Around the Storage Block Blog : SAN

Tech Ed Days 4 & 5

CalvinZ — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:03:00 GMT

By Ian Selway, WW Solution Marketing Manager

So as day 5 is really only a short day, I’ve waited to send my day 4 comments and I’m combining the summary of days 4 and 5 here at TechEd Berlin. Overnight the Wednesday to the Thursday, our stand designers added a whole bunch of balloons to celebrate the 20th anniversary of HP’s ProLiant range of servers. All day we also had cupcakes on the stand that not only reminded delegates of the occasion but also helped attract folks to the stand. I’ve attached a picture of the HP stand all decked out with balloons. Of course the other big news from overnight was the announcement of HP’s intention to acquire 3Com. We had expected a lot of questions from those attending. I’m not sure what the experience of others was, but I don’t think (aside from HP folks asking) that I had a single question asked. I guess everyone is so busy focusing on the bigger things happening between Microsoft and HP.

A lot of our customers who came out with us last night stopped by to tell us what a great time they had and we even found customers who had been pure server customers who came across to the storage section to look at the MDS 600. It seems word has spread about the flexibility, scalability and cost of these units and I spent a lot of time on Thursday talking about zoned storage for HP BladeSystem. When we were talking about deploying MDS 600 for Exchange Server 2010 mailboxes at under $2/GB, customers again told us how great this would be for deploying larger mailboxes. Several customers told us that they liked the idea that HP could offer a choice of storage and that we weren’t tied to only offering DAS or SAN but could offer both. I spent a lot of time directing our visitors to our eco-friendly collateral site so they could download the whitepapers, best practice guides and sizer information. The other great thing about being here at TechEd is the ability to meet with the key developers from Microsoft. I had three really good interactions with Microsoft on Thursday and I think when I get back to the US our engineering and marketing teams can really start demonstrating why Microsoft is going to be so good deployed on HP’s Converged Infrastructure.

Day 5 at TechEd was a lot shorter, and that was very welcome given what an active week it had been so far. A number of us from the StorageWorks team again supported the Microsoft virtualization kiosk over in their hall. For anyone who’s visited these types of shows, you’ll know the last day seems spent handing out all those trinkets the vendors bring to these shows, swapping your ‘swag’ for other vendors swag, and making sure you don’t have to carry any of it back. It never ceases to amaze me what delegates want to take home or back to the office. We did a huge trade in ‘Magic 8-Ball’ key rings. As soon as they went up on the booth, they disappeared as if by magic…. That said, it did enable us to engage in conversation as we attempted to address any of those last minute questions. Just after lunch, TechEd Berlin 2009 closed and it was time to close the booth, dismantle the demonstration and take time to reflect on the past week.

Everyone I spoke with from HP agreed we had a great week. I think we managed to register well over 1,000 attendees or 13% of the total registered visitors. We took a significant number of customers through our NDA room, and most importantly, we demonstrated just how HP Converged Infrastructure comes together to be such an impressive platform for deploying and running Microsoft applications such as Exchange Server 2010 and Windows Server 2008 R2. We presented our StorageWorks integration capabilities with Hyper-V to over 600 people and demonstrated our broader storage offering to a significant number of delegates. Thanks must go to the European organizers including John Stewardson, Till Stimberg and others too numerous to mention, employees from the worldwide business groups who helped support and to De Umphry from the events team. Here’s looking forward to TechEd EMEA 2010… May it be as successful as this year.

FCoE...it's almost time to get moving!

Sean Fitz — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:48:00 GMT

by Sean Fitzpatrick, StorageWorks Storage Platforms Business Development

Over the past few months, we've all witnessed positive milestones for FCoE...but...is it ready?

This past June the Fibre Channel Standards T11.3 BB-5 (back bone) working group finalized defining the spec (or ratified) and voted to forward it to INCITS for public review and eventually publication next year. Is the BB-5 spec good enough to develop product? Absolutely!

Also in June HP announced the availability of two ToR (top of rack) FCoE switches from Brocade and Cisco. Other companies have also announced future availability of FCoE products. This is positive move in the right direction for the industry and for customers looking to lower the TCO over time.

More resources and tools are available today from Brocade, Cisco, Emulex and QLogic to assist with evaluation and planning. HP's own SAN Design Guide provides great design ideas on how to build or modify existing SANs, including a dedicated application note on FCoE implementation guidelines.

As I've stated before, this stage is very important part of the early adopter Phase I to allow customers to evaluate the technology. The real adoption has yet to develop (phase II) and it will, once additional mature products become available. In the mean time IT managers should investigate adopting FCoE for small pilot projects and focusing on how it's going to improve their overall TCO.

From a timeline perspective 2009 is the year for proof of concept and planning. In 2010 I'm anticipating a wider breath of product availability from all the major suppliers.

HP's position is FCoE won't overtake traditional Fibre Channel next week, or even next year. But, now that FCoE is starting to move, it's getting exciting.

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Not your grandfather’s NAS…

CalvinZ — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:30:00 GMT

By Dirk Kunselman, Product Manager

If I ask you to tell me the first thing that comes to mind when I mention NAS, you might reference high-end (and expensive) file serving appliances. Or you might mention consumer-class devices that are becoming more prevalent at your local electronics retailer. Or you might say that you know it's like a SAN, only different. You might even reveal that he's your favorite rapper. Oops, you lost me.

Fact is, NAS (Network Attached Storage) is often misunderstood and more frequently underappreciated. Most folks associate it with files, but as NAS has evolved, it's taken on more than just file protocols and print services. The term is now almost synonymous with (and sometimes even replaced by) unified-or combined file and block-storage. It's a great story, especially for small environments: why just network and consolidate one type of data when you can serve files for your clients and blocks for your servers all from the same storage system?

That's where the new HP StorageWorks X1000 and X3000 Network Storage Systems come in. They're NAS devices, yes; but moreover, they're unified storage systems since they all include an iSCSI Target standard. An X1000 model can be that single storage consolidation platform by itself, while an X3000 Gateway can turn an existing array or SAN into a unified consolidation solution (utilizing both SAN and Ethernet connections) by adding IP-based file and/or iSCSI protocols to it.

NAS isn't just about sharing files any more--it's about sharing information.

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Why isn't all storage in a SAN?

CalvinZ — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:09:00 GMT

By Charles Vallhonrat

Despite many years of strong growth in storage migrating to SANs, we still live in a world where a huge amount of storage is still directly attached to servers. Why have we not seen all storage move external for any environment with multiple servers? Surely the SAN offers lower cost, higher data protection, and better utilization.

The fact of the matter is a lot of data remains inside servers or directly attached via a JBOD because that is the best place for it. Maybe there is a specific performance need, or certain local control of data and access that leads to customers keep storage directly attached. Customers are savvy and until the SAN offers a better solution for their specific need, they are keeping certain storage infrastructure close to the server.

Enter shared SAS. It looks and smells like shared storage yet offers the simplicity of Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and has no requirement for a switch or to manage a network in smaller configurations. HP introduced a shared SAS solution - The MSA2000sa - in August 2008 and quickly SAS became 25% of the interconnect mix for MSA. Now with the release of a generation 2 model (or G2) there are a number of improvements that will likely boost usage still further. The G2 products is faster than the previous generation, supports more drives, supports more snapshots, supports more LUNs, supports more servers...and on and on. But, one of the most important new features is support for 2.5" inch (aka Small Form Factor) drives. Yep, the same type of drives used in many ProLiant servers. In fact, with the MSA2000sa G2, the small form factor drives are same drives that are used in our HP ProLiant servers. Talk about keeping the simplicity of DAS...

By the way, once customers get the benefit of shared storage using SAS, the MSA architecture allows them to upgrade controllers to iSCSI or Fibre Channel if they wish. Maybe we have finally found the catalyst to remove storage from servers.

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Is the SAN dead?

CalvinZ — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:08:00 GMT

By Lee Johns

Is the SAN Dead?

Well what do you know. A well respected analyst has had the courage to write a paper entitled "Do you really need a SAN anymore?". In his paper Andrew Reichman of Forrester postulates that the promise of the SAN has not been realised and that application centric storage based on industry standard platforms and alternate interconnects like iSCSI, SAS and infiniband may offer a better return.

So is the SAN dead. The simple answer is no. Fibre Channel SANs will continue to be the predominant platforms for storage over the next few years. However there is real merit in Andrew Reichman's hypothesis.

I am a Zoologist. Yes I admit it. I have an "ology". I don't apply the knowledge I gained from zoology everyday in my job in the computer industry but occasionally I do and one of the things that zoology taught me is that evolution comes in leaps. When the climate changes dramatically it does not suddenly result in mutations that lead the next generations. Those mutations already exist, and the change in climate just means their adaptions (which may previously have been a weakness) make them more competitive than they were.

We are currently going through one of these "Climate Changes" with the turmoil in the financial markets. IT managers are looking for alternatives and they are out there. The HP Oracle Exadata Database Machine (Leverages infiniband), The HP Extreme Data Storage System (SAS), alternate SAN technologies like LeftHand Networks an HP company (iSCSI) and new SAS connected solutions including HP's direct connect storage for HP BladeSystem.

Anyone want to make a guess as to who is most ready to capitalize on this new shift in storage power? Andrew Reichman makes some suggestions and HP is on his list of the best prepared and most likely to embrace. He does not say it quite like a Zoologist would however. As every zoolologist knows The Dinosaurs never saw that meteorite coming.

If you liked this article you might also like the read the following (these are all links):-

And for those of you who don't believe I'm a zoologist:-

http://h30431.www3.hp.com/?fr_story=48087e34d302151d43a00ab35c025f555c2d375c&rf=bm

HP BladeSystem and StorageWorks Synergy

CalvinZ — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:26:00 GMT

By Lee Johns

I often get asked why HP BladeSystem and StorageWorks are such a compelling combination. There are multiple reasons and it starts with the cost of connecting to existing fibre channel storage which can be reduced by up to 50% with the reductions in cables, single failure points and administration when you use a technology like HP Virtual Connect. You of course also benefit from the infrastructure savings you get from implementing blade servers in terms of time, energy, change and cost.

Today there is a new reason. Direct connect storage! Think the simplicity of DAS with the resource sharing of a SAN. With HP BladeSystem you can now implement up to 192TB of shared storage across 16 blade servers using a simple, but high-performance 3Gb SAS interconnect. What's more the Storage offers all the management features and capabilities of the HP MSA 2000 but without the requirement to manage a fabric (Fibre Channel or iSCSI).

Now don't get me wrong. Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage are every bit as important as they were yesterday with BladeSystem. In fact HP also announced a technology called Virtual Connect Flex-10 for BladeSystems today that will offer great benefits for future iSCSI storage solutions for our EVA and MSA as well as future products from our acquisition of LeftHand Networks. The difference today is that if implementing Fibre Channel or iSCSI was not the right choice for me as a customer, I now have an alternative that offers breakthrough simplicity. Direct connect storage is perfect for Server Administrators who want to implement a simple shared storage environment for boot infrastructure or other server administrator controlled data. It is ideal for small and medium businesses or remote sites who are looking to implement there first SAN but want a simpler solution. It is great for VMware infrastructure and supports VMotion. It is great second tier storage for Enterprises.

Customer excitement in HP early previews has been very strong. In fact it has so much utility for new implementations or existing SAN environments it make me wonder why the traditional storage only vendors are not offering it. After all it simply offers customers more choice.

Lee Johns, Director of Marketing for Entry Storage

More on SPC-2

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:47:00 GMT

Last month we announced a world record SPC-2 number by the XP24000. At the same time we extended yet another challenge to EMC to join the rest of the world in publishing benchmarks. They continue to decline the offer, arguing “representativeness”. I thought I’d clear up the “representativeness” question.

EMC’s argument that this XP is too costly starts from the assumption that SPC-2 only represents a video streaming workload. To quote, “128 146GB drive pairs in your 1152 drive box? A pure video streaming workload?” We actually see a widely diverse set of workloads used in the XP. The power of having both SPC-1 and SPC-2 benchmark results is that they provide audited data that applies to almost any workload mix a customer might have. But if one had to pick a most common workload it would probably be database transaction processing by day, then back up and data mining workloads joining the transaction processing by night. SPC-2 models the back up and data mining aspects, with SPC-1 representing the transaction processing. SPC-2 is about a lot more than video streaming.

When people need bullet proof availability and high performance for transaction processing they turn to high end arrays like the XP24000. It’s probably the most common use for a high end array. Our data indicates that on average the number of disks in an initial XP purchase is right around the 265 in our SPC-2 configuration. Some of those won’t have the levels of controllers in the SPC-2 configuration. But an increasing number use thin provisioning. In those cases they will often get all the controllers they’ll need up front, delaying the disk purchases as you’d expect with thin provisioning. So the configuration and workloads look pretty representative.

Then consider a real use of the benchmark. A maximum number is key in assessing an array’s performance. Below that you can adjust disks, controllers, and cache to get fairly linear performance changes. But when you reach an array’s limit, all you can do is add another array. So once you know an array’s maximum number you know its whole range of performance. By maxing controllers we provide that top end number, giving the most useful result. For sequential workloads like back-up and data mining maxing disk count isn’t necessary, whereas it generally is for random workloads like transaction processing.

Now let’s discuss how one might use XP’s SPC-2 results. Let’s say you need a high end array for transaction processing. The most common case we see requires backup and data mining operations at night in a limited time window. Since the XP’s SPC-2 result is twice that of the next closest high end array, you can expect it to get the backup and data mining done with half the resources of the next fastest array. But with SPC-2 you can go further. You can look up the specific results for backup and data mining workloads which are around 10GB/s for the XP24000. Knowing how much data you need to backup and mine you can estimate how much of the system’s resources you’ll need to get those things done in your time window and therefore what’s still left for transaction processing during that window. You can scale that for the size array you need for transaction processing. And you can compare to other arrays that have posted results. All using audited data before you get sales reps involved.

SPC benchmarks are all about empowering the storage customer. XP24000’s SPC-2 result is important to the most common uses for high end arrays, as well as for less common uses like video editing. The configuration we used looks pretty typical, with choices made to make the result most useful to customers. The cost is pretty typical for this kind of need. At HP we expect to continue providing this kind of useful data for customers. And our challenge to EMC to publish a benchmark result still stands, though they’ll probably continue inventing reasons not to.

Today's LeftHand Networks Announcement

CalvinZ — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:18:00 GMT

Wow - it's been a busy week at StorageWorks and Lee still can't post his own blog so I'll post this for him on today's news that we have signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks, Inc.. Here is Lee's post:

As the dust settles on the announcement of the HP & Oracle Exadata machine, along comes another interesting announcement. HP has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks (See press release). I'm sure a lot of press and analyst opinion will focus on the benefits to HP of beefing up our iSCSI portfolio or gaining access to some of the strong server and storage virtualization capabilities of the LeftHand Networks solution, or of the opportunity to sell to more mid-market customers with HP storage or even on the channel synergies and worldwide expansion opportunities of the acquisition.

These are all true but what are the customer benefits? An interesting fact is a software solution that builds storage products from industry standard servers. HP Extreme Data Storage System, HP & Oracle Exadata Machine & LeftHand Networks are all very different in their target market, and yet all build from Industry Standard ProLiant and/or BladeSystem components. They all layer on strong SW capabilities that turn industry standard servers into robust storage solutions. LeftHand Networks delivers a very strong software stack featuring Snap & Clone technology, thin provisioning, remote replication and SmartClone capabilities and each of these has considerable customer benefit. LeftHand Networks even offers the capability to run storage services in a virtual machine. Imagine that - building a SAN without having to buy storage hardware. Now that really sounds like a customer benefit!

Lee Johns, Director StorageWorks Marketing

EMC, We Challenge You!

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:44:00 GMT

EMC, we're once again throwing down the gauntlet. Today the XP24000 put up the highest SPC-2 benchmark result in the world. The top spot for such demanding workloads as video streaming goes to the XP. Once again, your DMX is a no show. And once again we challenge you, this time to put up an SPC-2 number. Every other major storage vendor is now posting SPC results. Every other major storage vendor is now starting to give customers standard, open, audited performance results to show what they've got. You remain the only vendor keeping your product performance behind a smoke screen of mysterious numbers and internal testing. We challenge you join us in the world of openness and let customers quit guessing at how low the DMX's performance really is!

Top Ten Reasons Why DAS Will Grow!

jasontreu — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 18:17:00 GMT

By Lee Johns

For a number of years now the relentless growth of SANs has overshadowed the Direct Attached Storage market (DAS). Indeed market studies have shown that while still a large market, DAS is shrinking. However, recent advances in SAS drives and SAS connectivity, along with market shifts are pointing to a resurgence of DAS.

I thought I might put forward 10 reasons why over the next 18 months DAS will grow! SO HERE WE GO (drum roll)...

1) SAS connectivity offers much more functionality that older SCSI cable connections. Indeed major systems manufacturers, like HP, have introduced SAS connected arrays that can provided a shared storage environment for multiple servers just like a SAN. For smaller environments this offers SAN functionality without the headache of managing a network.

2) Server Blades are the hotest growth area of the server market. By consolidating servers in a single enclosure, SAS based arrays will in the near future be able to share storage across more servers without using a network with traditional server architectures.

3) Server Virtualization is the hotest SW growth story in the market. Using products like VMware forces customers to have to consider how to implement shared storage, and for many using fibre channel storage is too expensive. SAS connectivity offers a lower cost alternative and is easier to manage, especially for server administrators. SAS products like the HP MSA 2000sa are VMware certified.

4) Although SAN's have consolidated a huge amount of data there still exists an extraordinary amount of drives in servers today that have not been consolidated for a variety of reasons. SAS offers a lower cost consolidation play for the drives that have not today been moved to SANs.

5) Ongoing management costs are one of the major issues faced by IT organizations today. If you don't already have a Fibre Channel SAN and just require shared storage for a few simple applications why look at managing a new fabric and hiring expensive SAN administrators?

6) Applications like Microsoft Exchange are moving more and more storage services inside the application. They are even recomending DAS for performance.

7) Web 2.0 companies are having to think differently about storage implementations b/c of new scale out applications. They can not afford traditional SAN's and the promise of architecting Storage based on DAS is compelling.

8) Server purchasers can not buy SANs without engaging Storage teams. They can buy shared SAS storage though and get the same effect.

9) Choice is always important as a consumer. Products like the HP MSA 2000 offers the choice of Fibre Channel, iSCSI or SAS interconnect, while providing the same basic functionality and management interface. This means you can buy into SAS connected storage with a simple migration path to a future SAN based on iSCSI or Fibre, if you need the future scalability.

10) AND FINALLY......... COST, COST, COST. It is an easy way for SMB's to implement shared storage and have you seen the economy lately?!?

What do you think?

Data Placement: Who’s Architecture is Really Broken?

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:17:00 GMT

I just read a blog where Chuck Hollis (http://chucksblog.typepad.com/chucks_blog/2008/07/the-great-data.html) of EMC launched an attack on storage virtualization. Called us all “spindle randomizers.” He based this attack on the idea that you can’t mange performance on virtualized arrays. Chuck seems to believe that you can’t make an array perform without manually placing every byte on every platter. That’s a misguided idea that’s got to be challenged. Unfortunately Chuck seems to be missing the bigger issues. Labor has become the largest cost in an IT organization. Not software. Not hardware. Not even power & cooling. Labor! The cost to manage all of that IT infrastructure. We recently asked storage managers what they need most. Did they say capacity? No. Did they say performance? Certainly not! Their top concern is administrative costs. With the amount of digital data doubling every 18 months the top issue is managing all of that data and the infrastructure that stores it. That kind of data growth drives complexity in a big, big hurry. We’ve got to fight that complexity with simplicity at every opportunity. Storage array virtualization is a critical foundation for fighting that complexity. With it 90%+ of the storage needs can be met with a simple create, present, and let it run. You don’t have to make a bunch of extra decisions that the machine could have made just as well. And you don’t have to come back and handle simple issues that the machine can manage just fine. You’re freed up to spend your time on the hard problems, be they performance, capacity utilization, or other, where a person really adds value. Without array virtualization the mind numbing details suck up the time and keep you from the interesting and important problems. There just aren’t enough hours in the day! But what about the cases where you do need to manage the performance? Go ahead! That’s why the EVA has disk groups and performance tools. There’s nothing in a virtualized array that prevents you from doing the tuning you need. You just don’t have to when you don’t need to. That’s critical. There aren’t enough hours in the day to be tuning every LUN!

Chuck tries to paint a vision where SSD’s make manually managing all the details a requirement. A wave of the future. But that’s a productivity killing tsunami. Nobody can afford all of that time! Virtualized arrays have been handling multiple drive speeds for years. We’ll do just fine with SSD’s. The issue Chuck’s trying to hide is that EMC’s CX architecture doesn’t include storage virtualization. They’ve got an inherent limiter that’s going to be very hard to overcome. We “spindle randomizers” aren’t going to be the ones that have to live with the consequences of our architecture. It’s Chuck and company. Good luck guys!

Storage Just got SASsy! VMware set free of the SAN.

jasontreu — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 02:24:00 GMT

By Lee Johns, director of marketing, StorageWorks Entry Storage and Storage Blades, HP

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS). Does not sound very exciting really does it? Many of you will know SAS as a class of disk drives found in servers and arrays but how many have ever though of using SAS as an interconnect for storage instead of Fibre Channel or iSCSI? Probably not many and with good reason. SAS is a point to point protocal that can not compete today with the sophistication of network storage toploogies like Fibre Channel and iSCSI for Enterprise Arrays.

But what if you just want to deliver a simple solution for shared boot, or a VMware infrastructure that enables Vmotion without a SAN, or you have an application that performs best with a direct attached storage architecture but you want better storage utilization. Now the cost and complexity of a SAN seems somewhat redundant. Why is there no way to provide the performance you need with the consolidation and utilization of a SAN without the overhead of an expensive fibre channel network infrastructure or leaving things as they are with existing direct attached storage (DAS)?

There is an answer. It is using SAS as a shared storage interconnect and with it you can build much simpler shared storage environments that can be managed by a server administrator. This saves you time, money and enables you to build the best architecture for any application. It is not a replacement for the traditional SAN but it is an enhancement to DAS that places the data and control where it should be and does not force fit a SAN as the answer to all storage problems.

Shared SAS solutions are available today and I encourage you to think where they could help you improve your Direct Attached Storage architectures and augment the SAN. SAS began as an internal server interconnect so maybe it is no surprise that dedicated storage vendors like EMC and NetApp are ignoring SAS as an interconnect. They feel it is threatening to them and that is exactly why you should be taking a serious look!