{ Monthly Archives }
Today is moving day for me. I’ve spent months packing up my life into three sizes of boxes (packetizing?) and now the movers are here to take it away (transport layer!)
It’s amazing to me how tightly packed the first boxes are, and how sparse the last ones end up! Ironically, the most important stuff (saved for last) is packed the worst!
I’ll be out of pocket for a few days, but expect to return soon for more tales of the pack rat, both virtual and physical!
Being a history buff stuck in the storage industry, I’ve long had an interest in how we got where we are. So much of the storage industry is rooted in legacy, and we can learn much by knowing why things turned out the way they did.
I’d like to kick off a series of articles with an exploration of a key piece of storage technology, the open systems NAS array. Now, lots of people think that NAS is a new development, but this is not so. In my research, I’ve come to the conclusion that NAS predates SAN by a few years at least, and its history is linked to the development of open systems servers, too!
Let’s start with some basics. I’m assuming that NAS is defined as the sharing of files (rather than blocks) over a high-level protocol. NAS generally addresses offsets within files within folders, and we usually encounter it today in the form of CIFS or NFS servers, which operate over the familiar IP protocol and Ethernet networks.
This was not always the case, of course. The earliest file servers I could find were created at Stanford using Xerox Alto servers, and headless file servers were named and in place by 1979, according to Byte magazine. Certainly, development of the concept of a “server” and file server in particular was helped by the introduction of XNS around 1981, as it included RPC functionality.
Novell took this concept and ran with it, transforming XNS SPP into IPX/SPX and introducing NetWare in 1983. It’s safe to say that NetWare was the first file server software, at least in the open systems world.
But there was another heavy hitter in town - 3Com. These days, it’s easy to forget just how important this company was back then, but the networking and storage world would look very different without 3Com! It was founded to exploit Xerox PARC’s Ethernet protocol, and like Intel today spent much of its first decade pushing networked applications into the market.
3Com developed a network server operating system of their own on top of DOS - 3+Share. Over two decades, this product would evolve into LAN Manager, SMB, and CIFS!
But 3Com released a hardware product, too, and this is critical to our exploration of the storage industry. The 3Server was based on the Intel x86 architecture and booted MS-DOS, but was not a PC. It had no provision for a “head” (keyboard and monitor), and was managed remotely over the network. It included seven disk drive slots from its 1985 introduction and included software to manage these disks and present storage over the network. Let’s see - headless dedicated server with disk slots running a proprietary file serving OS. Sound like a storage array to you? Me too!
Although it originally supported XNS over Ethernet and AppleTalk, Token Ring support was added quickly. The 3Server (like NetWare) also supported network applications, but it was its storage protocol that had the most impact. 3Com worked with IBM to develop a successor to 3+Share, which IBM called LAN Manager and 3Com called 3+Open. This was based on OS/2 and was handed over to Microsoft in early 1991 as 3Com refocused on network infrastructure.
So who knows of an earlier storage array in the open systems world? I’ll cover Auspex/NetApp, EMC, and the rest in future installments of Storage History.
I’m moving. As always happens, moving is a great time to rid ones self of baggage and clutter. So I’m saying goodbye to some old friends: four PCs and two monitors. It wasn’t easy, though, and not because of sentiment. In this age of environmental regulations, how do you toss a PC? Continue Reading »
I love the iPhone. Who wouldn’t? It combines (seemingly) useful music, internet, and phone features in one device. But I doubt I’ll ever pull the trigger on this version for one simple reason: The iPhone has a serious storage problem. Continue Reading »
Marc Farley challenged us storage geeks to wave our junk flags and reveal just how many computers we have. Well, I’m really not sure… Let’s see - in order of usefulness…
Networked:
So my network has up to 11 devices on it… Interesting!
Now for the rest of the machines:
There’s at least a terabyte and a half right there… Plus my collection of odd hard disks - just today I was marveling at the fact that I have 50 MB, 500 MB, 5 GB, 50 GB, and 500 GB hard disks!
Yeah, we’re nuts.
Hu Yoshida speculated in his blog that most folks would rather outsource their home media storage than keep terabytes of storage in their home. Sure, he was speaking for HDS, which has no home storage ambitions, but I respect him and can understand his point. I already outsource my personal email because I can get better features, access, and reliability that way. But there’s no way I would outsource my media, and this is the real storage king in my multi-terabyte home.
Back in the 1990’s, I marveled at the fact that every PC I bought had more storage than all others I had ever owned, combined. But then came the Nomad Jukebox and its hard drive hack and suddenly my portable personal music player had more storage than everything I owned. My AT&TiVo easily eclipsed that, especially once I added a second drive. And the majority of the 320 GB in my home PC is used for media files too. My new HD TiVo promises to soon become the first terabyte-in-a-box computer in my house.
I’ve said before that Microsoft’s work in the field of enterprise storage was truly remarkable. Every other operating system vendor, as well as the grubby hordes developing Linux and BSD, should be ashamed that the “evil empire” beat them to the punch with great storage ideas like VSS, VDS, and transportable backup integration. Well, it seems Microsoft is changing the SAN landscape in another way - the Simple SAN initiative.
Although most folks haven’t heard about it, Simple SAN is Redmond’s way to force vendors to improve interoperability and ease of installation for networked SAN storage, whether it is Fibre Channel or iSCSI. Continue Reading »
I love my new Series 3 TiVo, but I use it with a 4:3 tube TV. This is a nice TV, mind you, with 16:9 enhanced mode, but I have an issue when it comes to the TiVo. Any time the TV gets an HD signal, it switches to enhanced mode and letterboxes it. This is great for widescreen content, but lots of HD shows are pillar boxed because they’re shot in 4:3. So my TV dutifully displays them with a complete “windowbox” on all four sides, which looks rather silly.
So one might think that the TiVo’s Aspect button would help. It’s supposed to allow you to zoom in on the image, after all. But it turns out that this only functions for fixed-ratio TVs. In other words, your widescreen set can use it, as can your old 4:3 SDTV. But it has no function when you’re displaying on a 4:3 HDTV!
I’m a pack rat. It’s true. You should see my home office - it’s full of treasures I’ve accumulated over almost four decades.
I’m even paid to be a pack rat in my professional life! You see, I’m in the business of data storage. It all makes sense now, doesn’t it?
But the time has come to come clean! I’ll be using this blog to talk about things that interest me, and people like me. Things like the enterprise storage market, the history of computers (some of which I’ve piled up at home), and what we pack rats are to do about the rapid accumulation of electronic stuff (both hard and virtual) that surrounds us.
Hello, world. Here I am!
Enterprise Storage at FriendFeed
