The original SAN was not always Storage Area Network. SAN had a twin nomenclature called System Area Network (SAN) back in the late 90s. Fibre Channelfabric topology (THE Storage Area Network) was only starting to take off when many of the Fibre Channel topologies at the time were either FC-AL (Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop) or Point-to-Point. So, for a while SAN was System Area Network, or at least that was what Microsoft® wanted it to be. That SAN obviously did not take off.
System Area Network (architecture shown below) presented a high speed network where server clusters can communicate. The communication protocol of choice was VIA (Virtual Interface Adapter), and the proposed applications, notably the Microsoft® SQL Server, would use Winsock API to interface with the network services. Cache coherency in the combined memory resources of a clustered network is often the technology to ensure data synchronization, consistency and integrity.
Alas, System Area Network did not truly take off, and now it is pretty much deprecated from the Microsoft® universe.
In a recent conversation with an iXsystems™ reseller in Hong Kong, the topic of Storage Tiering was brought up. We went about our banter and I brought up the inter-array tiering and the intra-array tiering piece.
After that conversation, I started thinking a lot about intra-array tiering, where data blocks within the storage array were moved between fast and slow storage media. The general policy was simple. Find all the least frequently access blocks and move them from a fast tier like the SSD tier, to a slower tier like the spinning drives with different RPM speeds. And then promote the data blocks to the faster media when accessed frequently. Of course, there were other variables in the mix besides storage media and speeds.
My mind raced back 10 years or more to my first encounter with Compellent and 3PAR. Both were still independent companies then, and I had my first taste of intra-array tiering
The original Compellent and 3PAR logos
I couldn’t recall which encounter I had first, but I remembered the time of both events were close. I was at Impact Business Solutions in their office listening to their Compellent pitch. The Kuching boys (thank you Chyr and Winston!) were very passionate in evangelizing the Compellent Data Progression technology.
At about the same time, I was invited by PTC Singapore GM at the time, Ken Chua to grace their new Malaysian office and listen to their latest storage vendor partnership, 3PAR. I have known Ken through my NetApp® days, and he linked me up Nathan Boeger, 3PAR’s pre-sales consultant. 3PAR had their Adaptive Optimization (AO) disk tiering and Dynamic Optimization (DO) technology.
[ Disclosure: I was invited by GestaltIT as a delegate to their Storage Field Day 19 event from Jan 22-24, 2020 in the Silicon Valley USA. My expenses, travel, accommodation and conference fees were covered by GestaltIT, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote the vendors’ technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views ]
And the Emmy® goes to …
Yes, the Emmy® goes to Dell EMC Isilon! It was indeed a well deserved accolade and an honour!
This is not a blog to praise Isilon but one that instill respect to a real true clustered, scale-out file system. I have known of OneFS for a long time, but never really took the opportunity to really put my hands on it since 2006 (there is a story). So here is a look at history …
Back in early to mid-2000, there was a lot of talks about large scale NAS. There were several players in the nascent scaling NAS market. NetApp was the filer king, with several competitors such as Polyserve, Ibrix, Spinnaker, Panasas and the young upstart Isilon. There were also Procom, BlueArc and NetApp’s predecessor Auspex. By the second half of the 2000 decade, the market consolidated and most of these NAS players were acquired.
[ Disclosure: I was invited by GestaltIT as a delegate to their Storage Field Day 19 event from Jan 22-24, 2020 in the Silicon Valley USA. My expenses, travel, accommodation and conference fees were covered by GestaltIT, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote the vendors’ technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views ]
Cloud computing will have challenges processing data at the outer reach of its tentacles. Edge Computing, as it melds with the Internet of Things (IoT), needs a different approach to data processing and data storage. Data generated at source has to be processed at source, to respond to the event or events which have happened. Cloud Computing, even with 5G networks, has latency that is not sufficient to how an autonomous vehicle react to pedestrians on the road at speed or how a sprinkler system is activated in a fire, or even a fraud detection system to signal money laundering activities as they occur.
Furthermore, not all sensors, devices, and IoT end-points are connected to the cloud at all times. To understand this new way of data processing and data storage, have a look at this video by Jay Kreps, CEO of Confluent for Kafka® to view this new perspective.
Data is continuously and infinitely generated at source, and this data has to be compiled, controlled and consolidated with nanosecond precision. At Storage Field Day 19, an interesting open source project, Pravega, was introduced to the delegates by DellEMC. Pravega is an open source storage framework for streaming data and is part of Project Nautilus.
The data generated at source (end-points, sensors, devices) is serialized, timestamped (as event occurs), continuous and infinite. These are the properties of a time series data stream, and to make sense of the streaming data, new data formats such as Avro, Parquet, Orc pepper the landscape along with the more mature JSON and XML, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
You can learn more about these data formats in the 2 links below:
Many time series projects started as DIY projects in many organizations. And many of them are still DIY projects in production systems as well. They depend on tribal knowledge, and these databases are tied to an unmanaged storage which is not congruent to the properties of streaming data.
At the storage end, the technologies today still rely on the SAN and NAS protocols, and in recent years, S3, with object storage. Block, file and object storage introduce layers of abstraction which may not be a good fit for streaming data.
[Disclaimer: I have been invited by Dell Technologies as a delegate to their Dell Technologies World 2019 Conference from Apr 29-May 1, 2019 in the Las Vegas USA. My expenses, travel and accommodation are covered by Dell Technologies, the organizer and I am not obligated to blog or promote their technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views]
Talk about big. Dell Technologies just went big with the Cloud.
The Microsoft Factor
Day 1 of Dell Technologies World 2019 (DTW19) started with a big surprise to many, including yours truly when Michael Dell, together with Pat Gelsinger invited Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella on stage.
There was nothing new about Microsoft working with Dell Technologies. Both have been great partners since the PC days, but when they announced Azure VMware Solutions to the 15,000+ attendees of the conference, there was a second of disbelief, followed by an ovation of euphoria.
I picked up the latest development news about Quantum Corporation. Last month, in December 2018, they secured a USD210 million financial lifeline to support their deflating business and their debts. And if you follow their development, they are with their 3rd CEO in the past 12 months, which is quite extraordinary. What is happening at Quantum Corp?
Quantum Logo (PRNewsFoto/Quantum Corp.)
Stornext – The Swiss Army knife of Data Management
I have known Quantum since 2000, very focused on the DLT tape library business. At that time, prior to the coming of LTO, DLT and its successor, SuperDLT dominated the tape market together with IBM. In 2006, they acquired ADIC, another tape vendor and became one of the largest tape library vendors in the world. From the ADIC acquisition, Quantum also got their rights on Stornext, a high performance scale out file system. I was deeply impressed with Stornext, and I once called it the Swiss Army knife of Data Management. The versatility of Stornext addressed many of the required functions within the data management lifecycle and workflows, and thus it has made its name in the Media and Entertainment space.
Jack of all trades, master of none
However, Quantum has never reached great heights in my opinion. They are everything to everybody, like a Jack of all trades, master of none. They are backup with their tape libraries and DXi series, archive and tiering with the Lattus, hybrid storage with QXS, and file system and scale-out with Stornext. If they have good business run rates and a healthy pipeline, having a broad product line is fine and dandy. But Quantum has been having CEO changes like turning a turnstile, and amid “a few” accounting missteps and a 2018 CEO who only lasted 5 months, they better steady their rocking boat quickly. Continue reading →
2019 beckons. The year 2018 is coming to a close and I look upon what I blogged in the past years to reflect what is the future.
The evolution of the Data Services Platform
Late 2017, I blogged about the Data Services Platform. Storage is no longer the storage infrastructure we know but has evolved to a platform where a plethora of data services are served. The changing face of storage is continually evolving as the IT industry changes. I take this opportunity to reflect what I wrote since I started blogging years ago, and look at the articles that are shaping up the landscape today and also some duds.
Some good ones …
One of the most memorable ones is about memory cloud. I wrote the article when Dell acquired a small company by the name of RNA Networks. I vividly recalled what was going through my mind when I wrote the blog. With the SAN, NAS and DAS, and even FAN (File Area Network) happening during that period, the first thing was the System Area Network, the original objective Infiniband and RDMA. I believed the final pool of where storage will be is the memory, hence I called it the “The Last Bastion – Memory“. RNA’s technology became part of Dell Fluid Architecture.
What about Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)? It wasn’t a compelling enough technology for me when it came into the game. Reduced port and cable counts, and reduced power consumption were what the FCoE folks were pitching, but the cost of putting in the FC switches, the HBAs were just too great as an investment. In the end, we could see the cracks of the FCoE story, and I wrote the pre-mature eulogy of FCoE in my 2012 blog. I got some unsavoury comments writing that blog back then, but fast forward to the present, FCoE isn’t a force anymore.
Weeks ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) just became a hybrid cloud service provider/vendor with the Outposts announcement. It didn’t surprise me but it may have shook the traditional systems integrators. I took the stance 2 years ago when AWS partnered with VMware and juxtaposed it to the philosophical quote in the 1993 Jurassic Park movie – “Life will not be contained, … Life finds a way“.
I post storage and cloud related articles to my unofficial SNIA Malaysia Facebook community (you are welcomed to join) every day. It is a community I started over 9 years ago, and there are active live banters of the posts of the day. Casual, personal were the original reasons why I started the community on Facebook rather than on LinkedIn, and I have been curating it religiously for the longest time.
The Big 5 of Storage (it was Big 6 before this)
Looking back 8-9 years ago, the storage vendor landscape of today has not changed much. The Big 5 hegemony is still there, still dominating the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise and Mid-end Arrays, and is still there in the All-Flash quadrant as well, albeit the presence of Pure Storage in that market.
The Big 5 of today – Dell EMC, NetApp, HPE, IBM and Hitachi Vantara – were the Big 6 of 2009-2010, consisting of EMC, NetApp, Dell, HP, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems. The All-Flash, or Gartner calls it Solid State Arrays (SSA) market was still an afterthought, and Pure Storage was just founded. Pure Storage did not appear in my radar until 2 years later when I blogged about Pure Storage’s presence in the market.
Here’s a look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant for 2010:
We see Pure Play Storage vendors in the likes of EMC, NetApp, Hitachi Data Systems (before they adopted the UCP into their foray), 3PAR, Compellent, Pillar Data Systems, BlueArc, Xiotech, Nexsan, DDN and Infortrend. And when we compare that to the 2017 Magic Quadrant (I have not seen the 2018 one yet) below:
[Preamble: I have been invited by Dell Technologies as a delegate to their upcoming Dell Technologies World from Apr 30-May 2, 2018 in Las Vegas, USA. My expenses, travel and accommodation will be paid by Dell Technologies, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote the technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views]
This may seem a little strange. How does Industry 4.0 relate to Dell Technologies?
Recently, I was involved in an Industry 4.0 consortium called Data Industry 4.0 (di 4.0). The objective of the consortium is to combine the foundations of 5S (seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, and shitsuke), QRQC (Quick Response Quality Control) and Kaizen methodologies with the 9 pillars of Industry 4.0 with a strong data insight focus.
Industry 4.0 has been the latest trend in new technologies in the manufacturing world. It is sweeping the manufacturing industry segment by storm, leading with the nine pillars of Industry 4.0:
[Preamble: I have been invited by Dell Technologies as a delegate to their upcoming Dell Technologies World from Apr 30-May 2, 2018 in Las Vegas, USA. My expenses, travel and accommodation will be paid by Dell Technologies, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote the technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views]
I have been invited as a delegate to the upcoming Dell Technologies World (previously known as Dell EMC World) from April 30th to May 3rd, 2018. I am excited because a vision has been playing in my mind since I got the invitation, and that vision is the geek in me goes bonkers. It is much like a going into a Supermarket Sweep game show, except there is no time limit and it will be technology, technology and more technology!
Since Dell acquired EMC in 2015, they have been getting a bit of criticism from almost everyone. The general feeling was that that USD67 billion acquisition of EMC was too big for Dell to swallow. 2 years on, and counting, I must say that the integration of both companies have gone extremely well. And it is just not the facade of the integration, but internally as well. This is what I have gathered from the many friends of both companies and ex-colleagues at EMC in South Asia. (I was a TC for the IP Storage solutions and was also the Regional Oil & Gas consultant during my stint at EMC from 2007-2009)
Dell Technologies is now the only company in the world which has almost every segment of the IT market covered. From x86 gears for the consumers and enterprise, to security needs, data analytics and IOT, and of course, storage tech, Dell Technologies is addressing every IT needs for any company, and that is a good time. How so?
