Everyone dreams of a truly virtualized datacenter infrastructure, but how can we get there?

We are at a turning point in IT infrastructure. It is now possible to build a completely virtualized and abstracted data center environment, one where applications and operating systems are completely independent from server, network, and storage hardware. Join me in 2012 at a new all-day in-person seminar series as I work through the challenges of building a virtual data center.

Learn to Build a Virtual Data Center

Building an appropriate environment for virtual machines is quite different from building one for physical machines. Although some of the components are the same, many tried-and-true hardware and architecture choices are no longer optimal for virtualization. This is causing a major upheaval among enterprise hardware and software vendors, as they adapt and jockey for position and mind share.

As I wrote recently, the shocking truth of virtual machine mobility is that it is almost impossible to accomplish without a clean sheet redesign or a bowl of virtualization spaghetti interconnects. This is the core issue that we will tackle in my seminar: How can you build a virtual data center when there is no “magic bullet” technology that makes everything possible?

Join Me In Building Virtual Infrastructure

This seminar series, appropriately titled “Building Virtual Infrastructure,” starts at the end. First, we describe a state-of-the-art virtual data center, before descending into a discussion of the server, networking, and storage components that are required to make this a reality.

After lunch, we will discuss products and technologies more specifically. We’re going to keep these free-form, with the audience deciding which topics to dive into. I expect we’ll spend time on the specifics of VMware technologies like VAAI, DRS, VMotion, VXLAN, and so on.

The seminar is organized by Truth in IT and will begin in Los Angeles and Atlanta in March. Qualified end-user may attend these seminars for free. Registration will open shortly at the Truth it IT website, and I will be posting more information on those dates shortly.

Suggestions and Feedback Welcome

In the mean time, I welcome your content suggestions. Like my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar, all my slides are CC-by-SA licensed, so you can use them yourself.

I also welcome contact from interested sponsors. Each date gives sponsors a chance to tell the audience about their relevant products, and there’s a networking break for attendees and sponsors, too. We’ll also have some give-aways and such to keep it fun.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Announcing “Building Virtual Infrastructure”, My New Seminar Series With Truth in IT
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Features, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It isn't always easy to get where you need to go!

Consider the following situation: You go to lunch with your good friends, John and Mary. Halfway through a rousing discussion of the latest Hollywood movie, Mary starts talking about the fantastic action sequences while John criticizes the romantic angle. You realize something mine-bending has happened: John now has Mary’s personality, and vice versa. It’s like they have switched brains or something!

This truly weird situation isn’t likely to happen in person, but occurs all the time in the data center. Virtualization of server, network, and storage services eliminates the fixed link between physical resources and functional applications. A running virtual machine can instantly move from one server, network adapter, HBA, or LUN to another. And when it happens, traditional components have no idea how to react.

The Challenges of Mobility

Mobility is perhaps the “killer app” of virtualization, but it is also the killer of traditional IT systems. Let’s consider the challenges of this “Twilight Zone” moment.

• The operating system expects a consistent hardware environment, which is exactly what the hypervisor creates
• The LAN must be prepared to redirect all network traffic instantly and seamlessly to one or more new physical interfaces
• The SAN similarly must be able to reroute all I/O to a new pair of HBA’s without missing a beat
• The storage array must be able to re-present capacity to a new physical device, and must maintain snapshots and other configurations
• The backup system must also be able to maintain consistency over time even as machines relocate to different server and storage locations

All of this must be done while maintaining quality of service (QoS), access control, reporting, and appropriate segmentation at all levels. This is an incredibly challenging task, and no conventional protocol (IP, Ethernet, NFS, SCSI, Fibre Channel, etc.) is anymore ready then you are when your good friends switch personalities.

Two Paths

So much of the development that is currently taking place in IT focuses on accommodating this “mobility issue”. Two key approaches have emerged to take on this challenge:

• “In a vacuum” technologies (like VXLAN) assume that no other changes will be made, so the focus is on maintaining complete compatibility in front and behind
• “Clean sheet” technologies (usually from startups) take a different approach, throwing out compatibility in favor of technical elegance

Both of these approaches have merit. Attempting to maintain compatibility only works so far (just ask a Windows API programmer), but it leverages the existing environment and recognizes that most people are not ready for wholesale change. Clean sheet designs always make more sense, but they rarely attain mass acceptance. Nearly every technology we rely on today is full of bolt-ons in the name of compatibility. Some, like Ethernet and x86, actually work pretty well, too.

The Stack of Lies

The difference between virtualization and cloud computing is exactly this same distinction. Hypervisors, NPV, NAT, thin provisioning, and so many other virtualization technologies exist mainly to maintain compatibility in a vacuum. In contrast, true cloud computing dispenses with the entire stack and creates a new platform for applications.

This is, perhaps, the reason that cloud computing is not taken off in the enterprise. Simply put, IT is not prepared to ditch everything they have ever used even in the face of a demonstrably superior alternative. Currently, the highest use of cloud is behind gateways and virtualization engines that bring it back down to earth.

This brings us to the stack of lies called server virtualization. Any “modern” virtualized data center is built on lie after lie, with each level telling the other what it wants to hear. The volume manager lies to the operating system; the hypervisor lies to the volume manager; and the storage array lies to the hypervisor. The same sad state of affairs allows networking and even memory to function in a virtual world.

But these shaky stacks of lies have difficulty adapting to motion, since no level truly “knows” the reality of the world around. The depressing truth is that a bowl of spaghetti like VXLAN is perhaps the highest form of art we can expect in a virtual data center.

Stephen’s Stance

As a techie, I am always drawn to clean sheet designs that offer technical elegance along with functionality. But I know that, realistically, products that assume nothing about the world around them and bend over backward to maintain compatibility are more likely to succeed. Still, I maintain hope that the issues of virtual machine mobility will be solved in an elegant way, rather than adding to the “stack of lies”.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | The Terrifying True Story Of Virtual Machine Mobility
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Features, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The great battle of enterprise storage is on!

The time has come to take sides on the core question of storage for virtual servers: Do you want storage intelligence to live in the hypervisor or the array? Most administrators are already lining up on one side or the other, unintentionally casting their vote while the rest flounder. But the storage industry must wake up and embrace the divide.

Hypervisor Huggers Unite!

Do you "heart" virtualization?

VMware’s vSphere dominates the world of enterprise server virtualization and has become the core element of the modern open systems datacenter. Microsoft recognizes this but has been unable to field a competitive hypervisor ecosystem for the virtual datacenter. Today, vSphere is the state of the art and nowhere is this more apparent than in storage.

In just a few years, VMware has delivered and updated a host of advanced storage functionality, from provisioning to migration and load balancing to backup and data protection. vSphere 5 includes an advanced and scalable storage virtualization layer, delivering everything a datacenter needs. VMFS sculpts basic block storage into a shared resource for virtual machines, with snapshots, policy-based layout and movement, and flexible allocation and thin provisioning.

Most VMware administrators are “server guys” and relish these features. They have never experienced an automated “storage service” like this, and the enterprise storage world has never been able to construct anything remotely as flexible, user-friendly, and functional. And Hypervisor Huggers don’t need complex enterprise storage arrays to do it: They can use basic iSCSI or Fibre Channel devices to provide performance and capacity and let VMware do the rest!

Storage DRS is exemplary of the new virtual datacenter world. Introduced in vSphere 5 (and restricted to the pricey Enterprise Plus license), Storage DRS uses the core technology of Storage vMotion to dynamically balance I/O and capacity across a diverse pool of storage. Storage DRS even uses Policy-Driven Storage and VASA to enforce tiered storage and data placement strategy. This kind of virtualization has been a “holy grail” quest for the enterprise storage industry, but they’ve never delivered on their promises.

Cheers for Storage Stalwarts!

Do you wish all this virtualization nonsense would just go away?

But not every IT environment wants be 100% vSphere focused, and many aren’t convinced that dumb storage is the smartest place for their data. These Storage Stalwarts want smarter and better-integrated storage arrays, and VMware is innovating here as well.

VMware’s Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) technology is squarely aimed at this market. VAAI allows vSphere to hand off heavy storage operations to the high-end storage arrays from the major players. It works transparently, too, coordinating cloning without the kind of scripting and hair-pulling that used to require. VAAI in vSphere 4.1 also includes block zeroing support and something called “atomic test and set” which we’ll get to in a moment. Microsoft announced their own cloning integration, ODX, but it won’t ship until Windows Server 8 appears sometime next year.

But cloning is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hypervisor-to-array integration. The rising army of NAS users have seen the glory of more-complete array integration for a while, and they’re not quiet about it. They love that VMware’s NFS protocol support makes storage “disappear” in vCenter, becoming just another resource with integrated thin provisioning and flexible allocation and movement.

VMware is moving aggressively to please their Storage Stalwarts, adding more VAAI support for block and file in vSphere 5. But, as the company laid out at VMworld 2011, neither access method is ideal for virtual servers. So VMware has been pushing the enterprise array vendors for ever-greater integration. They see a future where a VAAI-based protocol enables arrays to de-multiplex I/O streams from the hypervisor and intelligently handle per-VM data.

Stephen’s Stance

You can spot a Hypervisor Hugger by their big LUNs: They would rather treat storage as a bulk commodity, and array vendors should be lining up to get their business. Storage Stalwarts will jump on each new VMware innovation, finally making use of the capabilities they have spent over a decade paying for but not utilizing. The only untenable stance is trying to keep a foot in both worlds: It’s foolish to buy an enterprise array and use it as bulk storage!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Are You a Hypervisor Hugger or a Storage Stalwart?
This post was categorized as Computer History, Enterprise storage, Features, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Symantec's newly-announced "V-Ray" technology does ... something ... maybe

Data is getting bigger, virtualization is expanding, and data protection applications are ill-prepared to deal with it. This much we can all agree on. But Symantec’s introduction of “V-Ray,” which the company describes as “X-Ray vision into … virtual environments” has just left me puzzled. Is this “marketecture” or some sort of technology or product?

Symantec’s V-Ray Vision

As discussed at Symantec Vision 2011, there is a distinct need within virtualized environments to improve visibility and transparency. As additional layers are added, each is obscures those below it. Virtual machines simply lack the level of visibility seen in physical environments.

The solution, we are told, is “V-Ray.” It “provides transparency of backup images across physical and virtual environments,” which certainly sounds like a positive goal. And Symantec can leverage its “intellectual property around file systems, security, and storage.” But what exactly is Symantec doing here?

I had numerous discussions with Symantec folks at Vision 2011, and it turns out that V-Ray is, in fact, a term for a number of technological features common to many products. First delivered in NetBackup and Backup Exec, the technology known as V-Ray allows these products to identify files within virtual machine images, enabling file-level recovery. It will also be leveraged by Symantec’s Endpoint Protection security products, allowing quicker scanning when the product “knows” which files have already been scanned and which have changed.

Put together, these features will allow these products to interact more efficiently and completely, sharing configuration information and other metadata. The V-Ray concept will extend into management applications and across Symantec’s software portfolio.

Symantec also made this clever video. Too bad it doesn’t say what exactly V-Ray is!

Stephen’s Stance

Anything that enables better management of virtual machines is a win in my book, but I wish this “V-Ray” idea wasn’t so opaque. I’d love a single page specifying exactly which technologies fall under this umbrella and that this “deep technology” really does.

Symantec has great IP for managing storage and applications as well as protecting data, but they haven’t always been able to leverage and communicate this technology. V-Ray is a step in the right direction conceptually, merging their storage, backup, and security smarts and spreading the result far and wide. But right now it appears to be more “marketecture” than real substance. Here’s hoping it matures into some solid, useful offerings in time for Symantec Vision 2012!

Disclosure: Symantec paid my expenses to attend Symantec Vision 2011 and has repeatedly sponsored Tech Field Day and other activities I am involved with. I am under no obligation to the company to write about their products, positive or negative.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | What Exactly Is Symantec V-Ray?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

2011 will look pretty much like 2010 apart from the differences...

Prognostication is a perilous business, but pundits are drawn to the topic in the month of December. The fact that most predictions fall on their faces demonstrates the intoxicating mix of hope, dreams, and irrationality that mark both geniuses and fools. I am neither, so I like to make predictions after the fact! But this year I’ve been asked to look to the future, so I’ll stick with the safe road and pick current trends rather than guessing what I hope will come.

Five Trends For Everyone

1 – Ubiquitous Connectivity

I named mobility as the mega-trend of the last decade, noting that it’s hard to spot a trend from the middle and harder still from the start. But I feel vindicated on that 2009 call, and will take it one further: 2011 will see ubiquitous connectivity become mainstream. With “MiFi” entering the vernacular, a proliferation of “4G” networks and integrated wireless data, and free WiFi having already become passe, I’d say “online everywhere” is here. Although incredibly challenging from both a technical and business perspective, I expect everyone and everything to be online-capable.

2 – The iPad and Foes

Steve Jobs’ bizarre claim that the overgrown iPhone tablet was the most important thing he ever did is starting to look prescient. A new generation is coming of age without windowing GUIs, mice, and keyboards thanks to gaming consoles, smartphones, iPods, and (finally) tablets. 2011 will finally see serious Android, WebOS, and Windows tablets, but the iPad (and forthcoming iPad 2) are the platform to beat, and Apple is firing on all cylinders. This war will be all-consuming next year.

3 – Wave “Hi” to Kinect!

Microsoft has a serious hit on their hands with the Kinect add-on to the Xbox 360. The gaming system is the best thing to come out of Redmond in a long time, and it continues the “no controller” concept of the iPad, finally kicking the Wii to the curb. The massive success of the Xbox will lead Microsoft shareholders to abandon their calls for Ballmer’s head, instead asking for a spin-out or IPO of the gaming division. Expect PCs to include Kinect-like features in the coming years as well.

4 – Facebook Is the Internet

Now boasting a quarter of all web pageviews. Facebook is looking increasingly like AOL for the rest of us. 2011 will see Facebook’s gravity pull in content from everywhere, and its satellites sprout all over the Internet. It will become the single sign-on, the central “like”, the address book, and the meeting place. But fear not, Facebook-phobes: Nothing is permanent, and this too shall pass.

5 – The Internet Changes and No One Notices

The IP address space is exhausted, BGP and DNS security lapses rise, and net neutrality falls by the wayside but Farmville still works so no one cares. The Internet is changing, and controversies over key components are coming coming to a head. I imagine the network engineers will be busy keeping ahead of catastrophe, but they’ll manage somehow. I’m not sure if IPv6 will finally take off or if the carrier gambit will succeed, but I’m confident we’ll still have an Internet at the heart of the technology world!

Five Trends For the Datacenter

6 – Clouds Gather Quietly

“Cloud” was the buzzword of the last two years, but now it’s getting down to work. Traditional IT staff still won’t see much of it outside of blogs and conferences, but non-traditional systems are all heading that way. Look for major uptake of cloud platforms and services from the home to enterprise applications and everywhere in between. Ironically, the “c-word” itself will soon be dropped from these successful services just as it gains acceptance in IT shops.

7 – Virtual Everything

The impact of server virtualization hasn’t been as great as supporters claim, but widespread acceptance of hypervisor-centric data centers is here. There’s really no reason not to deploy every datacenter server as a virtual machine and lots of resulting benefits. Expect to see mission-critical apps finally move to VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V in 2011. And expect to see the resulting infrastructure called “cloud”!

8 – Farewell, Fast Hard Drives

Storage I/O performance is now the realm of solid state, not spinning disk. SSDs have reached the level of performance, capacity, availability, and sophistication that we no longer need 15k rpm enterprise hard disk drives. You’ll use SSD if you want IOPS, but you’ll still need spinning platters for capacity and maximum throughput for a long while. Don’t expect hard disk drives to disappear, but the fastest will exit at the end of the year.

9 – Not-So-Converged I/O (Yet)

DCB ain’t ready, folks. Neither is FCoE. Although Ethernet will eventually sideline InfiniBand and Fibre Channel, that’s not a 2011 topic. I expect to hear a lot of noise about converged network and storage I/O, including high-profile customer adoption stories, but we’re still a few years short of actual impact and serious market share movement. Practical application starts in 2011, though, and it’ll get major coverage and big-money action in the vendor space.

10 – RAID is (Finally) Dead!

There won’t be much ink spilled in memoriam outside storage blogs like this one, but conventional mirroring and parity has finally met its maker. Today’s hard disk drives are too big to rebuild singly, and alternatives like wide striping, erasure coding, and touch-me-not disk packs are taking over.

And One More For Me

11 – The Internet is Shiva

Every business will be permanently changed as Internet-enabled platforms destroy profitable monopolies and build new opportunities. Google conquered advertising and destroyed traditional publishing but enabled a flowering of democratic dialog. PayPal and Square will do the same to banking in 2011, but their own come-uppance might come sooner than they like. No matter your business, someone has their sights set on you and the Internet is their tool. The trick is to keep dancing, keep innovating, and love the paradox.
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Image Credit: Eleven by Wetsun

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Eleven Tech Trends To Watch In 2011
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, 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.

Was EMC World 2010

“Private cloud” wasn’t just the message of EMC World 2010, it was the slogan. The phrase was everywhere, from the airport to the taxis to the cycle rickshaws to the convention center walls. But end users seemed as confused as ever when talking to me, and EMC’s own show video proves the point: EMC’s customers are using virtualization and public cloud talking points, not the private cloud concepts EMC is pitching!

What is your cloud-computing strategy?

The first video asks for cloud strategy on Day 1 of the show.

1. “Putting together a solution for existing customers … to provide them the opportunity to leverage all of the capacity on demand … for emergency projects … as well as the cost savings” – Ok, so this guy is presumably a service provider of some sort. And his cloud strategy is to offer existing capacity to existing customers in emergencies. I’m not all that excited by this prospect, but I’m sure they’ll appreciate “the cost savings.”
2. “It’s still in development and it’s being defined by each of the different areas” – So he’s not really clear on that cloud thing, though he does get that storage, compute, and VM are different. I feel for you, brother, and hope you get answers at the show!
3. “We are in stage 2 of cloud evolution where we are trying to virtualize the core and mission critical applications” – Sounds like his company is trying to get server virtualization done first before working too hard on cloud. That’s probably a good IT strategy, but not really a cloud computing strategy.
4. “We’re talking about virtualization at my company” – This admitted “behind the curve” guy is also not too worried about cloud right now.
5. “We are talking about sharing data, talking about legal things like privacy; we have to put it somewhere and the private cloud is for collaboration.” – I talked to this guy at the show and he’s super-smart. He understands the cloud concept, is working toward it, and is doing the right things to get there. But he didn’t really mention this in the video.

There aren’t a lot of strategies mentioned here. And it doesn’t seem like their strategies match up with EMC’s private cloud vision going into the show. Let’s see how that changes over the three days of the event.

What are the business opportunities that the cloud will create?

Day 2 attendees would have been relentlessly pounded by EMC’s private cloud messaging. So what are they saying now?

1. “It allows us to virtualize and spread our services to different locations that we wouldn’t be able to provide the services to before.” – He starts with a private cloud pitch (equating cloud with virtualization) but then shifts to a location independence that’s not easily attainable with private cloud. If you can’t provide services to a location now, how does private cloud fix this? I can see accessing a public service over the Internet fixing this, but EMC’s big-iron infrastructure-centric vision of private cloud ain’t gonna help.
2. “What we’ve done is moved about 95% virtualized, so we’ve moved a lot of our applications, mission-critical applications, into the virtualized world, so our cloud is going good.” – Great for you! Seriously, this guy has a virtualization dream and he’s totally satisfied with that as his cloud. Sounds like EMC has very little selling to do here and he’s not all that interested in any new cloud vision.
3. “We have a private cloud. It’s great. It’s flexible. The business … needs to turn on a dime … so cloud computing is the way to go for us.” – Ok, so here again we have a company that already has a private cloud (presumably this is his synonym for server virtualization) and loves it. This is great, but it’s again hard to see what his cloud is and if it’s aligned with EMC’s vision.
4. “Different companies will be able to share data among each other a lot faster and quicker, instead of flying it to each other; it saves time and money.” – This guy is talking about public cloud, clearly. I haven’t heard data sharing and interchange used as a selling point for private cloud. To the contrary, data security is the primary FUD of private cloud proponents.
5. “We know we have components we need today but looking at the whole cloud it’s constantly changing so the industry will have to respond to the different niche markets within those clouds.” – These are not the words of someone who is sold on private cloud. He sounds like a skeptic, or perhaps a realist, who is sick of hearing half-baked cloud schemes and is politely asking for more business-aligned solutions. Amen, brother, I’m with you!

The gist from these folks, and those I talked to, is that cloud is just a new word for virtualization and “we’ve got that.” Have we moved on from the cloud meme yet? Or is this a sign of massive misunderstanding about what cloud really is and can be? Simply put, the EMC World attendees don’t see cloud as something they have to go out and buy right now. That’s probably not the message EMC wanted to send…

What did you learn?

Although the “what did you learn” video is much more on-message, it’s not clear that customers came out of EMC World with any actionable knowledge about private cloud. One attendee says, “cloud is not just vaporware anymore,” while another agrees, “we need to consolidate and think in terms of the cloud.” Yet most are still enthusing about storage features (“new Symmetrix features” and “VPLEX”) rather than the wholesale change to IT that the cloud represents. As the last guy says, “think about the future.” EMC itself ought to heed this advice!

What did I learn from these videos? That customers aren’t getting the message but are pretty good at learning the words. Most IT practitioners still don’t see the coming business/IT schism and don’t grasp that cloud is much bigger than virtualization. But they’re trying hard to figure it out. I hope they look farther than the singular vision they got from EMC World.

I’m not trying to lampoon EMC or these show attendees. Far from it! This stuff is hard to grasp, and many companies are sending conflicting messages (if not outright FUD). I’m trying to stay on top of the messaging and I find it difficult. Imagine how hard it is for your average business person!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2010. | Could EMC World Attendees Have Missed The Private Cloud Message?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

This last point has always been debatable as well. Apple tends to select higher-end x86 parts for their Macs and has led the way with innovative chassis, screen, and trackpad technology. But PC makers have quickly followed, offering part-for-part Apple clones at 80% of the cost. This week, however, I stumbled onto a concrete difference between Mac and PC hardware that has real-world impact: Across the board, Apple uses exclusive Intel CPUs with enhanced capabilities to support virtualization of 64-bit operating systems, including Windows 7′s special XP compatibility mode.

Virtualization-Ready

Virtualization hypervisors have become very widespread and popular, especially in the Apple world. Mac users regularly list Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion among their favorite applications, since they open up the wide world of Windows applications running in a virtual machine. Although most daily tasks can be performed with native OS X applications, some apps just aren’t available.

Personally, I use Fusion on OS X with Windows Vista to occasionally run Microsoft’s Visio and Outlook, both of which aren’t available as native applications. I also use a 2009 Mac Mini as a server and virtual computer lab, mainly relying on Sun’s lightweight and free VirtualBox hypervisor. Although it isn’t impressive as the physical lab Dennis Martin described to me last week, I am able to run a variety of servers (Linux, Windows, and OS X) and other virtual gear (Windows Storage Server and FreeNAS) to simulate enterprise IT environments.

Windows users have less need to run virtualization applications: When your operating system commands over 90% of the market, a whole world of applications is at your fingertips! But enthusiasts and corporate IT types love virtualization, and VMware Server and Microsoft Hyper-V are commonly found on their Windows machines.

64-Bit Road Block

These popular virtualization packages support a wide range of modern hardware, but not everything works perfectly. Hypervisors had trouble with many tasks, particularly running 64-bit operating systems, until Intel and AMD introduced special hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities in their CPUs. The latest hypervisors and CPUs can now even virtualize 64-bit operating systems on top of 32-bit hosts!

But not all CPUs include this technology. Intel has a long history of artificially segmenting their product line by disabling certain features in low-end parts. For their Core 2 Duo “Merom” and “Penryn” lines, Intel decided that their VT virtualization technology would be the differentiator. Therefore, a lack of VT support is one of the main differences between low-end and high-end Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs.

Many of the latest portable and compact desktop systems use Intel’s Penryn-3M line, including Apple’s MacBook, MacBook Pro, and Mac Mini systems. See the issue here? Intel’s lower-end 2.0 GHz and 2.133 GHz CPUs (P7350 and P7450, respectively) don’t support VT, which means that systems using them don’t have the latest VT hardware virtualization capability and thus can’t run 64-bit virtual machines!

This is an issue for users of popular Sony Vaio, Dell Inspiron, and HP Pavilion PCs, and is likely to become much more important soon. See, Windows 7 includes a special XP compatibility mode, which is really just a virtual machine running XP under 7. But XP mode will not work without Intel VT or AMD-V. This means that XP mode in Windows 7 won’t work on the very mass-market machines that would benefit most from it!

Apple’s Different

This sounds terrible: The latest machines won’t run increasingly-popular virtualization software. But there is a very good reason that buyers of the latest Apple machines aren’t up in arms. It seems that Apple made a deal with Intel to get a special version of the Penryn-3M Core 2 Duo CPUs that do support Intel VT!

Apple’s latest Mac Mini, MacBook, and MacBook Pro all sport P7350 and P7450 CPUs, just like competing Dell, Sony, and HP machines. But the Apple CPUs have VT and the PCs lack it. The VT support is gone, and cannot be enabled in the PC BIOS.

So even a PC and Mac sporting the exact same CPU part numbers aren’t equal: Every recent Mac will run 64-bit Windows and XP mode in Windows 7 and many PCs won’t. And I can run anything I want on my Mac Mini virtual lab!

Update - Let me be very, very clear on the facts here:

• Most hypervisors now require Intel VT or AMD-V in order to virtualize 64-bit operating systems
• Microsoft requires this technology to use XP mode in Windows 7
• All current Apple Macs (including those that use P7350 and P7450 CPUs) have Intel VT support in their CPUs regardless of what Intel says on the model spec sheets
• Many PCs use high-end Intel and AMD CPUs that support VT or AMD-V, though some have this turned off in the BIOS
• No PC with an Intel P7350 or P7450 CPU has Intel VT support at all. It cannot be enabled in the BIOS because it does not exist.

I am not an Apple fanboy. I am a virtualization fanboy who is glad I bought a Mac Mini instead of a Dell Studio, HP TouchSmart, or Sony Vaio.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | A Concrete Reason Macs Beat PCs: Intel VT
This post was categorized as Apple, Computer History, 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.

There is still time to register and attend the Expo, and I’d love to meet up with readers and new friends. I’ll also be in New York on Saturday May 16th and London on Wednesday May 20th. Drop me a line! Sadly, this schedule means I’ll be missing everyone at EMC World, but I think they will get along without me somehow!

The Benefits of Cloud Storage

The demand for storage has increased, placing significant stress on “in house” storage infrastructures and costly overcapacity build-outs Factoring in our current economic state and the pressures of power, space, capital expenditures, global performance, and availability issues, companies are faced with an exploding challenges and costs. Cloud storage platforms enable Enterprises to cut-cost and focus on more important aspects of business, but with many competitors in the marketplace it’s hard for businesses to decide which option is best. This session will teach attendees about the uses of cloud storage within Enterprise levels of deployment and shed some light on the current solutions available today. (Monday, May 18, 5:05 PM)

How Does Virtualization Change Storage?

The virtualization of servers destroys everything that storage folks thought they knew about I/O and throws in a new layer of abstraction to boot. Creating storage for virtualization is not the same as storage for most other apps, and storage virtual servers on a SAN or NAS is not the same as using internal disk. There is synergy between the two fields, though, if we look for it. This sesskion will walk through what virtualization changes about storage, the various storage options, pros and cons, and what the future looks like with FCoE, UCS, 10 GbE, and VMware vStorage APIs. (Tuesday, May 19, 6:30 PM)

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Preparing For Cloud and Virtualization Expo in Prague
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Challenges for Enterprise IT

I’ve spent 15 years focused on the business of IT, with a special interest in data storage, since it makes up such a large part of modern information systems and budgets. The current crisis has forced many of us in enterprise IT to focus inward, tackling the tough challenges inside our data centers rather than adding on exciting new capabilities. The priority has shifted from features with a potential for cost avoidance to real current-year cost savings.

Even as budgets are tightening, we continue to pour good money after bad. This happens everywhere, buying too much of what we don’t want or need.

• As the high end marches ever-higher, we find that most applications require lower tiers of capability
• Data center managers are scrambling to control power and cooling costs
• At the same time, utilization of existing resources remains low, especially storage systems

But change is in the air. Enterprise IT is questioning their old assumptions.

• The monolith of IT infrastructure is finally becoming a pyramid, with a small amount of super high-end “tier-0″ capability and a widening reliance on lower tiers of bulk capacity
• Virtualization of servers and storage is having a real impact, enabling mobility of systems, applications, and data across tiers
• Enterprise IT is increasingly offloading non-essential services to outside partners who can deliver focus and economics

A New Challenge for Me

I have always tried to focus my efforts on making a difference in my little corner of the world, so the time has come for me to make a change professionally.

I am pleased to announce that I am joining Nirvanix, where I will be starting a new strategic consulting practice. We will focus on enabling enterprise customers to leverage modern data storage technology for infrastructure transformation. Nirvanix shares my vision of evolved IT infrastructure supported by tiers of applications, servers, and especially storage. Nirvanix moving forward and attacking the storage issues that face enterprise IT head-on!

I pride myself on giving honest and straightforward advice, and this will not change. Nirvanix Consulting will deliver independent and trustworthy advice, and this is exactly what enterprise IT organizations require and demand. Although Nirvanix provides managed offsite storage as a service to enterprise customers, this offering is not the correct answer for every application or business. In discussing this business concept with Nirvanx CEO, Jim Zierick, I stressed that I will certainly sometimes recommend competing solutions, and that the right move for some is reuse of existing assets. Zierick, who was formerly a partner at the respected consultancy, McKinsey, agrees with this independent approach. We must help each client to develop a strategy that is appropriate to their needs.

Although I have a new professional affiliation, my independence and commitment to the storage community will not change. I remain committed to open communication, and will maintain my Pack Rat blog, Gestalt IT, and my other public writing and speaking activities. Now let’s get down to work!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Changing Times Demand Focus
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The genius of WeFollow is that there’s not account to create and no complicated setup. You simply send a tweet to @wefollow with up to three hashtags and your account is added to the list for each. For example, I sent “@wefollow #storage #apple #virtualization” last night, and my account was added to these lists. If I send a different tweet, presumably, my account would be re-categorized in the directory.

There are lots of twitter directories, but this is by far the simplest to use. It’s also viral: I saw my Twitter friends tweeting to @wefollow, so I decided to do the same thing myself. Brilliant!

I’d love to know how often one can re-categorize ones Twitter account. I’d also want to know how WeFollow decides which tags to use, since it apparently ignored some of my later re-categorization tweets. I also agree with @stu that three might be too small a number, and it would be useful to search on more than one tag.

One more issue is standardization: Already @MattPovey has suggested using “#itstorage” instead of “#storage” for us enterprise storage folks. It looks like the server virtualization folks have settled on “#virtualization“. But what about Cisco-style networking, as opposed to social media folks? I suggest adopting “#internetworking“. These things will probably work themselves out fairly rapidly. And we’ll be left with a useful Twitter directory. Nice!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | WeFollow: The Passive Twitter Directory
This post was categorized as Apple, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.