Netapp FlashRay! 100% SSD Storage Appliances.

This morning, Netapp took a u-turn in their product offering by announcing two 100% SSD storage appliances for both SAN and NAS.   

After spending years on integrating several levels of cache into their current operating system, Netapp appears to have had a change in direction and decided to go all in with SSD... 

Finally.

The EF540 SAN solution builds on it's SANtricity® operating system that was purchased from Engenio/LSI in 2011.  "The EF540 is said to achieve 300,000 IOPS and the transactional performance of 1000 15K drives"

The more interesting announcement almost appeared as "by the way" statement in today's Flash product announcement.    You have to play the the announcement several times to actually hear the word "FlashRay".

The FlashRay™ product architecture is being designed from the ground up and will combine consistent, low-latency performance, high availability, and integrated data protection with enterprise storage efficiency features such as inline deduplication and compression.

Beta systems available this year, and available in early 2014

Sources

FlashRay shines out from Sunnyvale
How NetApp FlashRay Will Disrupt Enterprise Storage
NetApp EF540 Flash Array and FlashRay Preview
NetApp Expands Flash Portfolio, Extending Leadership in Enterprise Flash Storage

End of the Corporate Datacenter

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

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?

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?

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?

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

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?

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?

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

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

SNW product highlights, Day 1

SNW product highlights, Day 2

SNW product highlights, Day 3

SNW product highlights, Day 4

Vmware Datacenter OS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.