
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And finally, wrapping up my update in spinning rust, <a href="http://blog.backblaze.com/2013/11/12/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/" target="_blank">here's an interesting report</a> from Backblaze (a backup service provider) on <strong>how long these small mechanical wonders are supposed to last:</strong><br />
<em>"For disk drives, it may be that all of them will wear out before they
are 10 years old. Or it may be that some of them last 20 or 30 years.
If some of them live a long, long time, it makes it hard to compute the
average. Also, a few outliers can throw off the average and make it less
useful.</em><br />
<em>
The number that we will be able to compute soon, and the one that is
more likely to be useful, is the median lifespan of a new drive. In
other words, at what age have half of the drives failed? We are starting
to get an idea what the answer will be." </em><br />
For additional thoughts and details, please also refer to<a href="http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/disk_failures.pdf" target="_blank"> this report from Google</a> on their observations around drive failure expectations.Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-81817262656320166692013-10-25T06:00:00.000-07:002013-10-25T06:01:10.621-07:00November<strong>Object Storage</strong> - not sure if it's only me but I seem to see a lot of buzz, hype and news around this topic in the past couple months!<br />
So I've started to track some news sites and have compiled some material I want to share with you. To start off, here's a <strong>great and very brief summary on what Object Storage actually is</strong> and how it's different from file systems: <em>"Instead of organizing files in a directory hierarchy, <strong>object storage
systems</strong> store files in a flat organization of containers (called
"buckets" in Amazon S3) and use unique IDs (called "keys" in S3) to
retrieve them."</em><br />
Read the details <a href="http://www.infoworld.com/t/data-center/what-object-storage-215778" target="_blank">here</a>. (thanks to my friend John Sing to provide that link!)<br />
There is also some additional details and diagrams on the <strong>OpenStack</strong> site <a href="http://www.openstack.org/software/openstack-storage/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Now, <strong>object storage will most likely be cloud-based storage</strong> and two companies have announced two very different products and approaches to actually store objects: In the case of <strong>Seagate</strong> (disk drives) they propose a <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/22/seagate_letting_apps_talk_direct_to_drives/" target="_blank">new type of hard disk</a> to directly connect "to the cloud": <br />
<em>"Seagate is building hard disk drives with a direct Ethernet interface
and object-style API access for scalable object stores, a plan which -
if it works - would destroy much of the existing, typical storage stack. Drives
would become native key/value stores that manage their own space
mapping with accessing applications simply dealing at the object level
with gets and puts instead of using file abstractions."</em><br />
<em></em><br />
In the case of <strong>SpectraLogic</strong> (tape libraries) they <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage-networking-management/spectra-logic-unveils-blackpearl-storage/240162788" target="_blank">promote low-cost tape storage</a> as the foundation for object clouds: <em>"Spectra’s Deep Storage story opens with a new RESTful object storage API
that Spectra’s dubbed DS3, for Deep Simple Storage Service. DS3 is an
extension of the Amazon S3 API that’s becoming a standard for not just
cloud storage services but also on-premise data center object storage
systems. The object API allows organizations to take advantage of the
low cost, and power consumption, of tape and still have their data
available to applications written by mere mortals."</em>
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<br />
Eventually, they both make sense but I think adding a low-cost (and automatic) tape tier makes lots of sense for objects - which tend to be inactive of nature and <strong>clients will probably prefer lower costs over split-second retrieve times?!</strong>Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-82656764610950981142013-09-20T05:09:00.000-07:002013-09-20T05:14:53.169-07:00September IILots of news these days, so time for an update and summary. As always in September, industry analysts did release their assessment of the <strong>2013 Q2 storage market</strong>.<br />
I have compiled the facts and comments for you - here as a general statement: <em>"...Worldwide external disk storage systems factory revenues posted a year-over-year decline of -0.8%, totaling just over $5.9 billion, in the second quarter of 2013 (2Q13), according to the International Data Corporation (</em><a href="http://www.idc.com/"><em>IDC</em></a><em>) </em><em><strong>Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker</strong></em><em>. For the quarter, the total (internal plus external) disk storage systems market generated $7.7 billion in revenue, <strong>representing a -5.0% decline</strong> from the prior year's second quarter and a slight sequential decline compared to the first quarter of 2013. Total disk storage systems capacity shipped reached 8.2 exabytes, growing 21.5% year over year."</em><br />
<ul>
<li>IDC Press Release and summary of report with market numbers <a href="http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24302513" target="_blank">here</a>.</li>
<li>Computerworld comment <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9242214/Disk_storage_revenues_decline_in_Q2?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">here</a>. (by Lucas Mearian)</li>
<li>The Register comment <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/11/idc_tracking_the_storage_market/" target="_blank">here</a>. (by Chris Mellor)</li>
<li>And some more detailed <strong>numbers for EMEA</strong> specifically <a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/marketreport/idc-emea-external-disk-2q13" target="_blank">here</a>. (by our friends at StorageNewsletter)</li>
</ul>
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In the midterm, the Gartners, IDCs and the likes will have to figure out if they eventually need to include storage provisioned thru cloud services as well? As of today, I think the capacities sold and installed off-premises by companies like Amazon Webservices, Rackspace or Google are not accounted for...they don't procure systems from the legacy storage vendors in most cases, so don't show up in the statistics here!<br />
<br />
And actually this links right into the next topic: an interesting <a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/podcast/Evolution-of-a-big-data-environment-How-storage-options-are-changing" target="_blank">podcast by Jon Toigo</a> on cloud:<br />
<em>"...I did think that maybe one of the better models for cloud going forward -- a sustainable business model for cloud, would be cloud that is specialized in holding huge repositories of certain kinds of data. I asked experts about this. Jeff Jonas at IBM, I asked him, would it make sense for a cloud service provider to stand up big data so I don't have to buy the infrastructure myself?"</em><br />
<em></em><br />
And in that same week a <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/17/netapps_ontap_is_gonna_embrace_the_cloud/" target="_blank">statement from NetApp</a> on how they think their systems will interact and integrate with the cloud, I personally think they have a great story there: they have rolled out DOT 8.2 starting this year which enables clustered Data ONTAP and adding cloud gateway capability and a couple interfaces to public cloud services should not represent a major hurdle.<br />
See the short 2' video clip <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RKGrHKdPJdU" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
But ultimately, it will be<strong> our customers call to decide</strong> if and how they will entrust their data to any form of "cloud", see the <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/19/why_move_storage_to_the_cloud/" target="_blank">five reasons for - and five reasons against</a> doing it...great writeup by Trevor Pott: <em>"The cloud will inevitably replace all other forms of IT? The cloud is a passing fad?"</em><br />
<br />
And lastly in a surprise but important move, <a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cisco-announces-intent-acquire-whiptail-120000367.html" target="_blank">CISCO announced</a> its intent to acquire Whiptail, a vendor of Flash Storage systems. While CISCO in their own press release emphasize the use of Whiptail technology inside their UCS servers, the rest of the <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/10/cisco_moving_into_storage/" target="_blank">industry sees this move</a> mostly as a way of CISCO to expanding their reach into storage. Read this great analysis <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/83778" target="_blank">here</a>.Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-61610434941354317722013-09-03T05:35:00.001-07:002013-09-03T05:35:43.008-07:00SeptemberToday I'll continue with a couple <strong>flash topics</strong> from last month and provide some links and comments regarding the news and developments announced at the recent <strong>VMworld conference</strong>.<br />
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When the SSD hype started first around 2007/2008, there was a widespread belief that SSD would be a temporary and intermediate technology: The "write penalty" and very limited durability seemed to be obstacles to a successful use and implementation in enterprise storage systems. Now, the industry has fixed many of these issues, partly by using smart controller designs (wear-leveling) partly by <strong>improving SSD</strong> core technology (eMLC, TLC, <a href="http://www.gizmag.com/samsung-v-nand-flash-chip-ssd/28655/" target="_blank">3D-Flash</a>, ...)<br />
At the same time, industrialization of more advanced "storage class memory" like <strong>PCM</strong> (phase change memory) and <strong><a href="http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/MRAM" target="_blank">MRAM</a> (magnetoresistive random access memory)</strong> has taken a backseat to the current hype around NAND flash. Read the complete analysis in CW <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241892/SSDs_maturing_but_new_memory_tech_still_10_years_away?taxonomyId=19&pageNumber=3G" target="_blank">here</a>:<br />
<em>"It's going to be a long time until NAND flash runs out of steam," said Jim
Handy, an analyst at Objective Analysis, during a presentation."</em><br />
<em></em><br />
There's an interesting possible combination of technologies which so far (to my knowledge) has not been productized: Flash storage and deduplication: <strong><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/27/greenbytes_latency_smash_with_flash_cache/" target="_blank">Greenbites</a></strong> proposes the use of Flash storage to achieve <em>" ...<strong>deduplication</strong> tech that has near-zero latency and possibly offers the world's fastest in line deduplication." </em>Seems to make a lot of sense: deduplication has an inherent requirement for very low latency read operations (to compare data patterns while deduplicating at ingest) and Flash is still a very expensive way to store data -so you want to avoid duplicate data. Combining the two seems kind of obvious!<br />
And <strong>Violin</strong>, one of the most visible startups in the realm of Flash Systems, is <a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/startups/violin-memory-files-for-ipo?utm_source=emailcampaign1060&utm_medium=phpList&utm_content=HTMLemail&utm_campaign=Violin+Memory+Finally+Files+for+IPO" target="_blank">getting ready to an IPO</a>! <br />
Looking at how detached from the real-world economy Wall St. recently seems to be, I'm honestly not sure that's a good thing - but some people will earn some serious money...<br />
<br />
Unrelated to Flash, the article <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241395/Clouds_are_backing_up_clouds_with_more_choices_on_tap?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank">here</a> caught my interest: "<em>On Tuesday, Nasuni introduced a cloud-to-cloud mirroring option to give
customers extra assurance that their data will be available in case of a service
outage. The same day, <strong>cloud-to-cloud backup</strong> vendor Backupify added more choices
for where users can have their data sent."</em><br />
We all have heard about the outages of the likes of Amazon and Google, so backing up your data in <strong>multiple clouds</strong> seems to be the smart thing to do! Here's a nice way to visualize this (and I wonder how long it will take until we see cloud companies with meteorology-names like <strong>Cumulus and Nimbostratus...</strong><br />
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On to <strong>VMworld</strong> which took place in San Francisco (unfortunately, I did not attend but supposedly 22'000 folks did!): while they had a zillion of press releases and announcements, many of the new functions and strategies revolve around two areas: <strong>The </strong><a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/cloud-computing/vmware-nsx-game-changer-for-data-center/240160449" target="_blank"><strong>network</strong></a><strong> and storage.</strong> <br />
<em>"<strong>VMware NSX</strong> is a software-defined network (SDN) that uses controllers and overlay networking. I'll examine just a few of the key aspects of the announcement and how they apply to your data center strategy." </em>See additional background <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/next-generation-data-center/servers/vmware-nsx-plants-flag-for-network-virtu/240160508" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Not to be confused with CISCO VSANs, the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241983/VMware_39_s_virtualization_quest_could_shake_up_data_storage_too?taxonomyId=19" target="_blank"><strong>storage</strong></a><strong> integration/tiering functions in VMware</strong> are now captured under that same terminology: <em>" VMware launched the public beta of <strong>VSAN </strong>(virtual SAN), its software for pooling
server-based flash among multiple physical servers. VSAN creates what is
effectively a hybrid storage array using flash and hard disk drives on each of a
cluster of servers."</em>Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-53504731242472836292013-08-16T05:21:00.005-07:002013-08-16T05:24:11.335-07:00August<strong>304</strong> - This was the magic number for July. 304 hours of sunshine in <a href="http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/startseite/wetter-juli-1.7485428">Zurich in July 2013</a>...most likely won't be repeated for a couple years. And I was lucky enough to get three weeks of vacation during that time!<br />
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<strong>Now, back to business this week!</strong><br />
<br />
There was quite a bit of news coming from the <a href="http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/">FlashMemory Summit</a> taking place in Santa Clara this week during the otherwise quite days of summer. My today's update will thus be somewhat SSD- and Flash-biased!<br />
Faster, cheaper flash storage is hitting the enterprise market and <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241584/Enterprise_flash_arrays_pack_in_more_storage_with_denser_media?taxonomyId=19&pageNumber=1" target="_blank">Computerworld had a great overview</a> on new products and technologies being introduced.<br />
As it has been the case with every piece of IT technology in the past, <strong>consumer products lead the way and the volumes achieved there eventually help drive down costs</strong> and make components (Flash Memory in this case) viable for enterprise products. In the case of SSD, the <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9241445/Ultrabooks_give_SSD_shipments_a_boost?taxonomyId=19">Ultrabooks and Tablets</a> are driving up volume shipments, as outlined in CW.<br />
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Amazingly enough, there's <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/13/facebook_calls_for_worst_flas_possible/" target="_blank">companies like Facebook who require "the worst flash possible</a>...just make it dense and cheap." Write-once, read-never would be the spec for this type of Flash. I'd think that probably tape storage would make a lot more sense in such an environment?!<br />
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As a matter of fact, Flash Memory and SSDs have reached enough momentum in the market to stir some countermeasures and activities on the side of the <strong>HDD ("spinning rust") vendors</strong>: <em>"The <a href="http://storage-products.net/">Storage Products Association (SPA)</a> was formed as a mutual benefit nonprofit
corporation in California to promote the use and understanding of rotating magnetic media
hard drive (RHD) technologies as a critical component of the future digital storage
ecosystem."</em><br />
Companies behind SPA are (Aug. 2013): <span class="home-small">HGST, Seagate, Toshiba and WD.</span><br />
<br />
On their website, they have compiled a very nice <a href="http://www.storage-products-association.org/infographic.html">infographic</a> with a couple amazing facts around disk storage!Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5224290967247788726.post-42465163093603310082013-07-05T00:48:00.000-07:002013-07-05T01:58:30.048-07:00JulyRecently, I had one of these <strong>"aha" moments</strong>, situations where things come together and you suddenly realize that a thought or idea you had -only as a faint impression- suddenly becomes real! Most often this happens to me when I read an article which exactly sums up -in an eloquent way-what I had only been guessing or feeling.<br />
The <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/03/emcs_next_vnx_delayed/">"Register" article</a> which had that effect on me last week is this one:<em> "Amazon, currently estimated to have <strong>$2bn in storage sales with an
expected 65 per cent growth in storage revenue</strong> in each of the next 2-3
years which will make them a top 3 player in the storage industry".</em><br />
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<strong>Top 3 player in the storage industry</strong>? For decades, the likes of EMC, IBM, HP, NetApp, HDS have been switching positions in the quarterly IDC and Gartner charts... now Amazon?<br />
How come?<br />
Well, <a href="http://gigaom.com/2013/05/29/killer-cloud-report-says-amazon-web-services-threatens-all-it-incumbents/">here's why</a>: <em>"The move to cloud computing means<strong> fewer companies will buy huge numbers
of servers and storage arrays for their own use</strong>. Over the next five
years, Morgan Stanley’s expects that 3 percent to 17 percent of current
spending could be sucked up by cloud-based IT service providers."</em><br />
And this is how "cloud storage" gets to "top three": 17% of the storage market today actually would be the #2 spot (behind market leader EMC). <br />
So<strong> customers only hold very limited amounts of active data in their "on-premise" storage farms</strong> (most likely on SSDs) and push/pull everything else (including archives and backups) to the cloud.<br />
As we all know, cloud providers like Amazon are not known as buyers of huge amounts of storage systems. Like Google and Facebook and other "hyperscale data" companies, they build their own infrastructure, based on chips from Intel or AMD and disk drives directly from the vendors like WD and Seagate.<br />
Now, preparing for this era and in order to allow enterprises to <strong>mitigate the dependence</strong> on one specific cloud technology or vendor, <a href="http://www.zurich.ibm.com/csc/security/icstore/">IBM is working on a project</a> (this was actually demo'ed at the<a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/edge/"> Edge 2013</a> conference in June) to provide redundancy by using an on-premise IBM Storwize V7000 system connected to multiple clouds <a href="http://pubs.0xff.ps/papers/racs-socc.pdf">(RAID'ed clouds</a> if you will): Please read the<strong> research paper </strong><a href="http://domino.research.ibm.com/library/cyberdig.nsf/papers/630549C46339936C852577C200291E78/$File/rz3783.pdf">here</a>!<br />
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On to the <strong>network:</strong> (after all "cloud" is enabled only by powerful networks!)<br />
You may not have realized it, but<strong> Ethernet did celebrate its 40th birthday</strong> this past spring, <a href="http://www.networkcomputing.com/video/mastermix/2149376119001?cid=iwhome_vid__mast">here's an interview with Bob Metcalfe</a>, the inventor of Ether-Net!<br />
At the same time, <strong>16 Gbps Fibre Channel</strong> is gaining momentum as is reported <a href="http://www.storagenewsletter.com/news/marketreport/16gb-fc-comes-back-1q13-infonetics">here</a>. The fact that CISCO recently announced their own 16 Gbps SAN director definitely is an endorsement for the Fibre Channel market and provides clients a choice of CISCO or Brocade gear for their storage networks!<br />
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And lastly, as many of us will be enjoying <strong>vacations</strong> in the coming weeks, exploring new countries and making new experiences, here's some <a href="http://www.roughtype.com/?p=3461">great thoughts</a> related to "live-blogging": <em>"Even for those who are always pulling out their phones to snap pictures
or shoot videos, to text or tweet or tumble or otherwise share the
moments of their being, the pleasure lies mainly in the recording, not
in the record. The act of recording is itself a disposable experience.
The tools for recording and sharing are disposable as well. They get
old."</em><br />
<strong>Have fun!</strong>Matt Wernerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08377474190252707231noreply@blogger.com0