November 2008 Entries
Best Practices for Microsoft Hyper-V and Storage Provisioning - November 9, 2008
Orlando Florida -- Xiotech Corporation announced plans today, at Storage Networking World (SNW) Fall 2008, to support Linux and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments within its award-winning ICON Manager user interface, expanding the integrated and automated storage provisioning and management it already provides. Through the end of SNW Fall, Xiotech representatives are available to discuss these and the company's other storage management tools at booth #306.
Currently, storage provisioning and management are typically "siloed" in that IT managers must use multiple management consoles to configure storage – first on the storage array, and then on the physical and virtual servers. Each step adds time and the risk of human error. ICON Manager's integrated and automated storage management enables users to provision and manage storage from a single console and gain a global view of storage throughout their IT environments.
ICON Manager, which currently provides these advanced capabilities for Windows and VMware environments, now adds support for Linux in the fourth quarter of 2008 and will support Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V by early 2009. ICON Manager also supports simplified storage provisioning and management for other operating systems, including UNIX, Mac OS and Novell NetWare.
"Our customers have saved significant money, time and stress by simplifying how they monitor, provision and manage their storage through ICON Manager," said Sencilo Solutions CEO Brian McCarthy. "Storage management is more application-driven than storage-driven, and the human error found in complex management procedures is essentially eliminated, because of the automation and control ICON Manager delivers. With support for additional operating systems, our users will now be able to realize even more functionality and savings across their entire IT ecosystems."
ICON Manager is designed for users of Xiotech's Emprise™ 7000 and Magnitude 3D® 4000 and Magnitude 3D 3000 storage systems. Based on the Web Services open architecture and utilizing Microsoft Management Console plug-ins, ICON Manager provides an unprecedented level of integration, automating storage management processes across the array and server environments. Wizards guide users through common tasks, speeding administration, reducing the possibility for errors and empowering users to realize the full value of their investment. Additionally, ICON Manager provides a global view of storage across the array, physical server and virtual machine layers, which helps avoid the inefficiencies of dark storage, where allocated but unused storage is difficult to locate and identify.
"It is good to see Xiotech extending its existing capabilities with ICON Manager into more environments," said Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Mark Peters. "With increasing system complexity as the norm in most data centers – especially as virtualized server environments grow – the capability that Xiotech offers for overall centralized storage monitoring and management is a boon. It's not just centralized and functional, but – at least as important – it's also easy to learn, navigate and use."
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts
Best Practices for Enterprise Solid State-Disk (SSD) - November 7, 2008
Orlando Florida --- Although solid-state disk (SSD) drives have seen insignificant adoption in the PC market, considerable excitement exists in the enterprise space for these devices. The key reason is speed. Although the price per gigabyte for an SSD drive is prohibitive in comparison to that of a traditional hard disk drive (HDD), there are server applications that use large numbers of HDDs at a fraction of their capacity to increase I/O bandwidth. In many cases, an SSD can provide more speed at an adequate capacity for a reasonable price.
"The difference between an enterprise server and a PC is that enterprise servers use a number of HDDs, whereas a PC uses only one. In a multiple-HDD system, mass storage is ranked into a storage hierarchy, with faster, more costly storage devices being placed in small amounts nearer to the processor and slower, cheaper storage devices used in larger capacities further from the processor," says Brian McCarthy CEO/President of Sencilo Solutions in Lake Mary Florida. In today's systems, the more expensive storage devices consist of enterprise-class HDDs -- disks with a high I/O rate because of high spindle speeds, wider tracks, and faster, more expensive interfaces such as Fibre Channel and SAS. Slower bulk storage devices are typically based on the same low-cost HDDs that are prevalent in PCs. This is the storage hierarchy typical of all computers, which extends all the way from processor caches down to archival storage.
An example of this hierarchy is shown in the figure, which gives a rough idea of where the different elements of the storage hierarchy fit from the perspectives of bandwidth and cost per gigabyte. We use a log-log chart format to allow us to see all the data that would be hidden if we were to use a linear scale for either performance or cost. The three orbs labeled L1, L2, and L3 are three possible layers of cache in or around the processor.
Since NAND's price per gigabyte has fallen below that of DRAM in recent years, system designers have found interesting ways to tap into NAND technology to improve performance while lowering costs. Flash SSDs are one means of reaching that goal, something McCarthy says he had worked on earlier in his career at Intel.
Enterprise-class HDDs fit at the top end of the HDD oval in the figure. As flash-based SSDs move into this market they pose a significant threat to enterprise HDDs, and many OEMs and IT managers expect future systems to be built using a combination of SSDs for speed and low-price HDDs for mass storage, eliminating the enterprise HDDs that might otherwise be used between low-cost HDDs and DRAM.
Flash SSD manufacturers have been working over the past few years to produce units that satisfy the enterprise server OEMs' needs at a satisfactory price. Their first offerings were expensive (about $10,000) so these devices are currently are being used to replace the most costly types of HDD-based enterprise arrays: those comprising short-stroked drives.
What is short stroking?
Short stroking is an approach to achieving the maximum possible performance from an enterprise HDD. The technology is relatively common, although the proportion of the overall enterprise HDD market that is used in this way is small. Objective Analysis estimates that less than 10% of all enterprise HDDs are short-stroked. The figure on p. 29 illustrates the basics of short stroking.
Two causes of delay in an HDD are access time and rotational latency. Access time is the time required for the disk's head to find a requested track, often referred to as "seek time," and depends on the distance from the current track to the requested track. Rotational latency is the time it takes for the requested data to move under the head after the head has found the right track.
While a programmer can do little to improve the latency, other than to use high-RPM disks, programmers can ensure that the head motion, and thus the access time, is as small as possible. This is done by using only a few adjacent tracks on the disk and completely ignoring the rest of the disk -- a process referred to as "short stroking."
While a short-stroked drive will only access a fraction of the available disk space, the data will be read off the disk at a significantly higher speed than normal. A disk with tens of IOPS can be "coaxed" into providing data at a few hundred IOPS by using this method. In some cases, users find that this is a worthwhile trade-off.
Another trick programmers can use to accelerate I/O is to use only the tracks at the outer edge of the disk. Data on the outer tracks is accessed at a higher rate, so transactions on these tracks are significantly faster.
An example of this approach is IBM's high-end Tier-1 storage system: the DS8300 Turbo. Offering 123,000 IOPS and a maximum latency of 16ms, this system includes 512 HDDs, in a mix of 73GB and 146GB capacities, which are mirrored and configured in a RAID formation.
Because of the redundant data required, and the fact that the drives are short-stroked, the system's 53TB of internal storage capacity whittles down to only 9TB of usable space.
An SSD can often support tens of times the IOPS of a short-stroked HDD. Often the higher bandwidth of the SSD, in tandem with the very small capacity actually used in a short-stroked HDD, will provide an opportunity for an SSD to replace a bank of HDDs. As long as the SSD's capacity is as great as that used in the short-stroked HDDs, and as long as the SSD's bandwidth matches that of the HDD array at a competitive price, the SSD may provide a more cost-effective alternative to an array of HDDs. This is the case in most of today's deployments of SSDs in enterprise environments.
Objective Analysis believes the market for short-stroked enterprise HDDs will be the first market to completely convert from HDDs to SSDs.
SSD market forecasts
Objective Analysis has arrived at estimates for the enterprise SSD market through two unrelated forecasting techniques. One of our forecasts uses the enterprise HDD forecasts of Coughlin Associates and applies some judgment to the numbers. This forecast results in strong similarities to the "bottom-up" forecast we derived by using a thorough analysis of each enterprise application type.
Our bottom-up forecast finds that the enterprise SSDs will first be adopted in transaction processing systems, but over the long term even stronger growth will occur in large Internet systems.
Our top-down forecast is based upon the following assumptions:
--5% to 10% of enterprise HDDs are short-stroked. This estimate is based on conversations with many parties in the industry;
--Acceptance of enterprise SSDs will be slow at first as IT managers evaluate the risks of introducing this new technology;
--SSD prices will decline with the conversion to MLC NAND flash technology and as SSD designers find ways to substantially reduce other manufacturing costs; and
--Today, arrays of 10 or more short-stroked HDDs can be economically replaced by a single SSD. As enterprise SSD prices decline, one SSD may economically replace even fewer enterprise HDDs.
This gives us a unit shipment forecast that grows from almost negligible shipments today to 1.7 million units in 2013 -- an average annual growth rate of nearly 150%.
Our revenue forecast is driven by this unit shipment forecast. It indicates that enterprise SSD revenues will grow at a strong 67% rate through the forecast cycle, based upon very strong 148% unit growth somewhat offset by an average annual price decline of 40%.
Enterprise SSD unit shipments will grow in 2013 to nearly 100× the expected shipments for 2008. In 2013, SSD revenues are expected to exceed $1 billion.
Enterprise HDDs are threatened by this new technology, which will initially replace enterprise HDDs at a 10:1 ratio, dropping to 3:1 by the end of the forecast period. This means that the enterprise HDD market will shrink faster than the enterprise SSD market can grow.
Summary
The enterprise server market is warming up to SSDs faster than has happened in the PC market, and with good reason. Today, entire arrays of costly high-speed enterprise HDDs can be economically replaced with a single enterprise-class SSD. Although enterprise SSDs are anything but cheap, at close to $10,000 each, they can often be used to replace an array of 10 or more HDDs, providing more speed in a much smaller footprint for about the same price.
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts
Tier Zero Storage - Solid-state Disk technology now topping 1M IOPS - November 1, 2008
Lake Mary, Florida -- Texas Memory Systems this week unveiled its largest solid-state drive (SSD) storage system -- the RamSan-5000, a stack of 10 RamSan-500 units that can be managed centrally and the vendor claims can deliver an aggregate 1 million IOPS.
The performance figure is based on the 100,000 random read IOPS benchmark TMS claims for the RamSan-500. The RamSan-5000 stacks 10 of the devices into a 40U appliance. Each individual RamSan-500 remains a separate logical unit, but all can be managed through the same software GUI. TMS said the system uses 3,000W of power.
This management GUI provides monitoring and reporting on the system, as well as the ability to initially carve out LUNs within each device (each RamSan-500 must present at least one LUN). Then OS-based volume managers would connect those LUNs to hosts.
TMS said it has installed the system in one customer data center, though the customer has not been named or its particular application for the system identified. The customer uses the system for "a database application with high-speed ingest and a lot of people querying and accessing the system simultaneously," which is "usually the case" among SSD users, said TMS marketing director Woody Hutsell.
The RamSan-5000 costs $1.5 million, but users in performance-oriented environments will find the system cost-competitive with buying large numbers of disks to achieve high IOPS, Hutsell said. One example he cited was of a recent SPC-1 result submitted by IBM for SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3, which claimed approximately 275,000 IOPS on a total of 61 TB of capacity for a price tag of $3.2 million.
"It all depends on how much capacity you need," said Brian McCarthy, CEO and President for Sencilo Solutions and leading supplier of network storage. "If you're buying 1,000 drives just for IOPS, SSDs really can be more cost-competitive [with Tier 1 arrays]."
Complicating looming SSD deployments are the Tier 1 storage array vendors who are placing SSDs behind their controllers. This allows the storage array software to position only high-priority data on the SSDs while migrating lower-priority data off SSDs to traditional hard disk drives.
With the RamSan-500, McCarthy said most rely on host-based tools, such as replication or mirroring, to provision and protect the system. However, some with SAN-based disaster recovery infrastructures have also duplicated writes to the RAM-SAN and their traditional disk array, "which is cheaper than mirroring the RamSan."
"Management software is important for SSDS to gain traction in a broader sense. I think ultimately that's the direction a lot of SSD vendors are going," McCarthy added.
TSM is adding a new management feature called Turbo, which allows LUNs to be "locked" in battery-backed DRAM cache to boost performance of write-intensive data sets or frequently accessed metadata, such as database redo logs. The DRAM cache has redundant battery backup to protect it against a power loss and will also flush data automatically to flash disks with RAID 3 parity protection. The RamSan-5000 can accommodate between 160 GB and 640 GB of DRAM.
While this product will mainly appeal to the niche high-performance computing market for now, Storage Switzerland analyst George Crump says it's a good demonstration of the kinds of capabilities that could become mainstream in the next few years. "If you'd told me several years ago that I'd ever need hundreds of gigabytes of storage in my home, I would've thought you were nuts," he pointed out. "Today's niche could be tomorrow's general purpose application -- this system paves the way to get there."
For more information please call (407) 265-6293 or visit us at: http://www.sencilo.com
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in storage and security solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, EMC, Juniper Networks, Hitachi, Symantec, Barracuda Networks, and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
About Us
Sencilo Solutions is a Florida-based integrator specializing in Cost Cutting storage, security and managed services solutions. Sencilo delivers a comprehensive portfolio of products from best-of-breed hardware and software from multiple manufacturers including VMware, Data Domain, EMC, Hitachi, Symantec, HDS, IBM, Commvault, Xiotech and HP. Its technical expertise is known throughout the storage and security industry. Clients include leading corporations, major financial institutions, top universities, government facilities, as well as small to medium size businesses. Sencilo's professional services include consulting, integration, project management, storage virtualization installation, maintenance and knowledge transfer.
Sencilo has offices throughout Florida including: Jacksonville, Daytona Beach, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Hialeah, St. Augustine, Gainesville, Ocala, Palm Coast, Clearwater, Kissimmee, Lakeland, Maitland and Cape Canaveral Green Simpana Offerings Projects: BC DR planning Replication De-Dup De-Dupe iSCSI SAN NAS VMware Security EMC NetApp HP IBM Quantum Compliance VTL Data Domain vs Gartner Magic Quadrant Quadrent LTO Backup Exc Pure Disk NetBackup Networker TSM Commvault BakBone D2D D2D2T compare cloud data deduplication thin provisioning DXi Global Compression DDX virtual tape library Data Reduction SEPATON FALCON compare Celerra CLARiiON Equallogic Dell NS20 NS40 CX4 CX3-20 CX3-40 CX3-80 FAS2050 FAS3050 Xiotech Nexsan Avamar DLD3 1500 D3 Storwiz storage compression data Ocarina Networks A-SIS compare Sepaton infopro BlueArc OnStor Microsoft Unified Storage data protection StorageX Brocade FAQ SSD Solid state disk SANmelody FalconStor tier zero Xiotech ISE nx4 ax4 greenBytes ZFS Sun Top 10 ROBOBak managed services hosting cloud grid Datacore Compellent compellant equallogic lefthand networks don't buy storage stop buying storage itguardian cherub networks Arkeia Network Backup appliance Data Recovery Backup Health IT Healthcare IT Digital Hospital Allscripts
