Category: data protection

Data virtualization surfaces

Posted on by Ray in Block Storage, Cloud services, Clustered storage, DAS, Data, data access, data protection, Data QoS, Distributed computing, File Storage, Object storage, SSD storage, Storage, Storage virtualization, Strategy, Systems

There’s a new storage startup out of stealth, called Primary Data and it’s implementing data (note, not storage) virtualization.

They already have $60M in funding with some pretty highpowered talent from Fusion IO, namely David Flynn, Rick White and Steve Wozniak (the ‘Woz’)  (also of Apple fame).

There have been a number of attempts at creating a virtualization layers for data namely ViPR (See my post ViPR virtues, vexations but no storage virtualization) but Primary Data is taking a different tack to the problem.

Data virtualization explained

Data hypervisor, software defined storage, data plane, control plane
(c) 2012 Silverton Consulting, Inc. All rights reserved

Essentially they want to separate the data plane from the control plane (See my Data Hypervisor post and comments for another view on this).

  • The data plane consists of those storage system activities that actually perform IO or read and writes.
  • The control plane is those storage system activities that do everything else that has to be done by a storage system, including provisioning, monitoring, and managing the storage.

Separating the data plane from the control plane offers a number of advantages. EMC ViPR does this but it’s data plane is either standard storage systems like VMAX, VNX, Isilon etc, or software defined storage solutions. Primary Data wants to do it all.

Their meta data or control plane engine is called a Data Director which holds information about the data objects that are stored in the Primary Data system, runs a data policy management engine and handles data migration.

Primary Data relies on purpose-built, Data Hypervisor (client) software that talks to Data Directors to understand where data objects reside and how to go about accessing them. But once the metadata information is transferred to the client SW, then IO activity can go directly between the host and the storage system in a protocol independent fashion.

[The graphic above is from my prior post and I assumed the data hypervisor (DH) would be co-located with the data but Primary Data has rightly implemented this as a separate layer in host software.]

Data Hypervisor protocol independence?

As I understand it this means that customers could use file storage, object storage or block storage to support any application requirement. This also means that file data (objects) could be migrated to block storage and still be accessed as file data. But the converse is also true, i.e., block data (objects) could be migrated to file storage and still be accessed as block data. You need to add object, DAS, PCIe flash and cloud storage to the mix to see where they are headed.

All data in Primary Data’s system are object encapsulated and all data objects are catalogued within a single, global namespace that spans file, block, object and cloud storage repositories

Data objects can reside on Primary storage systems, external non-Primary data aware file or block storage systems, DAS, PCIe Flash, and even cloud storage.

How does Data Virtualization compare to Storage Virtualization?

There are a number of differences:

  1. Most storage virtualization solutions are in the middle of the data path and because of this have to be fairly significant, highly fault-tolerant solutions.
  2. Most storage virtualization solutions don’t have a separate and distinct meta-data engine.
  3. Most storage virtualization systems don’t require any special (data hypervisor) software running on hosts or clients.
  4. Most storage virtualization systems don’t support protocol independent access to data storage.
  5. Most storage virtualization systems don’t support DAS or server based, PCIe flash for permanent storage. (Yes this is not supported in the first release but the intent is to support this soon.)
  6. Most storage virtualization systems support internal storage that resides directly inside the storage virtualization system hardware.
  7. Most storage virtualization systems support an internal DRAM cache layer which is used to speed up IO to internal and external storage and is in addition to any caching done at the external storage system level.
  8. Most storage virtualization systems only support external block storage.

There are a few similarities as well:

  1. They both manage data migration in a non-disruptive fashion.
  2. They both support automated policy management over data placement, data protection, data performance, and other QoS attributes.
  3. They both support multiple vendors of external storage.
  4. They both can support different host access protocols.

Data Virtualization Policy Management

A policy engine runs in the Data Directors and provides SLAs for data objects. This would include performance attributes, protection attributes, security requirements and cost requirements.  Presumably, policy specifications for data protection would include RAID level, erasure coding level and geographic dispersion.

In Primary Data, backup becomes nothing more than object snapshots with different protection characteristics, like offsite full copy. Moreover, data object migration can be handled completely outboard and without causing data access disruption and on an automated policy basis.

Primary Data first release

Primary Data will be initially deployed as an integrated data virtualization solution which includes an all flash NAS storage system and a standard NAS system. Over time, Primary Data will add non-Primary Data external storage and internal storage (DAS, SSD, PCIe Flash).

The Data Policy Engine and Data Migrator functionality will be separately charged for software solutions. Data Directors are sold in pairs (active-passive) and can be non-disruptively upgraded. Storage (directors?) are also sold separately.

Data Hypervisor (client) software is available for most styles of Linux, Openstack and coming for ESX. Windows SMB support is not split yet (control plane/data plane) but Primary data does support SMB. I believe the Data Hypervisor software will also be released in an upcoming version of the Linux kernel.

They are currently in testing. No official date for GA but they did say they would announce pricing in 2015.

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Comments?

Disclosure: We have done work for Primary Data over the past year.

Photo Credits:

  1. Screen shot of beta test system supplied by Primary Data
  2. Graphic created by SCI for prior Data Hypervisor post

EMC acquisitions & other announcements at #EMCSummit last week

Posted on by Ray in Cloud services, Cloud storage, data protection, Mobile computing, Object storage

EMC’s recently announced the acquisition of Maginetics and Spanning, which are mainly for pushing data protection out to cloud storage and cloud storage data protection. The other major item to come out of EMC Global Analyst Summit last week was the announcement of EMC’s Hybrid Cloud Solution.

Magnetic for cloud onramp

Maginetics is intended to be yet another tier in the deep archive for Avatar, Data Domain and NetWorker but this one is intended to be in the cloud. MagFS Maginetic’s file system manages the file to object transition, provides their own deduplication and can replicate data to one or more cloud providers, even supporting different cloud services such as, AWS, Google Compute, Azzure, CleverSafe etc. I think ultimately this may be broadened beyond just data protection to be another tier for Unified storage to move to the cloud as well but that’s subject for another post.

How does Maginetics differs from another recent EMC acquisition, TwinStrata? TwinStrata is mainly targeted for primary storage moving a LUN to the cloud and maintaining data avaliability and something like reasonable responsiveness to the data that’s moved to the cloud. So where Maginetics is for data protection storage TwinStrata is for primary storage. Unclear where this leaves other file storage…

Spanning for protection of cloud data

Spanning is intended to be a data protection solution for  data that’s born in the cloud. In this case, you can use Spanning to backup your cloud applications to different cloud service providers or even the same cloud service providers. Even if you don’t want to use Spanning to backup your cloud app’s data, with a cloud version of Data Protection Advisor (based somewhat on Spanning), you should be ultimately able to use it to monitor your current cloud provider’s replication/protection activities to insure they are copying and backing up your data properly across data center domains etc. In this way you can better monitor your cloud providers internal data replication/protection services.

EMC seems like it’s got a vision of where it intends to go and the cloud represents a significant new potential data stream and they want to be there to help protect it and use it to help protect other data.

EMC’s Hybrid Cloud announcement

The main announcement at the summit was on EMC’s Hybrid Cloud Offering which was pre-announced at EMC World last spring. With their Hybrid Cloud Offering making it easier for data centers to take advantage of the cloud to burst applications back and forth, EMC’s trying to cover anyway to use the cloud that makes sense.

EMC announced that their Hybrid Cloud solution will support a “federation” hybrid cloud solution based on VCE/VBLOCK or VSPEX and a software defined version based on ViPR storage controller. They also made a statement of direction to have their Hybrid Cloud solution support Microsoft Azure as well as OpenStack at some point in the future…

Well I think that about covers it for EMC cloud announcements from the EMC Global Summit last week.

Comments?

VMworld 2014 projects Marvin, Mystic, and more

Posted on by Ray in Block Storage, Cloud services, Clustered storage, data protection, desktop virtualization, Disk storage, Distributed computing, Mobile computing, Networking, Object storage, Server virtualization, Software Defined Network, Storage, Strategic Inflection Points, Strategy, Systems

IMG_2902[This post was updated after being published to delete NDA material – sorry, RL] Attended VMworld2014 in San Francisco this past week. Lots of news, mostly about vSphere 6 beta functionality and how the new AirWatch acquisition will be rolled into VMware’s End-User Computing framework.

vSphere 6.0 beta

Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) is in beta and extends VMware’s software-defined storage model to external NAS and SAN storage.  VVOLs transforms SAN/NAS  storage into VM-centric devices by making the virtual disk a native representation of the VM at the array level, and enables app-centric, policy-based automation of SAN and NAS based storage services, somewhat similar to the capabilities used in a more limited fashion by Virtual SAN today.

Storage system features have proliferated and differentiated over time and to be able to specify and register any and all of these functional nuances to VMware storage policy based management (SPBM) service is a significant undertaking in and of itself. I guess we will have to wait until it comes out of beta to see more. NetApp had a functioning VVOL storage implementation on the show floor.

Virtual SAN 1.0/5.5 currently has 300+ customers with 30+ ready storage nodes from all major vendors, There are reference architecture documents and system bundles available.

Current enhancements outside of vSphere 6 beta

vRealize Suite extends automation and monitoring support for a broad mix of VMware and non VMware infrastructure and services including OpenStack, Amazon Web Services, Azure, Hyper-V, KVM, NSX, VSAN and vCloud Air (formerly vCloud Hybrid Services), as well as vSphere.

New VMware functionality being released:

  • vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.8 – provides self service DR through vCloud Automation Center (vRealize Automation) integration, with up to 5000 protected VMs per vCenter and up to 2000 VM concurrent recoveries. SRM UI will move to be supported under vSphere’s Web Client.
  • vSphere Data Protection Advanced 5.8 – provides configurable parallel backups (up to 64 streams) to reduce backup duration/shorten backup windows, access and restore backups from anywhere, and provides support for Microsoft Exchange DAGs, and SQL Clusters, as well as Linux LVMs and EXT4 file systems.

VMware NSX 6.1 (in beta) has 150+ customers and provides micro segmentation security levels which essentially supports fine grained security firewall definitions almost at the VM level, there are over 150 NSX customers today.

vCloud Hybrid Cloud Services is being rebranded as vCloud Air, and is currently available globally through data centers in the US, UK, and Japan. vCloud Air is part of the vCloud Air Network, an ecosystem of over 3,800 service providers with presence in 100+ countries that are based on common VMware technology.  VMware also announced a number of new partnerships to support development of mobile applications on vCloud Air.  Some additional functionality for vCloud Air that was announced at VMworld includes:

  • vCloud Air Virtual Private Cloud On Demand beta program supports instant, on demand consumption model for vCloud services based on a pay as you go model.
  • VMware vCloud Air Object Storage based on EMC ViPR is in beta and will be coming out shortly.
  • DevOps/continuous integration as a service, vRealize Air automation as a service, and DB as a service (MySQL/SQL server) will also be coming out soon

End-User Computing: VMware is integrating AirWatch‘s (another acquisition) enterprise mobility management solutions for mobile device management/mobile security/content collaboration (Secure Content Locker) with their current Horizon suite for virtual desktop/laptop support. VMware End User Computing now supports desktop/laptop virtualization, mobile device management and security, and content security and file collaboration. Also VMware’s recent CloudVolumes acquisition supports a light weight desktop/laptop app deployment solution for Horizon environments. AirWatch already has a similar solution for mobile.

OpenStack, Containers and other collaborations

VMware is starting to expand their footprint into other arenas, with new support, collaboration and joint ventures.

A new VMware OpenStack Distribution is in beta now to be available shortly, which supports VMware as underlying infrastructure for OpenStack applications that use  OpenStack APIs. VMware has become a contributor to OpenStack open source. There are other OpenStack distributions that support VMware infrastructure available from HP, Cannonical, Mirantis and one other company I neglected to write down.

VMware has started a joint initiative with Docker and Pivotal to broaden support for Linux containers. Containers are light weight packaging for applications that strip out the OS, hypervisor, frameworks etc and allow an application to be run on mobile, desktops, servers and anything else that runs Linux O/S (for Docker Linux 3.8 kernel level or better). Rumor has it that Google launches over 15M Docker containers a day.

VMware container support expands from Pivotal Warden containers, to now also include Docker containers. VMware is also working with Google and others on the Kubernetes project which supports container POD management (logical groups of containers). In addition Project Fargo is in development which is VMware’s own lightweight packaging solution for VMs. Now customers can run VMs, Docker containers, or Pivotal (Warden) containers on the same VMware infrastructure.

AT&T and VMware have a joint initiative to bring enterprise grade network security, speed and reliablity to vCloud Air customers which essentially allows customers to use AT&T VPNs with vCloud Air. There’s more to this but that’s all I noted.

VMware EVO, the next evolution in hyper-convergence has emerged.

  • EVO RAIL (formerly known as project Marvin) is appliance package from VMware hardware partners that runs vSphere Suite and Virtual SAN and vCenter Log Insight. The hardware supports 4 compute/storage nodes in a 2U tall rack mounted appliance. 4 of these appliances can be connected together into a cluster. Each compute/storage node supports ~100VMs or ~150 virtual desktops. VMware states that the goal is to have an EVO RAIL implementation take at most 15 minutes from power on to running VMs. Current hardware partners include Dell, EMC (formerly named project Mystic), Inspur (China), Net One (Japan), and SuperMicro.
  • EVO RACK is a data center level hardware appliance with vCloud Suite installed and includes Virtual SAN and NSX. The goal is for EVO RACK hardware to support a 2hr window from power on to a private cloud environment/datacenter deployed and running VMs. VMware expects a range of hardware partners to support EVO RACK but none were named. They did specifically mention that EVO RACK is intended to support hardware from the Open Compute Project (OCP). VMware is providing contributions to OCP to facilitate EVO RACK deployment.

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Sorry about the stream of consciousness approach to this. We got a deep dive on what’s in vSphere 6 but it was all under NDA. So this just represents what was discussed openly in keynotes and other public sessions.

Comments?

 

MCS, UltraDIMMs and memory IO, the new path ahead – part 2

Posted on by Ray in Block Storage, DAS, data protection, SSD storage, Storage

IMG_2337In part 1 (see previous post here), we discussed the underlying technology for SanDisk‘s UltraDIMMs based on Diablo Technologies MCS hardware and software. IBM will be shipping UltraDIMMs in their high end servers later this year as their new eXFlash.

In this segment we will discuss what SanDisk has put on top of the Diablo Technology’s MCS to supply SSD storage.

SanDisk UltraDIMM SSD storage

In the UltraDIMM package, SanDisk supports 200 or 400GB of 19nm MLC NAND SSD storage that is accessed via SATA [corrected after this went out, Ed.] internally, but the main interface is the 1600MHz, DDR3 to the UltraDIMMs.  As each UltraDIMM card plugs into any DDR3 memory slot you can potentially support multiples of these cards in a single server. I believe the maximum number is 7 UltraDIMMs, not sure if IBM supports this many [corrected after this went out, Ed.] dependent on the number of memory slots in your server. IBM on their x3850 and x3950 can support up to 32 UltraDIMMs per server.

SanDisk uses their Guardian Technology to enhance NAND endurance beyond what’s possible with native NAND controllers. One of the things that Guardian Technology does is to vary the voltage used to program the NAND bits over the life of the bit cells/pages. So early on when the cell is fresh, they can use less voltage and as it ages they increase the voltage to insure that the bits are properly programmed. With other NAND controllers, using the same voltage across the whole NAND lifetime it will unduly stress the NAND bits early on and later as they age, it will be unable to program properly and will need to be flagged as bad.  The NAND chips/bits are characterized so that SanDisk Guardian Technology can use an optimum voltage curve over the chips lifetime.

The UltraDIMMs also have powerloss protection. This means that any write to an UltraDIMM memory that’s been acknowledged to the server is guaranteed to have sufficient power to make it all the way to the SSD storage.

Another thing that MCS memory interface brings to the picture is Error Correction Circuitry (ECC). Data written to UltraDIMMs has ECC protection throughout the data path up from the server DRAM memory, through the DIMM socket, all the way to the SSD flash.

As discussed extensively in Part 1 of this post, access times for UltraDIMM storage is on the order 7µsec, which is ~7X faster than best of class PCIe Flash storage and a single UltraDIMM card is capable of sustaining 20GB/second of data throughput. I know of enterprise class storage systems that can’t do half that in throughput.

On the other hand, one problem with UltraDIMM storage is that they are not hot swappable. This is primarily a memory interface problem and not an UltraDIMM issue but nonetheless, you can’t swap an UltraDIMM module until the server is powered down. And who would want to do such a thing when the server is powered anyway?

SanDisk long history in NAND

SanDisk1 SanDisk2 SanDisk3As you can see from the three photos at right SanDisk seems to have been involved in flash/NAND technology innovation since the early 1990’s.  At the time NOR and NAND were competing for almost the same market.

But sometime in the mid to late 1990’s NAND found a niche in consumer cameras and never looked back. Not sure where NOR marketis today but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the NAND market

UltraDIMMs is just the latest platform to support NAND storage access.  It happens to be one with blazingly fast access times and high IO parallelism, but in the end it just represents another way to obtain the benefits of NAND for IT customers.

Also, SanDisk’s commercial NAND (Memory Card) business seems to be very healthy. What with higher resolution photos/video/audio coming online over the next decade or so it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

SanDisk is in a new joint venture (JV) with Toshiba to produce 3D NAND flash. But in the mean time they are still using 2D flash for their current SSD storage. Toshiba and SanDisk in their current JV together manufacture about 1/2 the NAND bits in the world today.

The rest of SanDisk NAND business also seem to be doing well. And the aforementioned JV with Toshiba on 3D NAND looks positioned to take all of this NAND to the next level of density as well which should make all of us happy.

SanDisk acquiring FusionIO

SanDisk was in the news lately as they have recently filed to acquire FusionIO, a prominent and early PCIe flash supplier that in recent years has broadened their portfolio to include enterprise storage with their acquisition of NexGen storage (renamed IO Control).

When FusionIO IPO’d the stock sold at ~$19/share and SanDisk is purchasing the company in an all cash deal for $11.25/share almost a 40% reduction in share price in 3 years (June’11 IPO) – ouch.  At IPO the company was valued at ~$2B, (some pundits said this was ~$1.5B, so there’s some debate on the original valuation). SanDisk is buying the company for ~$1.1B in cash. Any way you look at it, they paid significantly less than what the company was worth at IPO. Granted, it was valued at 41X earnings then and its recent stock price at $11.59 represents a 3.3P/E (ttm).

Not exactly certain what happened. Analysts seem to indicate that Apple and Facebook, FusionIO’s biggest customers were buying less FusionIO product. I also happen to think that the PCIe flash space has gotten pretty crowded over the last 3 years with entrants from Micron Technologies, Intel, LSI, Verident/Western Digital, and others.

In addition, for PCIe flash to broaden its market there’s a serious need to surround it with sophisticated caching software to enable a more general purpose IO solution (see Pernix Data, Proximal Data, and others). These general purpose, caching solutions have finally reached high levels of sophistication and just now are becoming more widely available.

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Originally, part 3 of this series was going to be on IBM’s release of the UltraDIMM technology  as their new eXFlash. However, I am somewhat surprised not to see other vendors taking up the MCS/UltraDIMM technology but IBM may have a limited exclusivity to it.

The only other thing thats this interesting happening in solid state storage is HP’s Memristor Machine which is still a ways off.

Nonetheless, a new much faster memory card based SSD is hitting the market and if history is any indication, it won’t be long until the data storage world will sit up and take notice.

Comments?

Veeam’s upcoming V8 virtues

Posted on by Ray in Block Storage, data protection, File Storage, Server virtualization, Storage Backup, Visionary leadershp

[Not] Vamoosing VMworld

We were at Storage Field Day 5 (SFD5, see the videos here) last month and had a briefing on Veeam’s upcoming V8 release.

They also told us (news to me) that they are leaving VMworld[I sit corrected, I have been informed after this went to press that Veeam is not leaving VMworld2014, and never said anything about it at the session – My mistake and I take full responsibility, sorry for any confusion] (sigh, now who’s going to have THE after conference, KILLER PARTY at VMworld) and moving to [but they did say they are definitely starting up] their own VeeamON conference at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas on October 6,7 & 8 this year. If their VMworld parties are any indication, the conference in the Cosmo should be a fun and rewarding time for all. Pre-registration is open and they have a call out for papers.

Doug Hazelman (@VMDoug), Rick Vanover (@RickVanover) and Luca Dell’Oca (@dellock6) all presented although Luca’s session was under strict NDA to be revealed later. I think sometime later this summer.

Doug mentioned that after 6 years, Veeam now has over 100,000 customers world wide.  One of their more popular, early innovations was the ability to run a VM directly off of a backup and sometime over the past couple of years they have moved from a VMware only backup & replication solution to also supporting Microsoft Hyper-V (more news to me).

V8’s virtues

Veeam V8 will add some interesting capabilities to the Veeam product solutions:

  • (VMware only) Built-in backups from storage snapshots – (Enterprise Plus edition only) Backup from VMware snapshots can sometimes impact app performance, especially when it comes time to commit changes. But with V7, Veeam now offers backup utilizing VMware’s Change Block Tracking (CBT)and taking backups from storage snapshots directly for HP 3PAR StoreServ, HP (Lefthand) StoreVirtual/StoreVirtual VSA and in soon to be available V8, NetApp FAS (Data ONTAP 8.1 or above, 7- or cluster-mode, clones too) storage systems. First Veeam does its application level processing (under Windows Server does VSS operations), after that completes tells VMware to take (a VMware) snapshot, when that completes they tell the storage to take a (storage) snapshot, when that completes they release the VMware snapshot. What all this does is allows them to utilize VMware CBT as well as storage snapshots which makes it up to 20 times faster than normal VMware snapshot backups. This way they can backup directly from the storage snapshot using the Veeam proxy. Also because the VMware snapshot is so short lived there is little overhead for committing any changes.  Also there is no need to use a proxy ESX server to do this, i.e., promote the VMware snapshot to a LUN, add it to an ESX, resignature, add the VM, and do all the backups, which, of course destroys CBT. This works for FC, iSCSI and NFS data stores. With NetApp storage you can also take the (VSS) application consistent snapshot and copy it to SnapVault.
  • Veeam Explorer (recovery) for storage snapshots – (Free backup edition) Recovery from (HP in V7 & NetApp in V8) storage snapshots is yet another feature and provides item (e.g., emails, contacts, email folders for Exchange), granular (VM level or file level) or full (volume) recovery from storage based snapshots, regardless of how those storage snapshots were created.
  • Veeam Explorer for SQL Server (V8 only) – (unsure what license is required) Similar to the Explorer for snapshots discussed above, this would allow a Veeam admin to do item level recovery for an SQL database. This also includes recovery from Veeam Backup repositories as well as storage snapshots. But this means that you could restore a ROW of an SQL table, an SQL TABLE as well as a whole SQL database. Now DBAs always had these sorts of abilities which required using Log services. But allowing a Veeam admin to do these sorts of activities seems like putting a gun in the hands of a child (or maybe a bazooka in the hands of an untrained civilian).
  • Veeam Explorer for Active Directory (V8 only) – (unsure what license is required) You’ve seen whats’ available above and just consider these same capabilities only applied to active directory. This means you can restore a password hash, user, group or organizational unit (OU). I don’t know about you but this seems more akin to a howitzer in the hands of a civilian.

They showed an example of competitive situation where running V8 (in beta?) with NetApp backups using snapshots versus some unnamed competition. They were able to complete a full backup in 1/4 the time of their competition (2hrs. vs. 8hrs.) and completed incremental backups in 35min. vs. 2hrs. for the competition.

“Thar be dragons there …”

Ok, maybe I am a little more paranoid than the average IT guy/gal. But in my (old world, greybeards) view, SQL databases belong in the realm of DBAs and Active Directory databases belong to domain controller admins. Messing around with production versions of SQL DBs or AD DBs seems hazardous to a data centers health. We’re not just talking files anymore here guys.

In Veeam’s defense, these new Explorer recovery tools are only probably going to be used to do something that needs to be done right away, to get things back operating again, and would not be used unless there’s a real need/emergency to do so. Otherwise let the DBA and security admins do it with their log recovery tools.  And another thing, they have had similar capabilities for Exchange emails, folders, contacts, etc. and no ones shot their foot off yet so why the concern.

Nonetheless, I feel strongly that these tools ought to be placed under lock and key and the key put in a safe with the combination under a glass case labeled IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, BREAK GLASS.

Comments.

Peak server, the cloud & NetApp storage for AWS

Posted on by Ray in Cloud services, Cloud storage, DAS, Data, data protection, Networking, Server virtualization, Software Defined Network, SSD storage, Storage, Storage Features, Strategic Inflection Points, Strategy, Systems

I was at a conference a month or so ago and one speaker mentioned that the number of x86 servers being sold has peaked and is dropping. I can imagine a number of reasons for this and the main one being server virtualization. But this speaker had a different view and it seemed to be the cloud.

Peak server is here.

He said that three companies were purchasing over 1/2 the x86 servers these days. I feel that there should be at least four Google, Facebook, Amazon & Microsoft and maybe five, if you add in Apple.

Something has happened over the past year or so. Enterprise IT has continued along its merry way but the adoption of cloud services is starting to take off.

I have seen this before, with mainframes, then mini-computers, and now client-server. Minicomputers came out and were so easy to use and develop/deploy applications on, that people stopped creating new apps on the mainframe. Mainframes never died out, and probably have never really stopped shipping increasing MIPS every year. But the share of WW MIP installations for mainframes has been shrinking for decades and have never got going again.

Ultimately, the proprietary minicomputer was just a passing fad and only lasted about 25 years or so. It was wounded by the PC, and then killed off by proprietary Unix workstations.

Then it happened again, the new upstart this time was Windows Server and Linux. Once again it was just easier to build apps on these new and cheaper servers, than any of the older Unix servers. Of course there’s still plenty of business in proprietary Unix servers, but again I would venture to say that their share of WW installed MIPS has been shrinking for a long time.

Nowadays, the cloud is mortally wounding the server market. Server virtualization is helping a lot but it’s also enabling the cloud to eliminate many physical server sales. This is because new applications, new IT environments are being ported/moved/deployed onto the cloud.

Peak server means less enterprise networking, storage and server hardware

In this new, cloud world, customers need less servers, less networking and less enterprise class storage. Yes not every application is suitable to cloud deployment but that’s why there’s still mainframes, still Unix servers, and a continuing need for standalone, physical or virtual x86 servers in the enterprise. But their share of MIPs will start shrinking soon if it hasn’t already.

Ok, so enterprise data center share of MIPs will start shrinking vis a vis cloud data centers. But what happens to networking and storage. My view is that networking becomes software defined and there’s a component of that which operates on special purpose hardware. This will increase in shipments but the more complex, enterprise class networking equipment will flatline and never see any more substantial growth.

And up until yesterday I felt much the same about enterprise class storage. Software defined storage in my future, DAS and SSDs for the capacity and the smarts exist in software if at all. Today, most of the cloud and many service providers have been moving off enterprise class storage and onto DAS.

NetApp’s new enterprise storage in AWS

But yesterday I heard about NetApp private storage for the cloud. This is a configuration of NetApp storage installed in a CoLo facility with a “direct connection” to Amazon compute cloud. In this way, enterprise customers can maintain data stewardship/ownership/governance over their data while at the same time deploying applications onto AWS compute cloud.

This seems to be one of the sticking points to enterprise customers adopting the cloud. By having (data) storage owned lock/stock&barrel by the enterprise it seems much easier and less risky to deploy new and old applications to the cloud.

Whether this pans out and can provide enough value to cover the added expense of the enterprise class storage, only the market can decide. But this is the first time I can remember, where any vendor has articulated a role for enterprise class storage in the cloud. Let’s hope it works.

Image: PDP8/s by ajmexico

EU vs. US on data protection

Posted on by Ray in data access, data protection, Information economy, Internet traffic
Prison Planet by AZRainman (cc) (from Flickr)
Prison Planet by AZRainman (cc) (from Flickr)

Last year I was at SNW and talking to a storage admin from a large, international company who mentioned how data protection policies in EU were forcing them to limit where data gets copied and replicated.  Some of their problem was due to different countries having dissimilar legislation regarding data privacy and protection.

However, their real concern was how to effectively and automatically sanitize this information. It seems they would like to analyze it off shore but still adhere to EU country’s data protection legislation.

Recently, there has been more discussions in the EU about data protection requirement (See NY Times post on Consumer Data Protection Laws, an Ocean Apart and the Ars Technica post Proposed EU data protection reform could start a “trade war”).  It seems, EU proposals are becoming even more at odds with current US data protection environment.

Compartmentalized US data privacy

In the US, data protection seems much more compartmentalized and decentralized. We have data protection for health care information, video rentals, credit reports, etc. Each with their own provisions and protection regime.

This allows companies in different markets pretty much internal control over what they do with customer information but tightly regulates what happens with the data as it moves outside that environment.

Within such an data protection regime an internet company can gather all the information they want on a person’s interaction with their web services and that way better target services and advertising for the user.

EU’s broader data protection regime

In contrast, EU countries have a much broader regime in place that covers any and all personal information.  The EU wants to ultimately control how much information can be gathered by a company about what a person does online and provide an expunge on demand capability directly to the individual.

EU’s proposed new rules would standardize data privacy rules across the 27 country region but would also strengthen them in the process.  Doing so, would make it much harder to personalize services and the presumption is that the internet companies trying to do so would not make as much revenue in the EU because of this.

Although US companies and government officials have been lobbying heavily to change the new proposals it appears to be backfiring and causing a backlash.  EU considers the US position to be biased to commerce and commercial interests whereas, US considers the EU position to be more biased to the individual.

US data privacy is evolving

On this side of the Atlantic, the privacy tide may be rising as well.  Recently, the President has recently proposed a “Consumer Privacy Bill Of Rights” which would enshrine some of the same privacy rights present in the EU proposals. For instance, such a regime would include rights for individuals to see any and all information company’s have on them, rights to correct such information and rights to limit how much information companies collect on individuals.

This all sounds a lot closer to what the EU currently has and where they seem to want to go.

However, how this plays out in Congress and what ultimately emerges as data protection and privacy legislation is another matter. But for the moment it seems that governments on both sides of the Atlantic are pushing for more data protection not less.

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Dell Storage Forum 2012 – day 2

Posted on by Ray in Block Storage, data protection, Disk storage, Ethernet, FC, FCoE, File Storage

At the second day of Dell Storage Forum in Boston, they announced:

  • New FluidFS (Exanet) FS8600 front end NAS gateway for Dell Compellent storage. The new gateway can be scaled from 1 to 4 dual controller configurations and can support a single file system/name space of up to 1PB in size. The FS8600 is available with 1GbE or 10GbE options and support 8Gbps FC attachments to backend storage.
  • New Dell Compellent SC8000 controllers based on Dell’s 2U, 12th generation server hardware that can now be cooled with ambient air (115F?) and consumes lower power than previous Series 40 whitebox server controllers. Also the new hardware comes with dual 6-core processors and support 16 to 64GB of DRAM per controller or up to 128GB with dual controllers. The new controllers GA this month, support PCIe slots for backend 6Gbps SAS and frontend connectivity of 1GbE or 10GbE iSCSI, 10GbE FCoE or 8Gbps FC, with 16Gbps FC coming out in 2H2012.
  • New Dell Compellent SC200 and SC220 drive enclosures a 2U 24 SFF drive enclosure or a 2U 12LFF drive enclosure configuration supporting 6Gbps SAS connectivity.
  • New Dell Compellent SC6.0 operating software supporting a 64 bit O/S for larger memory, dual/multi-core processing.
  • New FluidFS FS7600 (1GbE)/FS7610 (10GbE) 12th generation server front end NAS gateways for Dell EqualLogic storage which supports asynchronous replication at the virtual file system level. The new gateways also support 10GbE iSCSI and can be scaled up to 507TB in a single name space.
  • New FluidFS NX3600 (1GbE) /NX3610 (10GbE) 12th generation server front end NAS gateways for PowerVault storage systems which can support up to 576TB of raw capacity for a single gateway or scale to two gateways for up to 1PB of raw storage in a single namespace/file system.
  • Appasure 5 which includes better performance based on a new backend object store to protect even larger datasets. At the moment Appasure is a Windows only solution but with block deduplication/compression and change block tracking is already WAN optimized. Dell announced Linux support will be available later this year.

Probably more interesting was talk and demoing a prototype of their RNA Networks acquisition which supports a cache coherent PCIe SSD cards in Dell servers. The new capability is still on the drawing boards but is intended to connect to Dell Compellent storage and move tier 1 out to the server. Lot’s more to come on this. They call this Project Hermes for the Greek messenger god. Not sure but something about having lightening bolts on his shoes comes to mind…

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