VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘storage’ Category

The GestaltIT Tech Field Day (TFD) is the gift that keeps on giving! From now until the end of the year (2009), VM /ETC readers can use the promotional code BRAMBLEY when buying a Drobo from Data Robotics and receive a discount.

For those that don’t already know about Drobo storage and the BeyondRaid technology, I posted about the Data Robotics TFD presentation a few weeks ago.

When you are ready to purchase just go to the Data Robotics store. The VM /ETC reader code is good until the end of the year (2009) and offers the following discounts:

Drobo $50 off <> Drobo S $75 off <> DroboPro $150 off <> DroboElite $350 off

Just enter BRAMBLEY in the Promotional Code field when placing your order.

For the record, I have not received any compensation for this post nor will I receive compensation from the use of this code. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

Surely you’ve heard about Drobo by now? As the presenter in the last slot of the GetsaltIT Tech Field Day (TFD) schedule a few weeks ago,  Data Robotics was probably the most anticipated session by my fellow Delegates. I’ll admit, I had heard enough about the technology during the 2 day event that I was looking forward to the presentation as well. Data Robotics did not disappoint. Evidence can be seen in the enthusiasm expressed in the various posts and videos published since that session.

As always, I’ll leave the deep technical details of Drobo’s unique and patented Drobo BeyondRaid technology to my fellow storage bloggers and stay focused on how Data Robotics fits in virtual infrastructure. In this post I expand a little on why the Drobo storage device is a VMware HCL certified, simple to implement and expand iSCSI SAN targeted for SMB customers that is an exciting alternative. Finally I offer opinions based primarily on my virtualization server administrator perspective.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ocarina Networks presented to us during the Day 2 morning session of the GestaltIT Tech Field Day. Their presentation was a deep dive into storage compression and optimization. If you read my Ideas About Presenting To Engineers from earlier this week, then you’ll know what I mean when I say that Ocarina had “black magic” that wasn’t as interesting to me as how and where the solution was deployed in the data center. After all, Ocarina claims that they will optimize and compress data on any storage device. I wanted to know how they could integrate with existing, third party storage before I was ready to absorb how their compression and de-duplication was actually achieved.

I don’t want to mislead anyone – almost all of my fellow delegates where deeply impressed with the block by block algorithm lesson on Ocarina’s technology. The storage gurus where so into it I had to wait for the hands on labs to start before I could get my questions answered. In fact, I never did the labs because I spent the whole time at the white board understanding the deployment options.

My post is therefore about implementation options of an Ocarina solution. I’m using several quotes from posts by Carter George, co-founder of Ocarina Networks, taken from the Online Storage Optimization Blog to help me explain the deployment options. Then I’ll cover some ideas about how could Ocarina function in a virtual environment.

For those that want to know more about the deep dive on the Ocarina technology, follow the links at the end of this write up to my fellow attendee’s posts. Read the rest of this entry »

Take a 9 minute drive around the storage block with Marc Farley of 3PAR as he uses an analogy of mismatched socks to explain how Autonomic Storage can eliminate human error in storage provisioning for virtual servers and databases. In the beginning of the video Marc goes off on a tangent Twitter rant where you might recognize some twitternames mentioned.

It’s worth the ride!

3PAR was one of the sponsors during the GestaltIT Tech Field Day in San Jose, CA last week, and announced Autonomic Provisioning with the press release titled 3PAR Changes the Way Utility Storage is Provisioned for Virtual Server and Database Environments

Check out Marc’s StorageRap blog and all of his Steering Wheel Camera videos on YouTube. The episode where he gives fellow storage bloggers Dave Graham (EMC) and Stephen Foskett (Nirvanix) a ride to the San Francisco airport on the last day of VMworld 2009 may also be interesting to VM /ETC readers.

I’ve already mentioned (and posted) about the vSphere Blog Contest current topic of thin provisioning, but I’ve been thinking about another “product” that has always functioned thin provisioned – The VI administrator. That’s right, I’m talking about the guys and gals that manage all the hypervisor hosts, the server and desktop virtual machines, the networking, and the storage.

Have you thought about the systems to administrator ratios we work under these days? Sure, server consolidation to virtual infrastructure has enabled doing more with less, but is there a better way to explain thin provisioning and over allocation than by looking at the small teams responsible for the virtualized data center? I say not!!

This is my small VM /ETC tribute to the ones who truly are “thin provisioned and over allocated”.

Do me a favor, leave a comment letting everyone know how many administrators are on your team and how many VMs you are responsible for. I expect the numbers to be staggering!

HP is announcing it’s own Converged Infrastructure Architecture with associated services and partner offerings later today which will “integrate existing silos of compute, storage, network, and facility resources with unified management to deliver a virtualized, highly automated technology environment ..”. The timing of this announcement obviously serves as a “us too” response to the VMware, Cisco, and EMC (VCE) vBlock architecture announcement, but more importantly positions HP as the provider of the only private cloud infrastructure solution under a single company logo combining HP servers, storage, and networking.

HP is also announcing availability of new storage virtualization products based on storage pooling features first introduced to me at the HP Tech Days in Colorado Springs, CO, which ultimately become pillars of the Converged Infrastructure Architecture. With HP’s new products, virtual storage pools can be created across multiple storage devices enabling high availability and dynamic adjustment for any workload.

Finally, hidden among the infrastructure product announcements is a high level indication of EVA integration with Hyper-V Live Migration. As of this writing it is not clear to me what this technically means and I am waiting for more information. It was made clear to me that HP is not establishing a competitive stance to the VCE partnership, and HP remains as an active VMware OEM partner.

Look for the official announcements from HP and the links in this post to go live around 9:00 a.m. EST today (Wed 11/4/09). HP lifted the embargo for press, analysts and bloggers as of Thursday 11/04 at 12:01 a.m. EST so I am publishing quick information from an embargoed call I attended Tues (11/3) afternoon with Lee Johns, HP Director of Marketing – Unified Storage, and links found in draft copies of the official press releases.

HP’s Converged Infrastructure Architecture is made up of 4 technology innovations: Read the rest of this entry »

VMware has been running a blogging contest in order to promote the new vSphere Blog. The current contest topic is vSphere Thin Provisioning. A lot has been written on this topic already, but I thought I would point out a storage design conclusion I’ve come up with based mostly from the explanations and recommendations of others about handling what happens when an over allocated, thin provisioned LUN runs out of space.

This post first walks through an basic explanation of the administrative concern caused by thin provisioning and how built in vSphere monitoring and alerting can be used to proactively handle an over allocation issue. I’m using quotes from a few bloggers to help describe the potential for problem and offer ways to handle it. At the end I make a simple LUN provisioning suggestion based on combining the vSphere feature with storage device’s thin provisioning capabilities.  Read the rest of this entry »