In the past, when designing enterprise storage solutions for virtual infrastructures as I have, we were basically provided two primary considerations to complete a valid design.

One, you must have enough capacity to store your VMs.

Two, you must have enough I/O to meet your virtual workloads requirements.

A third consideration, though not strictly a necessity, was software integration with the hypervisor and storage array.

As disk sizes have increased, we no longer have to throw shelves and shelves of disks at the design to meet capacity needs. Likewise, with the introduction of Flash (EFDs, SSDs etc.) into our storage solutions, we no longer have to throw shelves and shelves of disks at the solution to meet our I/O requirement (a la “short stroking”). Now, customer demands are pushing for software defined storage solutions as their number one priority. The demand for “VM aware” storage is greater now than it ever has been.

ENTER the Host

We can argue what network protocol and medium in which to use for as virtual storage solution (Fibre Channel, Ethernet, NFS, iSCSI etc) until we are blue in the face, what’s not up for debate is this:  if we move the active data closer to the CPU we are going to get decreased latency and increased response time. 

To realize this we must first accept two conditions.

1. Capacity Storage is becoming a commodity
2. I/O requirements can and will be met with Host based Flash solutions

With these assumptions, we can begin to focus on storage solutions that truly provide “value add” at the software layer. Let’s focus on the second condition.

Solutions for utilizing host based flash aren’t exactly new. Product offerings from companies like Fusion IO, allow us to insert high quantities of flash storage into our virtual hosts. The real advantage of utilizing these types of peripheral interconnects comes out of the software that successfully manages them with efficiency and transparency to the data as it’s stored and retrieved.

The author thinks it takes the following attributes for a host based flash solution to be truly enterprise worthy:

• It must be truly clustered and compatible with cross-host functions like vMotion, DRS, HA, etc. And “being compatible” should mean that the product allows true network-based sharing and movement of a VM’s flash footprint as it goes through vMotion, DRS migrations, etc.
• It must support write acceleration, and in a manner that doesn’t incur data loss on host failures.
• It must not be a virtual appliance. I repeat, it should not be a virtual appliance. This often leads to performance, availability, scalability, and manageability problems. It must have seamless, simple, integration into the hypervisor management console.
• It must not require in-guest or application level changes. This is operationally un-scalable.
• It must be flash technology agnostic!
• It must work on per VM basis. We should have the ability to apply such a solution at the VM level, when we want to, and for how long. Such a solution should be “VM aware” with proper reporting. For example, we should be able, at any point in time, to see and understand the total number of IOPs being utilized from the solution by a particular VM. And thus make intelligent admin decisions based on this information.

I recently had the privilege of discussing such a solution with Satyam Vaghani. You may recall Satyam for his long tenure at VMware where he helped create ESXi, VMFS, VAAI and virtual volumes. He is now the CTO and cofounder of PernixData where he is working on his next game changing technology.

I asked about PernixData’s product offerings and how they may provide change that could impact the storage playing field?

His response: “At PernixData, we envision the need for a brand new yet seamless software defined data tier in front of the primary storage system and alongside the VMs. This tier provides IOPS for data-in-motion (“hot” data), and unburdens the storage system so it can focus on providing capacity and data services for your data-at-rest.”

More to come and full on follow up/interview with Satyam will be in the months ahead.

One thing is for certain: my designs for enterprise storage systems that support virtual workloads have changed. I now have to focus not only on capacity and I/O requirements but how the next generation software defined data center interacts with the data as it is being stored and fetched.

Some time now has passed since EMC World tore through Las Vegas and my head is still spinning from all the announcements! One that definitely should not be overlooked especially for SMB customers is the newest addition to the VNXe family, the VNXe 3150. For those of you who are not familiar the VNXe line of storage from EMC let me get you up to speed. VNXe systems were designed with one philosophy in mind: keep it simple. It’s storage from the application’s point of view with one clear way to handle any task from initial installation to creating storage for virtual servers. You can shift from managing file shares to creating application storage without missing a beat. What this means to you? Well…You can save time and steps. Provisioning storage is a breeze most any operation you need to do can be lone in 5 clicks or less and most certainly under 10 minutes. Not too shabby huh? All of this is done through the all new Unisphere management interface tailored especially for the VNXe for administrators of all types. This system is easy for the first time storage user to the storage expert. The wizards in this thing are fantastic! Not a wizard fan and don’t like being bound with their constraints? No problem all the advanced features are still there for the storage pros! Don’t forget the best part though, the VNXe line provides deduplication, thin provisioning and compression all for FREE, no extra licensing required for any of those features! So, all of that said let me tell you what the VNXe 3150 brings to the table, more after the bump! Read more >>

“Raising the Bar | EMC with VMware”

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
4-7 PM

The Harbour Club
35 Prioleau Street
Charleston, South Carolina

4:00 – 5:30 P.M. (Prioleau Ballroom):
Presentations by:
Derek Bell, eGroup
Brian Gatta, EMC

5:30-7:00 P.M. (Prioleau Ballroom)
Networking Event with access to industry experts from eGroup and EMC at your fingertips! Read more >>

EMC now offers convenient five software packages to optimize, secure, and protect application data, along with two bundles that package popular combinations:

Software Packages:

FAST Suite
Improves performance, boosts storage efficiency, and lowers costs by automatically tiering and serving data from the most cost-effective drive type.

Security and Compliance Suite
Protects data from unwanted changes and other actions. Data is encrypted where created and protected anywhere outside the server. File-level retention supports compliance.

Local Protection Suite
Delivers any-point-in-time recovery of production applications with minimal data exposure. Use copies of production data for development, testing, reporting, and other tasks.

Remote Protection Suite
Provides block and file replication for disaster recovery protection of any host and any application, with immediate DVR-like recovery to any point in time.

Application Protection Suite
Automate application consistent copies of Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, and Oracle for assured recovery. Alert for recovery gaps and prove protection policy compliance.

Software Bundles:

MORE DETAIL: (click for larger image)

Enjoy! and thanks EMC!

As technical consultants for Fortune 500 companies in today’s economic landscape, we are tasked with presenting solutions that will reduce or eliminate IT spend. That is what the market demands—solutions that cut cost and drive production with a realistic and measurable ROI. These facts are why most of our clients are focusing on data storage reduction. The driving factor is that there are tools and methodologies available to determine what cost savings/production benefits can be realized prior to spending.

Data Infrastructure Assessments

Deduplication storage systems dramatically reduce the amount of disk storage needed to retain and protect enterprise data. Deduplicating and compressing data can typically result in the following reduction metrics:

• 100TB data becomes 5TB

• 10TB data becomes < 1 TB

• Backups that once took 24 hours are now complete in just a FEW

Data Infrastructure Assessments can accurately identify potential in your environment, there is no cost associated with the assessment, and the information generated is extremely beneficial.

For more information, please e-mail sales@eGroup-us.com or call 1-877-eGROUP-1.