Virtual Optics

End of the Corporate Datacenter

2011-05-03T14:54:00.001-05:00

Networking, Storage, Servers, Power, Cooling, Datacenter buildings and people which are a significant cost to businesses will been eliminated in the very near future. Services such as the Windows Azure Platform will used to build, host and scalE applications in cloud datacenters. This service real and available today and while it might take a few years for adoption, the Corporate Datacenter will soon collapse into the cloud. It's time now to re-focus the resume on providing cloud solutions, because the days of providing datacenter solutions have ended.

Nasuni Cloud File Server

2011-03-02T20:09:00.001-06:00

Finally something interesting and real in Storage...

Cloud is HOT this year and Nasuni is my first look into cloud storage.   Nasuni is a virtual NAS appliance that has some amount of local storage.  The Nasuni appliance sits on your local network and serves CIFS and NFS to your users on the front end, and then snapshots the data to one or more Cloud Storage providers of your choice. Cloud providers currently include Amazon Web Services, AT&T Synaptic Storage as a Service℠, Nirvanix, Peer 1 Hosting, Rackspace, and Windows Azure

Literally within 10 minutes, I download the ESX VM, started it and had my first cloud share up and running. Started copying images, videos, etc and sharing them to other to test... Fast and flawless.

Nasuni setup was by far they easiest appliance I have ever setup, and when you turn on, it's just on. No boot up, just on!

Nasuni really isn't Cloud Storage, it more of a Cloud Storage Gateway.  It's a generic way to setup Cloud Storage to any number of current (an future) Cloud Storage providers. Yes it does CIFS and NFS and stores data on local disk just like all NAS filers, however the main feature is the snapshots to the "Cloud".

How is works is simple; Data is written locally to the appliance, and at set increments, snapsnots of the data are taken and the delta (change blocks) are sent to the cloud.    Recovery from any point in time snapshot is also possible... Delete a file, no problem... Go recover it from the snapshot!

I've only had a few hours with this product, and I see lot's of potential here and still lots of questions.

Netapp better incorporate this technology into Ontap fast, or it's going to see some market share loss to this new idea on providing NAS.

Look for updates to the blog as soon as I have a better feel for it...

NetApp ONTAP-v Virtual Storage Array - Cloud Computing in a BOX?

2010-12-20T00:00:00.001-06:00

Netapp has my attention with it's announcement of a NetApp ONTAP-v Virtual Storage Array (VSA).

Basically ONTAP-v will be a virtual machine and will use virtual disk to serve (via iscsi/NFS?) other VMs in local and remote VSAs. Add some additional SAS shelves and you could in theory handle 1000's of VMs all replicated and backed up via snapshots/mirrors on remote VSAs...

A truely converged datacenter in a box or at least a small puff of a cloud starting for form.

This is one to keep a close eye on...

On November 24th Fujitsu announced the global availability of the Primergy BX400 blade server. The Primergy BX400 is a green ‘datacenter in a box’ that delivers the first NetApp virtual storage appliance (or VSA) running Data ONTAP-v.

EMC Corporation In Talks To Buy Isilon Systems, Inc.-Reuters $2 billion?

2010-10-18T13:56:00.000-05:00

Pasture play? Not sure where EMC is going with Isilon System...

October 18 12:22pm EDT

Reuters reported that EMC Corporation is in talks to buy computer storage company Isilon Systems Inc for more than $2 billion, the New York Post reported on Monday. The report quoted an unnamed source as saying the deal would be done this year.

HP ReRAM Flash and Disk Replacement?

2010-08-31T22:08:00.000-05:00

Today, HP announced a joint development agreement with Hynix Semiconductor Inc., to develop a new kind of computer memory – one that will employ memristor technology pioneered by researchers at HP Labs.
This memory, called ReRAM, holds the potential to surpass Flash in terms of affordability, total capacity, speed, energy efficiency, and endurance.
Previous to the prediction of the memristor by Prof. Leon Chua of UC Berkeley in 1971, there were three recognized passive circuit elements: the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. These three passive elements have provided the fundamental building blocks on which all electronic circuits today are based.

Symantec Puredisk

2010-08-31T21:38:00.000-05:00

Shadowed by their competitors, Symantec Puredisk solution is starting to turn heads. Well at least mine... Puredisk is now completely integrated into Netbackup 7, which means that a 3rd party solution or separate install is not required for backup deduplication. Out of the box, Puredisk is available to use at the switch of a license key.

Puredisk deduplication can be accomplished at the client, or at the media server and can be switched via netback policy. As a bonus, the puredisk pool can be replicated to a second pool incrementally and the netbackup catalog kept sync automagically.

Some amount duplication occurs on the initial backup depending on your data, but Puredisk shines on the next backup deduplicating all unchanged blocks. Nothing like seeing a 99% deduplication rate!

Intel to buy Mcafee, why? SSD data compression maybe?

2010-08-19T15:01:00.005-05:00

Why?

I can't see why Intel would want bloatware like Mcafee other than to keep the CPUs hot...

Now if Mcafee had some type of pattern matching IP that allowed Intel SSDs to incorporate some type of de-duplication... Now that could be huge and finally allow SSDs to surpass their hard drive counterparts.

The Virtual Datacenter; 500 VMs in 10U?

2009-09-22T20:35:00.018-05:00

Now why can't someone build a 6-Tbyte and 2-Gbyte/sec SSD array as a blade addon?

A 14 blade nahalem CPU system and (2) 6TB storage blades would make an awesome all in one Vmware in a 10U box system!

No Nework, No SAN, and high IO!

I'de buy 5 of these tomorrow!

Didn't GATES and DELL get their start by providing a simple solution in their garage?

Sandisk M2 2TB Memory Stick @60MB/s

2009-01-13T13:02:00.007-06:00

8/3/2009 UPDATED SPECS: Memory Stick XC

It's been awhile since my last posting here mainly due to lack of any interesting storage news. Well this came across my RSS this morning.

Starting in 2009, Sony and Sandisk will make a giant leap in storage capacity for the Memory Stick memory card.

"Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity (Tentative name)" expands the "Memory Stick PRO" format series to achieve a maximum storage capacity of 2-terabytes (TB), with a maximum data-transfer speed of 60 megabytes per second (MB/s)

The SSD ERA lasted.... about 12 months!

Game Changer!

dp

Storage Networking World 2008 Dallas News

2008-10-14T20:59:00.005-05:00

SNW product highlights, Day 1

SNW product highlights, Day 2

SNW product highlights, Day 3

SNW product highlights, Day 4

Vmware Datacenter OS

2008-09-19T11:25:00.004-05:00

Vmware 2008; VMware has extended Virtual Infrastructure into a Virtual Datacenter Operating System

The virtual datacenter OS addresses customers’ needs for flexibility, speed, resiliency and efficiency by transforming the datacenter into an “internal cloud” – an elastic, shared, self- managing and self-healing utility that can federate with external clouds of computing capacity freeing IT from the constraints of static hardware-mapped applications.

VmDOS (Back to DOS days) delivers the virtual datacenter OS through the following essential components:

Application vServices guarantee the appropriate levels of availability, security and scalability to all applications independent of hardware and location.
Infrastructure vServices subtract, aggregate and allocate on-premise servers, storage and network for maximum infrastructure efficiency.
Cloud vServices federate the on-premise infrastructure with third party cloud infrastructure.
Management vServices allow you to proactively manage the virtual datacenter OS and the applications running on it.

All I can say is WOW!!!

Welcome to the Cloud Computing ERA!

ESXi FREE

2008-07-30T14:50:00.002-05:00

You’ll still need VirtualCenter and VI3 Enterprise licenses for all the cool enterprise-level features like VMotion, DRS, HA, SRM.

ESXi can either be installed or run from an embedded device available in certain servers.

The 32MB footprint gives small businesses an easy way to get into the virtualization world with easy upgrade paths to enterprise-level features.

Great call by someone at Vmware!

Now with all the virtualization going on these days, it's becomming harder to find a spare "real" server to try out ESXi on :(

NetApp 2007 NetApp Innovation Awards Honors Dan Pancamo and Marcus Bui

2008-06-04T23:26:00.005-05:00

Myself and Marcus Bui are the proud recipients of the 2007 Netapp Enterprise Infrastructure Innovation award!

In August 2006 we convinced our Vmware teams to switch from a SAN Vmware environment to a Netapp NFS Vmware environment as we quickly realized the potential value that Netapp could play in a Vmware environment.

I truly believe that even Netapp didn't even see their potential role until we proved the value of Netapp's snapshot and replication technology in a vmware environment. Today we run over 1000 VMs on 35 ESX host in two locations all using Netapp filers over NFS.

The NetApp Innovation Awards recognize NetApp customers who have helped their companies, customers, or communities through innovative deployment of NetApp products and solutions.

The Enterprise Infrastructure award distinguishes customers worldwide who have deployed NetApp systems to power data center, workgroup, department, collaborative, or HPC applications that are specifically not Oracle, SAP, SQL Server, or Exchange and who demonstrate innovation with NetApp products. This year’s winner was Invesco, a leading independent global investment management company. By delivering the combined power of its distinctive worldwide investment management capabilities, including AIM, Atlantic Trust, Invesco, Perpetual, PowerShares, Trimark, and WL Ross, Invesco provides a comprehensive array of enduring investment solutions for retail, institutional, and private wealth management clients around the world. Activision, a leading international publisher of interactive entertainment software products, and Reliance Communications Limited, which is rated among “Asia's Top 5 Most Valuable Telecom Companies” and is India's foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service provider, were finalists.

HP Single Filesystem Cluster ExDS9100

2008-05-06T22:31:00.003-05:00

HP anounces a highly scalable storage system named ExDS9100 (Extreme Data Storage System). ExDS9100 can scale to 246 petabytes using HP’s C-Class 16 Blades 12.8 cores per unit for an 3.2 GB/second of raw performance all managed with a single management interface.

HP's PolyServe software (acquired in February 2007) is at the heart of the single filesystem.

HP predicts it will cost less than US$2 per gigabyte in a typical configuration.

Storage Networking World 2008 Highlights

2008-04-09T19:17:00.009-05:00

Storage Networking World April 7-10, 2008 at Rosen Shingle Creek Resort in Orlando, Florida - the world's largest and foremost storage networking event - is where IT management and professionals learn, network and maximize their company's storage capabilities

Broadcom Demos 10-Gig iSCSI/TCPIP HCA Broadcom iSCSI HBA functionality enables on-chip processing of the iSCSI as well as TCP and IP protocols, which frees up host CPU resources at 10 Gbps line rates and enables an impressive 400,000 IOPS

Xiotech announced intelligent Storage Element (ISE) "virtually eliminate the need for service, scale from one terabyte to one petabyte and dramatically boost performance".

Mellanox accounced 10Gbit FCoE CNA w/Host Offload ConnectX EN Dual-Port 10GigE Single-Chip Adapter with FCoE Enables LAN and FC SAN Consolidation over Ethernet Networks.

More to come...

Intel 10Gbit Nic with VMDq doubles Vmware IO performance

2008-03-08T07:05:00.012-06:00

In order to help the I/O congestion associated with the additional VMM software switching in a virtualized environment, Intel has implemented a technology called VMDq in their latest 10Gbit Ethernet NICs and silicon. VMDq is a technology specifically designed to offload some of the switching that was done in the VMM to networking hardware specifically designed for this function. This drastically reduces the overhead associated with I/O switching in the VMM which greatly improves throughput and overall system performance.

Without VMDq, the throughput was 4.0 Gbps; with VMDq, the throughput more than doubled to 9.2 Gbps.

Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switch

2008-02-02T15:34:00.000-06:00

Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switch - purpose built for the Data Center of the future. It is designed to transform data center operations, making the customers experience in the data center more efficient, resilient and lasting. Also, check out the Cisco Nexus 7000 website where you can explore the features and elements of the Nexus 7000 Series in our 3-D Interactive Model and view other videos introducing the Nexus 7000 family.

The Cisco Nexus 7000 Platform is powered by Cisco NX-OS, a state-of-the-art operating system. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series is purpose-built for the data center and has many unique features and capabilities designed specifically for the most mission-critical place in the network, the data center.

Zero-Service Disruption Architecture
Scales beyond 15 Tbps with future support for 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps Ethernet
Connectivity management processor (CMP) for integrated out-of-band management access
Graceful system operations to minimize the effect of upgrades and other software operations
Comprehensive XML API for total platform control
Built to support the emerging 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps Ethernet standards
Flexible foundation for unified fabrics and unified I/O Virtual Device Contexts (VDCs) to maximize software and hardware resource utilization while providing strong security and software fault isolation
Lossless fabric architecture to support the requirements of a unified fabric

VMware I/O Virtualization HBAs and Xsigo Systems I/O Director

2008-01-30T21:16:00.000-06:00

A partnership between VMware Inc. and Xsigo Systems Inc. will result in Xsigo's I/O virtualization product being integrated with ESX Server and its management software folded into VMware's Virtual Center GUI.

Xsigo's I/O Director consists of a rack-mounted switch that takes the place of Ethernet NICs and FC HBAs in physical servers, connecting them in turn to the user's network or storage fabric in a consolidated physical footprint. The switch also allows users to change connectivity on the fly.

The I/O Problem

I/O is a growing problem in large data centers. Thousands of interconnects link resources in complex configurations. Every data path must be redundant to guard against failure, and all paths must deliver the bandwidth needed for peak loads.

The resulting infrastructure involves a vast array of physical resources: adapter cards, networking switches, storage switches, and a maze of cables. Issues with large scale server I/O include:

Inflexibility: Multiple interdependencies limit agility.
High cost: I/O infrastructure cost (cards, switches) can exceed server cost.
Management complexity: Multiple teams must coordinate even simple changes.

According to Xsigo the benefits of using their director are:

Reduce server I/O cabling by 70%
Cut connectivity capital costs by up to 50%
Deploy connectivity to any server at any time
Migrate connectivity among servers transparently
Deliver 10Gb/s bandwidth to each server
Integrate with existing management frameworks

Vmware should be well aware that storage is the key a successful virtual infrastructure. By virtualizing storage, they will be able to provide a generic connectivity point for all 3rd party storage systems.

I/O Virtualization will be a major enhancement in upcoming VI releases and will future proof changes in storage going forward. Expect to see a number of specific IO solutions for vmware in the comming year.

EMC DMX-4 Delivers First Solid State Disks

2008-01-15T05:45:00.000-06:00

Symmetrix DMX-4 is the first enterprise storage system to provide flash drives that break the performance barriers of traditional disk technology.

EMC plans to offer flash drives in 73 GB and 146 GB capacities for the Symmetrix DMX-4 platform beginning later in Q1 2008.

From the press release:

The flash drives for the Symmetrix DMX-4 system have been purpose built to EMC's exacting specifications and use single-layer cell (SLC) flash technology combined with sophisticated controllers to achieve ultra fast read/write performance, high reliability and data integrity.

This new solid-state storage tier, "tier zero," is fully supported by the Symmetrix software management suite, enabling storage administrators to simplify the provisioning of all of their storage tiers with advanced management tools including Dynamic Cache Partitioning, Virtual LUNs, Quality of Service Manager, and now Virtual Provisioning to simplify overall management and application performance

The Symmetrix DMX-4, with support for flash drives, Fibre Channel disk drives and SATA disk drives, offers the broadest range of 'in the box' storage tiering options to enable the consolidation of all application tiers within a single system.

BiTMICRO 1.6TB Solid State "Soft Drive"

2008-01-05T14:24:00.000-06:00

Update 2/5/2008 : E-Disk® Altima™ Ultra320 SCSI SSD combines up to 1.6TB pure solid state storage capacities with 30,000 IOPS and a lightning-speed sustained throughput of up to 230 MB/sec to deliver highly reliable and performance-driven storage solutions for enterprise, military, and industrial applications

Set for an official announcement at CES next week, BiTMICRO's 832GB SSD uses some sort of proprietary technology that they call MLC memory.

BiTMICRO hasn't made any mention regarding pricing at this point, but they do plan for a launch sometime in Q3 2008.

Virtual Optics's vision for 2008 was hot for solid state in 2008, however never this hot.

Netapp Grabs Onaro

2008-01-03T19:20:00.000-06:00

Netapp announced today a definitive merger agreement to acquire Onaro, a privately owned company headquartered in Boston, Mass. Onaro's software, deployed in 32% of Fortune 50 companies, allows enterprises to manage storage with the highest possible data availability at a fraction of normal operational costs.

Netapp has been working hard at adding a new software look to it's hardware product line. Onaro not only adds SAN and NAS functionality, but also Vmware functionality. I suspect that Netapp is also looking at the talent pool as a key factory in the agreement. I see a tight integration comming in the future with all the Netapp functionality on the hardware side.

Watch the What's New Onaro Demo (4:00)

It's only January 3rd, and yet another Virtual Optics 2008 predition is on the table.

dp

IBM Grabs XIV Nextra Clustered SAN

2008-01-02T14:53:00.000-06:00

Looks like my #2 predition for 2008 is already comming true. IBM throws down a rumored $350M for clustering startup

XIV is an unknown clustering solution with 40 customers that provides SAN connectivity in a cluster configuration. XIV's Nextra solution provides point in time snapshots and scales to 1 Petabyte

XIV is led by Moshe Yanai, one of the key architects of data storage systems and instrumental in the development of EMC's Symmetrix and DMX product lines throughout the 1990s. XIV was founded in 2002 by five graduates of the Talpiot program, Israel's elite military program for technology leaders. The innovative Nextra technology has been in development since 2002, with first customer installations in 2005.

2008

2008-01-01T01:09:00.000-06:00

Well Happy New Year!

I started this Blog on 9/11/2007 and I just tracked my 3069th unique visitor (see above for their locations)

My visions for 2008

1. 10Gbe will become the standard for NAS storage

2. Clustered Storage (such as Isilon) will pick up steam

3. Solid State storage will be the talk of 2008

4. VMware will continue to increase market share

5. Infiniband Storage and VMware will be the 2008 solution

6. Several Storage vendors will consolidate

7. NFS RDMA NFSv4 pNFS over 10Gbe will outperform Fibre Channel for Vmware Datastores

8. FCOE will be limited to few applications

And on a green note, Nanosolar will change the world.

Dan

January 1 2008

Isilon and Vmware ESX

2007-12-30T23:55:00.000-06:00

I've done limited VMware ESX testing using Isilon as datastores, and so far no issues.

Isilon has the ability to fail NFS mounts from one head to another without any inflight read or write loss which is impressive. They also provide up to N+4 protection which is the highest that I've seen. N+4 means you can have up to 4 heads fail without data loss.

Storage (up to 12TB in 2U) can literally be added in 30 seconds. Plug in power, ethernet, and infiniband cables and power on. The front panel asks "Join cluster xxxx Y/N". Select Y and 30 seconds later you have another 12TB.

Isilon also has the ability to dynamically load balance NFS clients across the cluster, which will allow you to load balance your ESX host using multiple NFS mounts. Hopefully Vmware will soon support dynamic DNS IPs for cluster storage, which would allow only one NFS mount.

Performance using one ESX hosts is just as good the other NAS solutions I've tested. Each Isilon node adds CPU and cache, so a 6 node cluster is like having 6 NAS heads! So basically the cluster can grow up to 1.6PB and 96 nodes and performance gets better as you add nodes.

Isilon does Point in Time snapshots at any directory level which is also unique to the NAS market.

Isilon currently only does file replication to a secondary cluster, which means that if a file changes the whole file needs to be transferred to the second cluster. Block level replication is in the works...

Isilon has some real potential and some very unique features with OneFS, and with 10G support early next year Isilon might be a preferred solution soon.

I've started a Isilon Yahoo group here: Isilon at Yahoo! Groups

dp

VMware ESX 3.5 Released Today

2007-12-10T22:05:00.000-06:00

VMWARE ESX Server 3.5 was released today: 12/10/2007.

VMware ESX Server 3.5
Latest Version: 3.5 12/10/2007 Build: 64607 Release Notes

ESX 3.5 Server is a major release that will deliver several new features.

As I see it, Storage Vmotion is the largest feature, however it's not included in these downloads and must be downloaded as a separate component. Migrations using Storage VMotion must be administered through the Remote Command Line Interface (Remote CLI), which is available for download here.

Here's a short list of Vmware ESX 3.5 New Features

Storage VMotion
InfiniBand network cards
10Gbit Ethernet network cards
Update Manager
SATA storage devices
Swapfiles-less VMotion
200 hosts and 2000 virtual machines
128GB RAM per host 64GB RAM per virtual machine
AMD Rapid Virtualization Indexing
para-virtualized Linux guest OSes
Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF)

Neterion's 10 Gigabit Ethernet Driver Included in VMware ESX 3.5

2007-11-27T23:44:00.000-06:00

Neterion's Xframe V-NIC is First 10 GbE Adapter to Be Supported in New Release of VMware 3.5, enabling IT Managers to Virtualize I/O-Intensive Applications for the First Time.

Now if we can get the network storage vendors on the ball with 10Gbit support!

Why VMware over Netapp NFS

2007-11-23T17:47:00.002-06:00

While today the majority of VMware ESX servers connect to their datastores using either Fiber Channel or iSCSI protocol. I believe that using the NFS protocol is a significantly better way to access your ESX datastores. Here's why...

An ESX datastore is simply a place to store your virtual machine files. Yes files, nothing more than files like a word document. So all that’s needed from an ESX host is a way to read and write to these files.

You have two options for datastores: VMFS or NFS. If you want to use the advanced features like VMotion you need a datastore that is shared across all your ESX hosts. Initially VMware only supported VMFS for datastores and hence the reason for the high number of FC implementations, however NFS was added in ESX 3.0 (August 2006) and is starting to catch on.

NFS is not really a filesystem, but a protocol to access files on a remote file server and has been in use since 1984. The remote file server is where the filesystem lives and is really where all the magic happens. In the case of Netapp, the filesystem is called WAFL, with Windows it’s called NTFS and Linux it may be ESX3 or some other filesystem.

So basically, Vmware not only has a significant burden with managing all the components of virtualization, it also has to maintain VMFS. With NFS, the burden shifts to the NFS vendor which also has the freedom to add features as long as it adheres to the NFS protocol.

Here are some reasons to use the Netapp implementation of NFS for VMware instead of using VMFS volumes over FC or iSCSI:

You get thin provisioning by default with NFS. FC and iSCSI VMDKs are thick. This can save 50% of your disk space.

Adding NFS datastores are simple. Mount the NFS volume using the GUI and start creating VMs

Adding additional Netapp filers for datastores requires no down and no cabling changes.

You can have large datastores that span many disks. 16TB for Netapp.

You can use A-SIS to de-duplicate your datastores for a 50-80% reduction in disk space

You can expand AND decrease NFS volumes on the fly

You can use snapshots of the volumes to restore individual VMs

You can use snapmirror to backup VMware volumes to a DR site over a WAN

You don't have to deal with VMFS or RDMs

You don't have to deal with FC switches, zones, lun sizing, HBAs, and identical LUN IDs

You can restore multiple VMs, individual VMs, or files within VMs.

You can instantaneously clone (Netapp Flexclone), a single VM, or multiple VMs

You can also backup whole VMs, or files within VMs using NDMP or any other backup software

ESX server I/O is small block and extremely random which means that bandwidth matters little

No single disk I/O queue, so your performance is strictly dependent upon the size of the pipe and the disk array.
Failover to your SnapMirrored copies can be done in minutes. iSCSi/FC requires LUN resignaturing.
In the near future, you will be able to clone a single VM or create 100’s of VMs from a template in seconds

Some background… The previous information is based on our experience, and not just some theory.

In August 2006 when NFS was announced we were in the planning stage for a major upgrade to our VMware infrastructure. Our VMware infrastructure then consisted of about 20 ESX hosts with about 750 VMs all using Fiber Channel to Hitachi SAN. We are also a heavy user of Netapp filers and knowing the benefits of NFS over SAN we decided to investigate the possibility of using Netapp over NFS. I’m pretty sure we were the first Netapp customer to do this…

Of course the first hurdle was performance. Fortunately, we had more than a years worth of VMware performance data on our SAN. After looking very close at the numbers, we discovered that the throughput to the SAN was extremely low. Somewhere in the 10-15MB/s on average across all 20 ESX host, and the spikes were well under 50MB/s. Since the migration to NFS is so simple, we decide to move several test servers to NFS. All we had to do is mount a NFS share on the current ESX hosts and start moving the VMs. After migrating several 100 VMs to NFS over 6 months, we decided to implement our new Infrastructure completely on NFS.

We purchased 2 dedicated Netapp 3070s and several new 8way ESX hosts for the new project. We also used an existing Netapp R200 to keep 21 says of snapshots for online backups. The R200 also serves as a failover I case of complete corruption of our primary system. Within 6 months we had completely migrated all of our VM’s off SAN and onto Netapp NFS. We now run almost 1000 VMs in this environment.

With our current Netapp IO load on the 3070’s, we estimate that we could add 2000 or more VMs to this configuration by simply adding ESX hosts. The Netapp 3070c IO is running 4MB on average with a few 30MB spikes during the day. Not one IO performance issue has arisen. Our VMware administrators says it’s even faster than our SAN when performing OS Builds, VMotion and Cloning.

We currently don’t run Exchange or Sqlserver VMs, however with 10Gbit and Infiniband solutions on the way I believe that soon all real servers will be virtual.

So I stand my initial statement, however I should say that today it’s really Netapp and not NFS that makes the difference. In the future however, I expect to see other vendors catch up with Netapp and all their added value to the VMware Infrastructure environment.

Additional Links to NFS for Vmware

Netapp Building Vmware with NFS and POC

NETWORK APPLIANCE AND VMWARE VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE 3 STORAGE

VMware over NFS

VMware Server and NFS? Am I alone

NFS Saved By VMware?

Advanced Single Instance Storage (A-SIS)

2007-11-20T20:05:00.000-06:00

In May 2007, NetApp announced a new deduplication technology that can significantly increase the amount of data stored in a set amount of disk space: Advanced Single Instance Storage (A-SIS) deduplication. This technology is available (at no charge!) for NetApp.

How much space can you save? It depends on the data set and the amount of duplication it contains. Here are a couple of examples of the savings that NetApp customers have seen:

An investment management company reduced backups copies of their VMware images by 90%.
A test and measurements manufacturer realized a 98% space savings on daily database backups.
A global oil and gas company achieved a 35% space savings for its home directory storage.

Here's a great TechTalk A-SIS and a Technical Report Here

A-SIS is part of the Nearstore license which I believe is under $3K, but don't quote me... Your rep should be able to give you a quote. You need 1 license per filer and no other cost.
You vmware volumes will be reduced (calculate) by 50-80+% which will more than pay for the license...

Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager (VMM)

2007-11-12T21:45:00.000-06:00

Here are some first impressions:

http://4sysops.com/archives/microsoft-virtual-machine-managers-vmm-bugs/

Here is a video overview of VMM:

http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/scvmm/flash/SCVMM.html

Oracle VM

2007-11-12T20:32:00.000-06:00

Oracle is entering the virtual arena with its own Oracle VM hypervisor based on Xen called Oracle VM. The new product includes a web management console and will be released for free (with optional support agreements) on November 14.

Oracle VM will available as a free download here Wednesday.

What is Oracle thinking? I don't get it. Maybe it will be clear on Wednesday.

Oracle VM is server virtualization software which fully supports both Oracle and non-Oracle applications, and is three times more efficient than other server virtualization products. Backed by Oracle's world-class support organization, customers now have a single point of enterprise-class support for their entire virtualization environments, including the Linux operating system, Oracle Database, Fusion Middleware, and Application software—all of which are supported with Oracle VM.

VDI and Netapp: 100VMs, 10 Minutes, 10Gb total!

2007-10-01T22:22:00.000-05:00

If you need to create 100's of VMs or VMs of the same type in seconds using only the size of 1 VM, then Netapp has your answer.

Netapp Flexclones are writable clones of a parent volume that use no additional space. Flexclones can be used to create clones of VMs in seconds.

I have been talking about the power of using Netapp for your datastores. Here is yet another feature that no other vendor can do: 100VMs in 10 Minute DEMO

RamSan-500 2TB Solid State Raid

2007-09-29T10:39:00.001-05:00

The photo speaks for itself.. This 2TB flash array has 8FC ports, 64GB of DDR cache memory and hot swapable flash modules in a raid configuration. The management interface allows for quick configuration of LUNS and front lcd panel is used for setting the IP address and name. List price is $300K, or $150K/TB

Texas Memory Systems 2TB Flash Array

CAPACITY: 1 to 2 TB Flash 16 to 64 GB DDR Cache
INTERFACES: 4Gb FC 2Gb 4x InfiniBand
PERFORMANCE: 100,000 IOPS 2 GB/s r/w

The Flash Memory (1-2TB usable capacity) is arrayed in nine RAID-5 protected hot swappable modules. The reliability of each module is further enhanced with ECC memory layouts, wear-leveling, and bad-block retirement. The RamSan-500 uses NAND-SLC flash memory, the highest quality of flash memory available on the market. The RamSan-500 is designed from the ground-up to protect data from the problems inherent to traditional flash storage.

FusionIO: The Next Big Thing in Storage

2007-09-27T23:09:00.000-05:00

Update: 12/28/07 -- FusionIO updated their web site... They have a new girl ( I like the old one) and an listed price of $2,400 for the 80GB model which is exactly $30/GB

The enterprise storage game just changed today. "Power of a SAN in the palm of your hand"

If FusionIO is for real, enterprise storage has just shifted gears. While storage vendors have been focusing on larger disk based systems with all the fancy features, it appears that out of nowhere a new storage solution was born today.

Demo Says

ioMemory & the ioDrive may prove to be among the most important products
ever to launch at DEMO. As our volumes of data and digital media soars, ioMemory addresses well the new demands of the digital content age. Yet this
high-performance, high-capacity, small-footprint, low-impact storage technology
may have tremendous implications for the design of data centers and their impact
on energy consumption, as much as for the product’s capability as a high-speed
storage solution.

A new flash storage card could make huge storage area networks go the way of the floppy disk. The company’s ‘ioDrive’ combines hundreds of gigabytes of flash storage onto a small computer card and company officials claim that the tiny card could replace banks of hard drives.

The card will initially have 80-640 GB of NAND flash on ONE PCI card and will scale up to 1.2 TB by the end of next year.

Price: FusionIO says ~$30/GB

Available: 1Q 2008

Performance? Remember when you moved from floppy to a hard drive? FusionIO is taking us to the next level of performance just like the hard drive did when it replaced the floppy disk.

Here are the performance numbers:

VMWARE and FUSIONIO. WOW!

VMworld 2007 Highlights

2007-09-11T21:24:00.001-05:00

ESX 3i , Storage Vmotion and Site Recovery Manager (SRM)

ESX Server 3i is the industry’s first hardware-integrated hypervisor built on a next-generation thin architecture, giving your organization an efficient foundation for building a dynamic, automated data center.

Storage Vmotion gives the admin the ability to move the backend storage of a VM without taking the virtual machine down. It's still unclear exactly how this will be implemented, but basically the vmdk files will be copied to a new location then vmware will automagically swap to the new files. If you have a VM that needs faster disks, SVmotion it!

Site Recovery Manager will allow the admin to control how a system fails over to another site. The backend storage will do the syncing of the data, and virtual center will allow the control of switching to the new site. Business Recovery predefied! Nice!

VMware ESX Server 3.1.0 / VirtualCenter 2.1.0 features list - Updated with full details

Virtual Optics. The Beginning

2007-09-11T21:03:00.000-05:00

I'm not a writer or pretent to be one that has a grasp on the english language. (see my point yet?) But I do have ideas and i hope someone someday might find them here.

Virtual Optics: The ability see the future of computing. Virtually...

Vmware started an revolution in enterprise computing. Not since the beginning of the IBM PC in 1982 has such a product stired so many business roots..

What a better way to start a new blog but on the eve of the next generation of enterprise computing. VMworld!

VMworld 2007 starts tomorrow and with all the posting online, I thought I would put my 2 cent into the pot.

My goal is to track all aspects of enterprise virtualization. Wish me luck.