Category: NTAP

Flood Affects Storage Industry


There was a great post a couple of weeks ago, with Tom Coughlin as a contributing editor, on Forbes’ news site about the floods that hit Thailand and how it will affect the disk drive market.  The great thing about the article is it truly highlights that necessity is the mother of invention.  What do I mean by that?  Over the past few “storage efficiency” has been a big topic with vendors.  Helping customers “do more with less”, especially in these stringent economic times, is key to the vitality of a number of businesses.  Technologies such as storage virtualization and thin provisioning have helped customers to slow their storage spend and get better utilization out of their existing storage.  Once customers have moved their utilization rates from 35% to 65% or 70%, time comes when new storage needs to be acquired to keep up with the growth of data.  The issue comes when there are no more disk drives to be acquired.  Due to the floods in Thailand, analysts predict that the storage industry could be 50 to 60 million units shy of the demand this quarter.  This does two things:

1)      Drives the price of disk higher, at a time when the expectation is to spend less for disk

2)      Has IT getting more creative on how they use and deploy their storage

It is the later that I want to focus on as paying more for disk is not necessarily the best option.  It is important to note that data grows for one reason, business does not stop, it needs to keep going and it is what is driving the demand on the data.

In the Forbes piece Tom talks about “a surge in new technologies because of this disk shortage” but he doesn’t cover some of the most innovative technologies that are available to help customers.  I would agree with Tom that we “could” see a surge in SSD but that would be short lived do to both supply and cost as well as a surge in tape, but these aren’t really “new technologies”.

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Dec 01, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Storage Efficiency Panel – SNW 2011 Fall


Yesterday I was on a panel at SNW in Orlando Florida.  The panel was hosted by Dave Vellente, Founder of Wikibon and always a great host for these kinds of things.  On the panel was Larry Freeman of NetApp, Craig Nunes of HP (formally 3Par), Jarred Floyed CTO / Founder at Permabit and myself, IBM (formally Storwize).

Some interesting data came out of this panel.  There were probably over 150 people in the audience.  It was a well-attended session.  Also, Dave is VERY good about asking the audience questions.  Let me start by making sure we all know where everyone sits at the “storage efficiency table” that was on the panel.

  • Larry Freeman is from NetApp – they claim, and I believe them, that they have 10 storage efficiency technologies that are embedded into WAFL
  • Craig Nunes main focus on the panel was ‘zero reclamation’ to optimize storage
  • I have a Real-time Compression drum I am beating
  • Jarred Floyed focuses on data deduplication

Here are some questions and answers Dave got when speaking to the audience:

Dave’s Question

Audience Response (in close estimated %)
How many people use deduplication / compression in their storage? 60% responded they did use one or both of these technologies in their environment
How do users use these technologies - embedded or appliance? 100% of the 60% said "embedded"
Who is your storage vendor was that provided these technologies? 100% of the 60% said NTAP
What is the number 1 issue was with the embedded solution and making it not more widely adopted? Performance was the answer.  They all believed that for 70% of their applications, the embedded solution was “good enough” but for 30% where performance is critical – it couldn’t do the job.
Why are not more appliances deployed to solve the performance issues? The response was that customers didn’t want to have to manage multiple solutions in their environment doing the same thing.
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Oct 11, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

5 Most Interesting Things at VMworld 2011


Two solid days at VMworld 2011 and I got to do and see a lot.  Here is a breakdown of the top 5 things I saw at VMworld.

#1 The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube

You couldn’t miss it.  You walk into the show floor and there they were, larger than life.  The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube broadcasting live from VMworld2011.  Guests that were on the cube included, Tom Georgens (NTAP), Pat Gelsinger (EMC), David Scott (HP), Rick Jackson (VMware) as well as many more.  The Cube also had 12 Industry Spotlights.  The most interesting spotlight had to do with Storage Optimization, especially for VMware.

Oh the times they are a changing.  Now that you can deliver HD TV live over the internet, the Cube has broadcast from a number industry shows and user conferences.  The great part about this, it is like the ability to watch a sporting event being covered by ESPN but for tech.  The Cube brings all of the highlights of these events right into your computer screen.  Now if you can’t make an event, no problem, you can catch all the most important messages from the Cube.  The Cube is now the new mechanism for delivering content to users in the way they want to receive the content, TV.  For more, check out www.siliconangle.tv

#2 Storage Optimization – Industry Spotlight

In the Storage Optimization industry spotlight, the first 15 minutes Dave Vellante and his co-host John Furrier tee up the concept.  They discussed storage optimization, where it has come and were it is going, especially in VMware environments.  We are hearing more and more about storage efficiency technologies.  During the next 15 minutes Dave and I discussed the 5 essential storage efficiency technologies including:

  • Tiering
  • Thin Provisioning
  • Virtualization
  • Compression
  • Deduplication

We also discussed the fact that the IBM Real-time Compression technology is not only the most efficient and effective compression technology in the industry; we also learned that IBM really acquired not just a real-time “compression” technology but a platform that can do a number of things in real time.  In fact, the 5 IBM storage efficiency technologies all operate in real time which is the most effective for customers.

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Sep 06, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Storage in Eastern Europe


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today I begin a 12 day trip to Easter Europe to talk about IBM Storage.

The trip will take me to:

  • Moscow, Russia
  • Warsaw, Poland
  • Prague, Czech Republic
  • Ljubljana, Slovenia
  • Umag, Croatia

In Russia, on September 6, I will be at the Information Infrastructure Conference and the following day meeting with customers to discuss storage and storage efficiency.

In Poland on September 8, I will be presenting IBM’s Real-time Compression at Storage University.

In Prague I will be meeting with the press as well as speaking with customers.  Additionally, I will be spending the weekend in Prague, a city I have always wanted to visit.

In Slovenia on September 14, I will be presenting at IBM’s Innovation Center at an IBM Solutions Event.

Finally in Croatia on September 15, I will be at the IBM Forum, the largest IBM even in Croatia.

In each location, I will be speaking with partners and customer on IBM’s innovation in storage, storage efficiency and Real-time Compression.  I am looking forward to learning what the largest storage challenges are across Eastern Europe and users go about solving their challenges.  Additionally, I will be doing some local enablement for our partners and sellers.

I will blog from each location.  I will talk about the professional part of my travels as well as, hopefully, one personal event.  I have tried to make sure that in each city I have time to do one interesting thing.  I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll be back to these cities and these are some places I have always hoped to go.  Too often we travel and its all business.

Also stay tuned, when I land I will have an update from my trip to VMworld.  It was fantastic.  Truly the best end user show around.  I learned a great deal and can’t wait to share some of what I saw.  As always – comments are always welcome.

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Sep 04, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Top 10 Reasons to Use IBM for VM Deployments


 

IBM @ VMworld 2011

After a full first day at VMworld, I started to think more about IBM and their technology solutions that help customers in a VMware environment.  Here is a top ten list of things to consider when looking at a VMware implementation and how IBM can help.

#1 Integration

VMware is playing Switzerland and ensuring all vendors are on a level playing field, so when other vendors state that they have “better” or “closer” technology integration than other vendors its probably not true.  Some vendors may not choose to integrate with certain things, but rest assured, all of   VMware’s APIs are open to all vendors.  Take a look and see how IBM is providing plug-ins for vSphere, SRM, and VAAI in XIV as well as other storage platforms.

#2 Ease of Use

IBM has seen, firsthand, a number of our customers switch from different competitive platforms to XIV because of the simplicity of the XIV solution.  A large manufacturer is one example of a customer who is provisioning new VMware instances in less than five minutes with XIV. 

Another XIV customer, who is a very experienced storage administrator, saw the XIV GUI and quoted "I don't get it (XIV GUI).  It can't be that easy.  Either I'm missing something or they are not showing me everything."  Well, the reality is, it is that easy and that interface is prolific throughout the IBM storage portfolio including the Storwize V7000 and SVC.

#3 Storage Efficiency

Probably one of the most important topics this year is Storage Efficiency and IBM is a leader in this department.  The N-Series with the Real-time Compression appliance can reduce the VMware storage footprint up to 75%.  Users tell us that by implementing VMware, their storage footprint has grown by as much as 4x.  Therefore their overall IT budgets didn’t get better, the dollars just shifted from servers to storage.  IBM’s Real-time Compression users can save up to 75% without any performance impact.  Additionally, Real-time Compression is the only compression technology that works in conjunction with deduplication, compressing the data before it is dedplicated, giving an added benefit to the technology.

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Aug 30, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Storage Efficiency Spotlight at VMworld


VMworld Live 2011
Via: Wikibon

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Aug 29, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Virtual Disk Storage


History truly does repeat itself.  We are talking about the history of data storage.  Every once and a while a new technology comes along that requires a new way to think about infrastructure.  Notice I said “infrastructure”.  I’d like to paint two analogies:

Analogy 1: RAID – Prior to RAID users stored their data on disk and if they could afford it, they backed that data up to have a protected copy of their data.  When RAID came out, users were able to store their data on multiple disks appearing as one device.  The benefits to this were, increased data reliability, better performance.  This new technology however, fundamentally changed how disk was sold, but the questions were the same:

  1. How much capacity do you need?
  2. What type of performance does your application require?

The sales reps point of view changed.  There were a number of new considerations that needed to be taken into account.  First, the age old question, “Will I sell less storage “stuff?”  Remember the person, at the time, selling the disk was probably also selling the backup tape and software to protect that information.  If the disks are more reliable, maybe the customer won’t need as much tape?  Second, when the capacity question came up, the seller also needed to know what type of RAID the customer wanted to ensure they sold them enough drives.  It was no longer as simple as asking the capacity requirements and dividing it by the drive capacity at the time.  Now depending upon RAID levels there was a new set of math that needed to be done.  Third was the notion of performance and more spindles meant more performance so now that the capacity equation was solved for, you also needed to know the I/O requirements in order to make sure the right number of drives were sold to solve for the capacity as well as the performance.

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Jul 06, 2011 | 3 comments View Post

Efficiency vs. Optimization


“Storage Efficiency” has become a big topic over the past 12 months.  There are a number of new technologies that have come out in the last few years that are helping to deal with storage growth.  We all know that data is the root of the decisions that drive business today.  The more data you have, hopefully, the better decisions you can make to drive your business to success.  The question is, “what is the value (and hence the cost) of the infrastructure to create that success?”  What we do know is that the ability to put more data in a highly efficient footprint can give your company a competitive edge.  There are five technologies that can help an IT organization create an efficient storage infrastructure.  These are:

 

1)      Tiering

2)      Virtualization

3)      Thin Provisioning

4)      Compression

5)      Deduplication

It is also important to point out that there are some semantics when talking about storage efficiency, specifically between efficiency and optimization technologies.  I think it is useful to attempt to define these as they lead us to picking the right solutions for what we are trying to accomplish.  For the purpose of this post, efficiency will relate to making existing capacity more useful and optimization will mean making more capacity out of existing capacity.

Using these definitions, technologies such as Tiering, Virtualization and Thin Provisioning are efficiency technologies.  These technologies help to utilize the existing capacity that you have.

Tiering is technology that is used on about 10% of your data or less.  It is used to move data that requires higher performance to flash storage.  Good tiering technology analyzes data access patterns and moves the most active data to the highest performing disk.  It doesn’t really change the amount of physical capacity that is required; it just changes what type of capacity is required and allows IT to make sure data is operating as fast and efficiently as possible.

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Jun 30, 2011 | 1 comment View Post

Key Competitive Advantages to IBM Real-time Compression


It still baffles me when there is so much information available for people to learn about any topic and it is not used.  Many times people just tend to rely on the information provided by their employer (which in many cases is just competitive FUD).  This video was the result of reading an email between IBM and one of their key partners on the competitive knowledge of each others products.

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Jan 10, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Linked In Storage Discussion on Storage Efficiency


Great conversation on Linked In about deduplication and compression for storage efficiency in the Data Storage Professionals Group.  Help the storage community answer this question:

Does anyone has any experience in NAS de-duplication at filesystem level, like NetApps. Does it really work? I concerns/limitations?

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Jan 04, 2011 | 2 comments View Post
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