Virtual Storage

I continue to be amazed by the level of interest I’m seeing in Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and 10 Gb Converged Ethernet among storage people. As I noted after my Charlotte virtualization seminar, end users at the largest enterprises seem to think that FCoE is their future, not just one of several options.

But when will 10 Gb and FCoE arrive? Dave Raffo and I discussed the topic after Storage Decisions, and he just wrote an article on the topic, 10GigE still seeking killer app. Here are some points that came up in our discussion:

• Shipping and supported 10 Gb HBAs and CNAs are the key requirement, and it looks like the schedules of Microsoft, VMware, Sun, and Linus Torvalds will determine when the floodgates open
• iSCSI people are talking 10 Gb, too, and they might end up adopting it first with software initiators
• Interest in FCoE is focused at the largest enterprise shops, and I’m seeing a distinct line between “iSCSI shops” and “(future) FCoE shops” with very little overlap (as I previously noted, iSCSI and FCoE aren’t mortal enemies, and FCoE will rule in the largest environments)
• No one is talking about 8 Gb Fibre Channel - they have all decided that 10 Gb FCoE or iSCSI is the next step for block storage
• InfiniBand has its believers (and they are rabid fans!), but the users I talk to are, as a rule, heading toward FCoE rather than IB for their future connectivity
• There is a tiny bit of user interest in moving back to SAS-enabled DAS for virtual server environments
• Everyone I talk to is shocked there isn’t a 10 Gb iSCSI array on the market yet, and we all expect to see this before FCoE
• Although some vendors have announced FCoE products, they’re not here yet - and it will be another year still before we see production deployment

Next week is the final Storage Decisions conference of 2008, Storage Decisions San Francisco! I’ll be in the Bay area from Sunday night through Wednesday, and invite you to say hello if you’re in the area as well!

If you’re attending the conference, here’s my schedule:

• Monday, 9:45 AM - 10:45 AM: DATA RETENTION & RETRIEVAL track: Deep Dive Into Email Archiving Products
• Monday, 4:30 PM - 7:00 PM: Exhibit Hall Reception
• Monday, 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM: Ask the Experts in the Exhibit Hall
• Monday, 7:30 PM - Late: Dinner (You’re invited! See below!)
• Tuesday, 1:00 PM - 2:45 PM: Lunch in the Exhibit Hall
• Tuesday, 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM: STORAGE & CAPACITY MANAGEMENT track: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Virtualization - In One Hour!

Join Me For Dinner on Monday!

A bunch of storage folks have said they’re interested in getting together for a dinner on Monday night. Let’s do it!

• What: Dinner and conversation
• When: 7:30 PM on Monday the 17th until we get tired
• Where: Start at the San Francisco Hilton, then off for Sushi, Mexican, or Italian (help me decide!)
• Who: Anyone who wants to come along!
• How: Contact me through email, a comment on this page, or twitter!

See you in San Francisco!

As I guessed on Friday, EMC has officially announced their Maui Atmos software layer today, calling it the “industry’s first COS (cloud-optimized storage) offering”, “a new era for IT”, and “a new category of storage.” So the new era for IT is a cloud with globally-distributed object stores with policy management?

Great! But I thought the new era for IT was a cloud with choice, mobility, and application support, as trumpeted by EMC’s VMware subsidiary! Wasn’t Cloud vServices from VDC-OS supposed to be the prototype cloud strategy for the datacenter?

What we have here is a simple clash of marketing amusingly taking place at (nearly) the same company. VMware figured out how to extend their server virtualization products outside the confines of the data center, and laid that technology out as a strategy with the trendy “cloud” name. Meanwhile, mother EMC is working on next-generation content storage software and decides to roll that out as a strategy and also jumps on the “cloud” meme. What’s an IT manager to do? Continue Reading »

Update: Maui is now Atmos! See my post, EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up?

Remember all the talk about a year ago about EMC’s mysterious new storage product, code-name “Maui”? It was teased and pulled by Storagezilla, and rumored by one and all… Well, it wasn’t at EMC World, and people were starting to claim it might just be so much vapor.

Well, the rumor from unnamed people within EMC is that it’s coming. Really soon. Like next week. Here come the drums!

Apparently, it’s a software layer that manages a global pool of storage, including replication, synchronization, and protection. Think of it as super storage virtualization, an internal storage cloud. It sounds something like Cleversafe, and a little like one of my favorite cool flops, MangoSoft Medley. Of course, this is just what I’ve gathered from outside - no one will tell me anything officially!

Just over three months after releasing Update 2 for ESX 3.5, VMware has released Update 3. That last Update brought major storage changes like VSS support, hot VMFS extension, Storage VMotion across Fibre Channel and iSCSI, and support for 10 Gb Ethernet and 8 Gb FC support.

For more information on Update 2, see my article, Storage Fixes in VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2.

Update 3 is not as important from a storage perspective, but there are some goodies in there:

• New VMDK recovery tool (nifty!)
• Storage tweaks like fixed multipathing on IBM SVC, interrupt coalescing on QLogic 4 Gb FC HBAs, and some bug fixes
• Expanded support for SATA (but not for VMFS), SAS, and some Broadcom NICs (but still no TOE)

Read on for more details! Continue Reading »

All the blog talk about whether or not EMC is innovative, and indeed whether any of the major news in the industry is truly innovative, got me thinking about real innovation. What are the true turning points in enterprise storage? What are the most influential hardware and software products? And which amazing products never really made the impact that they should have?

So I’m doing what any good obsessive-compulsive would do - making a list!

Over the next few weeks, I plan to post a few “top ten in storage” lists. Here are the topics I’m focusing on right now:

1. Most Important Storage Technologies - True technological and conceptual innovations like RAID, external storage, NAS, snapshots, and indeed the hard disk drive itself!
2. Most Innovative Storage Hardware Products - Which pieces of storage gear shook and shaped our world? How about EMC’s Symmetrix, DG’s CLARiiON, IBM’s RAMAC storage, DLT tape, the Auspex array, NetApp’s Filers, and Seagate’s ST-506?
3. Most Innovative Storage Software Products - What made the biggest impact on the software side? I’d name NetWare, LAN Manager, Legato NetWorker, Microsoft’s iSCSI initiator, VMFS, and PowerPath.
4. Coolest Storage Flops - All of this got me thinking about the things that should have been, like 3COM’s 3Server, WinFS, Storage Tank and IceCube, and Revivio’s CDP.

I’d like you to participate! Please use the comment section below to nominate your favorites in these categories. Or if you’d like to help out more, drop me an email. I’d even be willing to make you a co-author so you can help me put together the lists directly!

Last week, I outlined where the various enterprise storage vendors stood on the key question of whether flash memory is a cache or a disk. In that article, I noted that 3PAR is notably absent in the enterprise flash world. In fact Mark Farley, 3PAR blogger extraordinaire, recently made it sound like 3PAR would sit on the fence for a good while longer, even comparing flash with optical technology (ouch!)

Well 3PAR is on the fence no longer. Marketing VP, Craig Nunes, has informed Chris Mellor of The Register that 3PAR will use flash as “tier-0″ storage in their InServe arrays. It is not clear how the company will integrate flash with their current strategy of wide-striping data across as many spindles as possible, but their post-RAID virtualized architecture ought to be able to make excellent use of the performance that flash drives bring, provided they have automated block-based tiering. And answering my question from the other day, 3PAR is definitely in the “flash is a disk” camp.

This is not an official announcement, and no dates or suppliers are given beyond the promise that the InServe is ready to handle FC SSD drives today. I look forward to Marc’s take on this!

Update: Marc’s response was sort of a non-response. He admits that SSDs are on the radar but insists that they’re not on the release roadmap, denies that there is “some sort of like weird greco wrestling match” between him and Craig Nunes (boy, that’s a relief!), and promotes 3PAR’s Dynamic Optimization technology, which I wasn’t aware of. I’d like to hear more, Marc!

Last week, I lauded Symantec for introducing an API in Storage Foundation which will interact with the thin storage capabilities of supported arrays. Since then, I’ve learned more about this capability, and I am writing this update to share that knowledge. As I noted last week, the press release was a bit hard to follow and comprehend (and not just for me), and one of my initial assumptions about the API turned out to be wrong. I also received a few comments from interested folks pointing out some more pros and cons of this technology.

First, let’s clarify just which products and capabilities Symantec is offering here:

• Veritas Storage Foundation version 5.0MP3 for Unix/Linux includes SmartMove and the Thin Reclamation API
• Veritas Storage Foundation for Windows 5.0 only includes SmartMove at this point, but it will be updated to include Thin Reclamation at some point in the coming year

Although there is no real information on Symantec’s web site about all this yet, Symantec’s director of Storage Management and High Availability, Sean Derrington, assures me that their software is available now. Although no compatible arrays are in end-user hands, 3PAR will update their T-Class firmware to support the API shortly, and HDS and HP are on the way as well. Continue Reading »

There is a battle shaping up in the enterprise storage industry. On one side are those who see flash storage as an upgrade for the disk drive, and on the other are those who see it as a cache between the CPU and the drive. It’s a fundamental difference of opinion - flash chips can be used either way, and each approach has its unique benefits and drawbacks.

The Register did a nice job of summing up the (late 2008) flash positioning of the various storage companies, and I recently posted a strategic look at this core issue. Note that some, like HP and Sun (and probably IBM), seem to have an end-to-end strategy, while others are firmly in one camp or the other. In the “not yet” column, apparently, are 3PAR, BlueArc (though they offer TMS RAM), Dell/EqualLogic, HP/LeftHand.

Update: 3PAR has joined the “disk” camp. Continue Reading »

I’ve just finished my day in Charlotte on my Storage Virtualization Seminar tour for TechTarget. We had another great crowd - everyone seemed interested even if some were shy about speaking up. I was especially pleased to see the optimism about the city’s post-Wachovia future.

Comments at the event focused on management, with my concerns about ownership and intra-departmental conflict rising from consolidation of server, I/O, and storage really getting attention. Continue Reading »