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 »

The pistol shot heard this week was the starting gun for FCoE, not the execution of iSCSI

To hear this week’s storage industry news reports, one might think that Wagner’s fat lady came to Storage Networking World (SNW), singing her song as the iSCSI world collapses. Storagebod wonders what iSCSI’s death will look like. Chris Mellor at The Register says “Game Over” as NetApp, QLogic, Emulex and VMware join EMC and Cisco in singing the praises of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Mellor suggests that the protocol will devalue Dell’s EqualLogic investment, as if HP’s acquisition of LeftHand wasn’t enough, even as fellow Register-ite, Bryan Betts disagrees.

But The Register didn’t invent the “FCoE kills iSCSI” meme - it’s just natural to imagine that these two protocols would be in a fight to the death. And if it’s a duel, then this year’s SNW conference would seem to be the first volley, as EMC introduced a FCoE Connectrix switch (based on Cisco), NetApp announced the first native FCoE array, and everyone qualified Emulex and QLogic adapters. However, despite these announcements, it’s way too early to bury iSCSI!

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As I mentioned on Monday, VMware’s Update 2 for ESX 3.5 includes support for 8 Gb Fibre Channel HBAs. This is an important development, so I went looking through the official ESX I/O Compatibility Guide to see which HBAs in particular were supported, but none were listed.

This was pretty puzzling, but Rich from VM /ETC and Duncan from Yellow Bricks were right - they just hadn’t updated the guide yet (even though the revision date was July 25).

So without further ado, the announcement:  You can now use Emulex and QLogic 8 Gb Fibre Channel HBAs with VMware ESX to give blazing I/O performance right where it’s needed.  Of course, 8 Gb storage arrays remain rare, but this will change soon.

An end-to-end 8 Gb FC SAN will likely provide all the performance of 10 Gb FCoE, and it’s available now instead of 2009 or 2010.  10 Gb iSCSI and NFS are also supported as of Update 2 if you’re more of a TCP/IP person…

VMware just released Update 2 for VMware ESX Server 3.5 (Virtual Infrastructure), and it includes some storage fixes of note:

1. Support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for filesystems Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 guests.  This means VMware services like VCB and SRM can now signal Windows Server to quiesce filesystems before creating a clone or snapshot and is a major addition!
2. Windows Server 2003 guests also get application quiescing, where supported.
3. You can now extend a live, running VMFS volume as storage is added, just like Windows Vista and 2008 guests could already do with raw device mode (RDM).  Note that this only works for flat disks with no persistent snapshots open.

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TechTarget’s Storage magazine today announced the winners of their annual Products of the Year awards, and it’s an impressive array of technologies. Although I did not contribute to the voting this year, I heartily endorse the outcomes!

Overall, I was impressed with many of these products this last year, but certainly CommVault, HDS, ProStor, Xsigo, and Akorri (winners all) stood out with important products. I too was surprised to see the absence of some heavyweights: Symantec’s strength in archiving and backup didn’t net them an award, and both Emulex and QLogic were skipped for the 8 Gb FC market. EMC was overlooked, too, but I’m certain that will be remedied for 2008 after the flurry of excellent new products announced these last few months.

Backup Software

• Winners: CommVault’s Simpana 7.0 - an impressive product that brings a very wide range of data protection features in an integrated package. They’d be in my top three! Next was the intriguing RecoverGuard from Continuity Software, a product which intrigues me. Finally, Yosemite’s amazingly priced FileKeeper Professional took bronze - I definitely would have put this up there, too!
• Strong contenders: EVault’s solution would have been my pick since it effectively tackles a real need - mobile and SMB data protection! Also, Symantec’s strong NetBackup 6.5 upgrade deserved more attention.

Backup Hardware

• Winners: NEC’s HydraStor HS8 isn’t a platform I’m familiar with - I’ll have to take the judges at their word! But I can’t argue with silver and bronze winners, Copan and ProStor’s cool RDX - both are truly revolutionary products and deserve the spotlight.
• Strong contenders: I would definitely have added Gresham’s Clareti VTL to the list - it’s much more than “just a VTL” and I hope it gets some more attention!

Disk and Disk Subsystems

• Winners: Seagate’s Momentus 5400 FDE.2 deserves considerable attention, bringing built-in hardware encryption to the mobile data market - every mobile disk should have this technology! NetApp’s FAS2000 (silver) is nice enough, but I was much more impressed with the bronze-winning USP V from HDS this year.
• Strong contenders: I would have given the USP V the top prize for 2007, but I can’t argue with the little Seagate disk. The AMCC 3ware 9600 RAID adapter deserves some attention, too.

Storage Management Software

• Winners: Akorri’s BalancePoint (gold) impresses me much like bronze-winning Onaro’s Application Insight does. Both make the big leap from “storage” to “application data”, and both are worthy winners. I’ve never used the silver-winning Finisar NetWisdom product, but it looks like others are impressed with it.
• Strong contenders: This was a crowded field, and Symantec, WysDM, Quantum StorNext, and the rest probably came close. I agree with the Akorri placing, but would have picked one of these instead of the potentially mis-categorized Finisar product.

Networking Equipment

• Winners: Xsigo took the top honors with their InfiniBand-based VP780 platform. This is truly a next-generation product, and it is getting serious attention and traction, and deserved a spot on the list! Riverbed’s excellent Optimization System (silver) also deserved its ranking, but I’m not familiar enough with the Storwize product to know if it’s truly bronze-worthy.
• Strong contenders: I would have tipped either QLogic or Emulex’s 8 Gb offerings for a spot. Despite my jokes, 8 Gb FC is an important element of the modern SAN and both companies have carved out a compelling product, but apparently neither shipped in volume until this month…

Well, not exactly Klingon, but both Host Bus Adapter powerhouses chose today to announce 8 Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs. This would be somewhat more exciting if there was any device these high-speed adapters could speak to. But switches, arrays, and drives are still a ways off. So for now, Emulex and QLogic can only speak to themselves, since after QLogic’s little stunt of “scooping” Emulex on the announcement today, it’s unlikely they’ll be too interested in speaking to each other!

I guess the egg comes before the chicken after all…