VMware is embracing FCoTR just as it rises to dominance in converged networking

VMware shocked the world today, pre-announcing an important addition to the vStorage family of APIs found in their marquee vSphere family of products. The vStorage API for Token Ring Integration (VATRI) promises to ease the transition to converged networks featuring the emerging Fibre Channel over Token Ring (FCoTR) storage protocol. According to a recent report by The D’Plata Group, FCoTR is set dominate the enterprise storage market, and this integration is a confident step in that direction.

The FCoTR Connection

VMware’s vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) in vSphere 4 was a major step for vSphere, enabling the offload of thin provisioning and data protection tasks to a storage array. But array integration was not enough to cement iSCSI and Fibre Channel (FC) in the virtualized data center. Indeed, Cisco’s oft-reported troubles with the myriad enhancements needed to make Ethernet a viable converged networking protocol indicated that a more-appropriate alternative was needed.

Fibre Channel over Token Ring (FCoTR) was created by a group of top storage, networking, and virtualization minds and launched to much fanfare in 2010. The Fibre Channel over Token Ring Alliance estimates an uncountable number of supporters for FCoTR, and such luminaries as Greg Ferrous and Joe Iamsick have thrown their weight behind the protocol. But it takes more than a few drunken bloggers to change the course of history, and VMware’s support is critical.

Storage vendors were quick to jump on the FCoTR bandwagon beginning with Compelling (since acquired by Dull), Numble Storage, and NES, which announced their support at Tech Field Day immediately after the unveiling of the spec. Network vendors have been slower to embrace the standard, though many individuals have been spotted proudly wearing FCoTR buttons. But perhaps the most ringing endorsers are IBM and HP, with the latter proudly including FCoTR on a banner at their recent Technology Summit.

VATRI: PFM!

While VAAI integrates high-level storage functions, VATRI functions at a deeper level. VMware vSphere 5 will include a standard virtual Token Ring adapter with full FCoTR support, enabling seamless integration of storage and servers. FCoTR adapters certified by DampStorage Labs will also get a paravirtualized Token Ring driver for enhanced performance, reliability, efficiency, cost savings, and wholesomeness. Finally, the revolutionary Token Cleanup API will take care of dropped tokens, a common datacenter occurrence.

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag now,” reports VMware spokesman, Jon Truer. “I might as well agree that FCoTR will take its rightful place at the center of the datacenter.” This ringing endorsement was echoed by Microsoft “Virtual PC Guy” Lance Armstrong, who added “even though VMware is first to market, our MSATRI implementation will be superior in every way.”

VATRI beta testing has already begun. As usual, VMware’s vExperts were given early access to the API and have been using it in secret for months. “It seems to work ok,” claims Jason Botch, while vShawn Cleric donned a sweater vest emblazoned with the FCoTR logo to show his enthusiasm. Storage wonks were equally enthusiastic, with Robin Hairs suggesting that Apple was behind the curve for ignoring FCoTR in his StrangeMojo blog.

Stephen’s Stance

VMware is really showing leadership here. Adding FCoTR support to vSphere 5 just cements their position as the dominant technology company for the next century. Since server virtualization is the computing paradigm that will rule the world for ever and ever, their embrace of Token Ring makes perfect sense. I look forward to adding FCoTR adapters and arrays to my home lab just as soon as they show up on eBay!

Update

Predictably, this story is getting major coverage! Check back throughout the day and I will update the page with news as it appears!

• Storage Vendors Announce FCoTR and VATRI Support

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | vSphere 5 To Include vStorage API for Token Ring Integration
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

• Tech Field Day 5 links
  • Official stuff:
    • Tech Field Day 5: The Links
    • Tech Field Day 5: The Videos
  • Rob Novak shared his Thoughts from Tech Field Day 5
  • A great post by Greg Stuart: Symantec NetBackup 7 for VMware vSphere 4
  • I loved Tom’s Things I Learned From Tech Field Day, Part 1
• My writing
  • I’ve wanted to write this for quite a while: ATA over Ethernet protocol overview for data storage managers
  • I talked to Intel this week and wrote it up: Where Is Intel’s FCoE Solution?
  • Another big area for my virtual storage seminar preparation: VMware VAAI Storage Array Support in Plain English
  • And finally: Aerobie AeroPress Review: The Hacker Coffee Maker
• Other great stuff I’ve been reading
  • Barry Burke responded to my VAAI post with some competitive digs: reality check vsp vaai support
  • From Robin Harris is a DEC obituary: Ken Olsen, 1926-2011
  • A clever piece by Tom Petrocelli: Public Clouds : An Unregulated Utility
  • vKernel has a good point to make: Dear CIO’s, Please Send Paul Otellini a Thank You Note
  • Chris Evans covers the arrays we saw at TFD: Data Robotics Releases Business-class Arrays
  • Ivan Pepelnjak (inspired by Greg Ferro): Open FCoE – Software implementation of the camel jetpack
  • I loved this infographic: The Most Common and Dangerous Passwords
  • And this one: A Decade of Storage
  • Another great piece by Chris Evans: Managing iSCSI on Windows 2008 Core with Hyper-V

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, February 11, 2011
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

A timely question from a comment on my cheap Momentus XT post and continued in my inbox:

How well does [the Momentus XT] perform in a Mac laptop? What I’ve noticed is substantial slow-down on my older MB Pro when there’s a lot of virtual memory usage (e.g. when running several apps plus Parallels.) For my next MBP (hopefully in the next 2-3 months), I’m considering 2 options:

1. Buy [the 500 GB Momentus XT] hybrid drive now, put it into my 1st gen MB Pro, and then move it to a new MB Pro when the boss lets me buy one.
2. When I get the new MB Pro, replace its hard drive with a 128 GB SSD, and put the rotating drive into an external (FW800) enclosure.  I’ve been tracking my disk utilization, and I figure I can live pretty comfortably within 128gb most of the time, as long as I have storage to move stuff I want to keep around but don’t use every day (e.g. mail archives, my iTunes stuff which I only use on the road, etc)

The interesting thing is these options are just about the same price, not counting the external drive enclosure.

I’ve had the Seagate 500 GB 7200 rpm drive in this (2.33 Core 2 Duo, 2005 vintage) laptop for a couple years now.  The fans kick in whenever anything disk-intensive goes on (e.g. mobile account rsync) and that is much more likely to happen when it uses more than 512 MB swap.

The current laptop is maxed out at 3 GB, the new one WILL have a full 8 GB, which should be a big help in reducing/eliminating swapping.

Weighing The Alternatives

It sounds like you’re looking at things the right way: Focused on lower cost and greater benefit without getting taken in by the coolness of SSDs or hybrid drives. And you’re also bringing up a key usability consideration: That external drive enclosure. So let’s weigh the merits.

How Does The Momentus XT Really Perform?

The Momentus XT is a nice compromise between "spinning disk" capacity and SSD performance with an emphasis on low cost

It’s really hard to benchmark a hybrid drive like the Momentus XT. An integrated hybrid drive, the Seagate includes an on-disk controller that attempts to keep its 4 GB of SLC flash memory full of the data you’re likely to ask for. So it’s always trying actively to predict what you’ll need and move that data between disk and flash. This is very different from an SSD, which always uses flash, or a hard disk drive, which mostly relies on the spinning disk for performance.

Most benchmarks are designed to hammer on the underlying storage media, actively bypassing cache. This really causes issues for the Momentus XT in benchmarks like Iometer. The best test of this drive I’ve seen is over at Storage Review, since it includes underwhelming Iometer tests and more-impressive Storagemark results. If you only looked at synthetic tests like Iometer, you’d think the Momentus XT was worthless. But the “workload trace” tests of Storagemark have it outperforming the 10,000 rpm Western Digital VelociRaptor!

The reality is somewhere in the middle: My friends Robin and Howard have both used a Momentus XT in their MacBook Pro, and were happy with its performance. They tell me the Momentus XT makes their computers feel much faster. But another friend, Greg, reports some serious issues with Windows crashing and an odd noise from the drive. Maybe it’s more stable in a Mac than a PC?

In my opinion, the Momentus XT is a nice compromise between “spinning disk” capacity and SSD performance with an emphasis on low cost. If I was going to upgrade my internal hard disk drive today, I’d buy a Momentus XT in a second. After all, I’m using a Mac and the additional cost is negligible. Plus, I tend to carry lots of data around – mainly video files for Final Cut. This last is the reason I haven’t “gone hybrid” myself: I already installed a 640 GB Toshiba drive!

What Are The “All-SSD” Tradeoffs?

The other option is to go all SSD, and this is what most computer vendors (including Apple) have selected for their high-end machines. Flash SSD technology keeps improving, giving better performance and a more-favorable cost/capacity balance. I don’t think 128 GB SSDs are yet available for the same $120 that gets you a Momentus XT, but that would get you the well-regarded 60 GB OCZ Vertex 2. A 128 GB SSD is likely to cost almost $250, changing the economic argument somewhat.

Capacity, performance, or low cost: Pick two!

Just about any SSD you pick will absolutely destroy the Momentus XT in both benchmark and real-world performance, but you’d never come close to the hybrid drive’s capacity without doubling the cost of the MacBook with a Kingston V+Series 512 GB device.

This is the SSD curse: Make do with less capacity and more performance or spend an arm and a leg.

Is SSD+HDD An Option?

Then there is the alternate path you suggest: Use both a hard disk drive and an SSD. There are two options here:

1. Replace the laptop’s optical drive with a hard disk drive using an adapter like the $99 MCE OptiBay
2. Use an external FireWire or USB drive, or repurpose your drive using a case

That second choice might not be an option for everyone. Do you really want to lug around a portable hard drive and cable? Do you want to connect it if you’re on a plane or in a meeting? Then there’s the fact that Macs don’t yet have native USB 3.0 or eSATA, so you’re looking at a maximum of 70 MB/s from a FireWire 800 port.

Either way, you’re talking about manually deciding which data resides on the SSD and which goes on the hard disk drive. Since Mac OS X is not nearly as friendly as Windows about using multiple drives, you’re certain to waste some of that expensive SSD capacity on rarely-used data. That’s fine, it just drives up the cost of the SSD+HDD combination.

One caution regarding SSDs in Apple machines: Mac OS X does not support TRIM, so ordinary SSDs will run into serious performance issues once they start filling up. You need a very aggressive SSD controller to maintain the awesome speed you start with. Something like the Kingston V+100 which uses the latest Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller with the updated firmware Apple uses in the MacBook Air.

Stephen’s Stance

I would never want to rely on an external hard disk drive solution, I need too much storage, and I’m too cheap to buy an OptiBay, let alone a decent-sized SSD. If I was in your shoes, I’d have just two options:

1. Spend $120 and get the Momentus XT for pretty-good performance and single-disk capacity
2. Spend $130 and get the 60 GB OCZ Vertex 2 for awesome performance and hack together some kind of OptiBay alternative

Although the second choice sounds like fun, it’s not a great idea in a laptop. I’m also not too good at manually managing data and would rather have something do it for me. This is why I’m so keen on the Momentus XT!

Given your circumstances, I suggest getting the Momentus XT now for your current laptop and seeing how you like it. If it doesn’t give you the performance you want, you can always go the SSD route with the new MacBook Pro and cry over the you $20 you wasted buying a hybrid rather than a regular 7200 rpm 500 GB drive. For what it’s worth, Apple currently charges $300 extra for a 128 GB SSD.

One word of caution, though: You mention that one of the main causes of performance issues for you is excessive swapping from virtual machines. This is a real red flag performance-wise. The Momentus XT has only 4 GB of flash, and your swapping VMs are going to eat that up, leaving none to accelerate other functions. You might find that the hybrid is even slower than a regular drive in this use case, since the controller would constantly be juggling gigabytes of data between flash and disk. An SSD will do much better with VM swapping, but if you’re not using TRIM you’re going to hit a wall sooner or later. The only real solution for a Mac user is to max out the RAM rather than trying to monkey with faster storage.

A Reader Talks Back

Here’s the opinion of a reader who upgraded his MacBook Pro to use the Momentus XT:

“To follow up on our previous discussion, I decided to buy the hybrid Momentus XT. It’s been in the laptop about 24 hours, and here are first impressions:

1. Getting into a pre-unibody MacBook Pro is no picnic!  I had to get a Torx #6 screwdriver and used about 6 different little containers to hold all the different kinds/sizes of screw.  And getting the top/keyboard assembly off of its clips was a struggle.
2. Right away I noticed the machine ran substantially cooler as measured by the fan speed.  The previous drive was a Seagate Momentus 500gb/7200 rpm 7200.4, and during disk intensive sessions e.g. TimeMachine backups the fans would crank up to 5000 rpm; they’d be pretty noticeable.  With the hybrid, during the same kind of backup activity, the fans have not run faster than 3200 rpm, which is comfortably below ‘notice’ sound levels.
3. The machine feels a bit faster, but Parallels definitely felt faster.  When I launched Parallels, the machine’s swap usage climbed to 2gb (on top of other stuff I run).  Before that would cause a significant hit, but with the hybrid the overall performance, and the performance inside Parallels, felt faster.

So I think this upgrade is a win if you’re considering replacing an existing drive with a 500gb/7200 rpm drive, just on the basis of reduced heat.  What remains to be seen, of course, is the reliability of this drive (I’ve had bad luck with Seagate 3.5″ drives.)”

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Are Hybrid Hard Drives A Good Alternative To An SSD?
This post was categorized as Apple, Ask a Pack Rat, Everything, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

HP invited bloggers to Colorado to show off their storage offerings at Tech Day 2009

Well that was interesting! I spent Monday and Tuesday with a dozen bloggers in Colorado Springs learning about HP’s key StorageWorks products from the executives and engineers of that storied company. Throughout the event, we listened, asked tough questions, and tweeted incessantly. HP Tech Day generated an avalanche of publicity for the company, including press articles and cries of FUD and misdirection.

Here is the truth: HP and Ivy did a darn fine job of putting together a set of sessions to tell us what they have. They presented folks who really knew their stuff, warts and all. They invited a variety of independent voices and let us ask and say anything we wanted with no expectations, let alone an NDA. This was a stellar event, and every other IT company should be asking why they didn’t do it first.

Won’t Be Fooled

But what was HP Tech Day really all about? Did they brainwash us into thinking the EVA was exciting? Did HP hoodwink and misdirect us from noticing the gaps and overlaps in their product line? Were we dazzled enough to no longer question their storage strategy? Of course not! Robin Harris has seen it all before. Rich Brambley can dissect a presentation with the best of them. Nigel Poulton questions everything he sees. This was not a love-fest, and there were some seriously uncomfortable moments for the HP crew.

We were all savvy enough to know what the score was: HP (and especially their StorageWorks product line) has never received much press or blogger attention. They invited us in to spread the word about their products and get blog exposure. And it worked! The storage Twitter-sphere was dominated with #HPTechDay postings for days, and attendees did indeed blog about the stuff they saw. It was a success from HP’s perspective, and now that we know more about their products we will likely cover them in the future.

I personally never blogged much about HP products. I compared them to Ford, called one product an all-time cool flop, and covered their acquisition of LeftHand and Ibrix, but that’s about it. I didn’t even notice that they had started selling LSI’s StoreAge-based virtualization platform, and didn’t know enough about their other product releases over the last two years to mention them. If it hadn’t been for Calvin Zito and the HP Tech Day, I probably wouldn’t mention them in the future, either. They just weren’t on my radar.

We Were Educated

This has changed as a result of Tech Day. I now know that EVA is still pretty much what I thought it was but that it is fairly simple to configure. I now know that HP has two lines of deduplication appliances, and that one is homegrown. I now know that HP develops and sells a FC SAN virtualization platform based on the LSI/StoreAge product. This was great product exposure for HP: Even though I still don’t think I’ll focus on these offerings, at least I now know that they exist.

We also saw some more interesting content: HP plans to leverage their excellent ProLiant server and blade technology to underpin a line of commodity-based storage and consolidated virtualization offerings. This is exciting stuff, and builds on HP’s base and their recent acquisitions. The most interesting concept I saw was a combination of a blade chassis and ultra-dense storage system with VMware ESX, LeftHand, Ibrix, and HP’s management software. They definitely plan to challenge Cisco/EMC and IBM in this market.

But the best part of the event was the people of HP. The company was smart enough to bring in the techies rather than executive marketing droids. They gave us straight and honest answers about their product capabilities and their place within the company, sometimes to the chagrin of others in the room. We saw conflicting definitions, product line overlaps, internal competition, and got a feel for the realities of this massive company. Every company is like this, but most would never admit what we already know. By not showering us with slick FUD, HP won our respect in a way that I would not have thought possible.

Colorado Take-Away

The event was great. Every other IT company should wise up and do the same. But I bet they won’t have the nerve to do it as openly, and I expect HP will be more careful next time too. As for HP’s products, let me lay out my honest opinion:

1. LeftHand was a bargain. HP could replace their entire sub-XP block storage product line with LeftHand variants based on commodity Intel hardware. I think they should.
2. Ibrix is too new to judge, but will likely take a seat next to LeftHand in a unified commodity-based scale-out SAN/NAS platform.
3. I hope HP hasn’t lost focus on their excellent Hitachi-based XP line, since it’s the only challenger they have to EMC Symmetrix at the high end of the market.
4. HP’s excellent server and blade hardware should be leveraged throughout the company and oddball hardware should be curtailed.
5. HP has an interesting lineup of Windows Storage Server and Windows Home Server hardware aimed at the low-end SOHO and SMB market. I’m not a Windows hater, but wouldn’t it be cool to have a super-low-end LeftHand variant there too?
6. I wonder if HP’s home-grown in-line deduplication (the D2D line) could replace the Sepaton-sourced post-process VLS line or vice-versa if an acquisition of that company happens.
7. I don’t “get” SVSP, the LSI/StoreAge SAN virtualization platform. It’s nice and it seems to work, but why introduce a FC SAN virtualization platform at this point? Maybe it sells when integrated with EVA, but not as a standalone product.
8. Where are all the storage arrays that use 2.5″ disk drives that HP talked about over the last few years? And where are the flash solid state drives?
9. They were like deer in the headlights with no story when I asked about sub-LUN automated tiered storage since even full-LUN automation has not yet been released. Might EMC get there first?
10. As for the absence of DCB and FCoE, HP seems to think that Virtual Connect and Flex-10 are good enough for now. HP will OEM a CNA soon and might possibly consider the Cisco Nexus 4000. Maybe. They had better have a more-convincing story when this stuff takes off next year!
11. Most importantly, where is the cloud strategy? I applaud HP for not overusing the current buzzword, but it almost seems like they are avoiding the topic entirely.

I am left thinking that HP is like a boxed puzzle. All of the pieces are there, but they haven’t been put into place yet. Let’s hope Dave Donatelli and his crew can help them work it out when he takes his post as czar of servers, networking, and storage next year. For now, I’ve gained a lot of respect for the people of HP and a pile of knowledge about their storage products. And HP has gained my attention.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | The Truth About HP’s Tech Day
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Apple

• MacBook Users: Turn off This Bluetooth Default Setting Now – Now I know what turned on my MacBook Pro in the bag: My BlueTooth mouse!

Enterprise Computing

• Windows Storage Server-Based Systems Step Into 2008 – My Gestalt IT coverage of the features of WSS08.
• EMC Symmetrix V-Max: When Does It Get FAST and Virtual? – Another Gestalt IT piece, pointing out that the V-Max isn’t going to be fully realized for a very long time
• Microsoft Unveils Final Windows Storage Server – Paul Shread runs with the “Windows Storage Server 2008″ theme, quoting yours truly extensively.
• What is a best practice and Are Best Practices Just Shared Opinions? – W. Curtis Preston and I pickup an old conversation about the definition of “best practice”.
• Infosmack Episode 2 – EMC, David Donatelli and Non-Compete Agreements – Tony Asaro and I join Marc Farley and Greg Knieriemen on the Storage Monkeys podcast!
• The US Federal Government defines Cloud Computing - Ruven Cohen covers the US Federal Government’s cloud computing meetings and gives us a sneak peek at the new definition of cloud computing from the world’s number one IT user.
• Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives – Lots of great info on how Windows 7 (and probably Server 2008 R2) deals with solid state drives.
• VMware Slaps Enterprise and Cisco In Face, Opens Door For Competitors – More on the VMware vSphere 4 licensing changes, and what it might mean.

Misc

• Non-competes are evil – Robin Harris lays it out. I happen to agree.
• Five Technologies Our Kids Won’t Even Recognize – Wired’s Gadget Lab makes us all feel old!
• Chrysler HQ Designed To Convert Into Shopping Mall - Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me says it’s true, so I believe it!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Content From the Week of May 9, 2009
This post was categorized as Everything. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.