Tech Field Day Archives - Page 3 of 5

Scaling new HPC with Composable Architecture

By cfheoh | May 10, 2019 - 4:50 pm |May 10, 2019 100Gigabit Ethernet, Analytics, API, Appliance, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Cloud, Clusters, Composable Infrastructure, Containers, Data Fabric, Data Management, Deep Learning, DellEMC, Drivescale, High Performance Computing, Hyperconvergence, Infiniband, Liqid, Machine Learning, nVidia, NVMe, PCIe, RDMA, Scale-out architecture, Software Defined Storage, Software-defined Datacenter, Tech Field Day, Unified Storage, Virtualization

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[Disclosure: I was 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. Tech Field Day Extra was an included activity as part of the Dell Technologies World. My expenses, travel, accommodation and conference fees were covered by Dell Technologies, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote their technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views]

Deep Learning, Neural Networks, Machine Learning and subsequently Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the new generation of applications and workloads to the commercial HPC systems. Different from the traditional, more scientific and engineering HPC workloads, I have written about the new dawn of supercomputing and the attractive posture of commercial HPC.

Don’t be idle

From the business perspective, the investment of HPC systems is high most of the time, and justifying it to the executives and the investors is not easy. Therefore, it is critical to keep feeding the HPC systems and significantly minimize the idle times for compute, GPUs, network and storage.

However, almost all HPC systems today are inflexible. Once assigned to a project, the resources pretty much stay with the project, even when the workload processing of the project is idle and waiting. Of course, we have to bear in mind that not all resources are fully abstracted, virtualized and software-defined whereby you can carve out pieces of the hardware and deliver a percentage of that resource. Case in point is the CPU, where you cannot assign certain clock cycles of CPU to one project and another half to the other. The technology isn’t there yet. Certain resources like GPU is going down the path of Virtual GPU, and into the realm of resource disaggregation. Eventually, all resources of the HPC systems – CPU, memory, FPGA, GPU, PCIe channels, NVMe paths, IOPS, bandwidth, burst buffers etc – should be disaggregated and pooled for disparate applications and workloads based on demands of usage, time and performance.

Hence we are beginning to see the disaggregated HPC systems resources composed and built up the meet the diverse mix and needs of HPC applications and workloads. This is even more acute when a AI project might grow cold, but the training of AL/ML/DL workloads continues to stay hot

Liqid the early leader in Composable Architecture

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Connecting ideas and people with Dell Influencers

By cfheoh | May 10, 2019 - 8:54 am |May 10, 2019 Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Big Switch Networks, Cloud, Composable Infrastructure, Data Management, Data Privacy, Data Protection, Data Security, Deep Learning, DellEMC, High Performance Computing, Hyperconvergence, Kemp Technologies, Liqid, Machine Learning, Microsoft, Software-defined Datacenter, Tech Field Day, VMware

AI Tweetup

In the razzmatazz, the most memorable moments were one of the Tweetups organized by Dr. Konstanze Alex (Konnie) and her team, and Tech Field Day Extra.

Tweetup was alien to me. I didn’t know how the concept work and I did google tweetup before that. There were a few tweetups on the topics of data protection and 5G, but the one that stood out for me was the AI tweetup.

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Dell go big with Cloud

By cfheoh | May 2, 2019 - 12:23 am |May 2, 2019 Acquisition, Amazon Web Services, API, Appliance, Artificial Intelligence, Backup, Cloud, Data Domain, Data Management, Data Protection, Data Security, Dell, DellEMC, Edge Computing, High Performance Computing, Hyperconvergence, Industry 4.0, Intel, IoT, Machine Learning, Software Defined Storage, Software-defined Datacenter, Tech Field Day, Virtualization, VMware

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[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.

VMware solutions will run native on Microsoft Azure Cloud. The spread of vSphere, VSAN, vCenter, NSX-T and VMware tools and environment will run on Azure Bare Metal Infrastructure at multiple Azure locations. How big is that. Continue reading →

The full force of Western Digital

By cfheoh | March 21, 2019 - 11:39 am |March 21, 2019 Acquisition, Analytics, API, Appliance, Artificial Intelligence, Backup, Big Data, Business Continuity, Cloud, Clusters, Composable Infrastructure, Data, Data Archiving, Data Availability, Data Management, Data Protection, Deep Learning, Disaster Recovery, Disks, Drivescale, Edge Computing, Flash, Fog Computing, Hyperconvergence, IoT, Kaminario, Machine Learning, NAS, Object Storage, Reliability, SCSI, Seagate, Solid State Devices, Storage Field Day, Storage Tiering, Tech Field Day, Tegile, Unified Storage, Western Digital

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[Preamble: I have been invited by GestaltIT as a delegate to their Tech Field Day for Storage Field Day 18 from Feb 27-Mar 1, 2019 in the Silicon Valley USA. My expenses, travel and accommodation were covered by GestaltIT, the organizer and I was not obligated to blog or promote their technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views]

3 weeks after Storage Field Day 18, I was still trying to wrap my head around the 3-hour session we had with Western Digital. I was like a kid in a candy store for a while, because there were too much to chew and I couldn’t munch them all.

From “Silicon to System”

Not many storage companies in the world can claim that mantra – “From Silicon to Systems“. Western Digital is probably one of 3 companies (the other 2 being Intel and nVidia) I know of at present, which develops vertical innovation and integration, end to end, from components, to platforms and to systems.

For a long time, we have always known Western Digital to be a hard disk company. It owns HGST, SanDisk, providing the drives, the Flash and the Compact Flash for both the consumer and the enterprise markets. However, in recent years, through 2 eyebrow raising acquisitions, Western Digital was moving itself up the infrastructure stack. In 2015, it acquired Amplidata. 2 years later, it acquired Tegile Systems. At that time, I was wondering why a hard disk manufacturer was buying storage technology companies that were not its usual bread and butter business.

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WekaIO controls their performance destiny

By cfheoh | March 17, 2019 - 5:33 pm |March 17, 2019 Amazon Web Services, Analytics, Appliance, Big Data, CIFS, Cloud, Deep Learning, Filesystems, Flash, High Performance Computing, Infiniband, Linux, Lustre, Machine Learning, Mellanox Technologies, NAS, NetApp, NFS, NVMe, Object Storage, PCIe, Performance Benchmark, Performance Caching, RDMA, Scale-out architecture, SMB, Software Defined Storage, Storage Field Day, Storage Optimization, Storage Tiering, Tech Field Day, Virtualization, WekaIO, Western Digital

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I was first introduced to WekaIO back in Storage Field Day 15. I did not blog about them back then, but I have followed their progress quite attentively throughout 2018. 2 Storage Field Days and a year later, they were back for Storage Field Day 18 with a new CTO, Andy Watson, and several performance benchmark records.

Blowout year

2018 was a blowout year for WekaIO. They have experienced over 400% growth, placed #1 in the Virtual Institute IO-500 10-node performance challenge, and also became #1 in the SPEC SFS 2014 performance and latency benchmark. (Note: This record was broken by NetApp a few days later but at a higher cost per client)

The Virtual Institute for I/O IO-500 10-node performance challenge was particularly interesting, because it pitted WekaIO against Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) Summit supercomputer, and WekaIO won. Details of the challenge were listed in Blocks and Files and WekaIO Matrix Filesystem became the fastest parallel file system in the world to date.

Control, control and control

I studied WekaIO’s architecture prior to this Field Day. And I spent quite a bit of time digesting and understanding their data paths, I/O paths and control paths, in particular, the diagram below:

Starting from the top right corner of the diagram, applications on the Linux client (running Weka Client software) and it presents to the Linux client as a POSIX-compliant file system. Through the network, the Linux client interacts with the WekaIO kernel-based VFS (virtual file system) driver which coordinates the Front End (grey box in upper right corner) to the Linux client. Other client-based protocols such as NFS, SMB, S3 and HDFS are also supported. The Front End then interacts with the NIC (which can be 10/100G Ethernet, Infiniband, and NVMeoF) through SR-IOV (single root IO virtualization), bypassing the Linux kernel for maximum throughput. This is with WekaIO’s own networking stack in user space. Continue reading →

Bridges to the clouds and more – NetApp NDAS

By cfheoh | March 15, 2019 - 7:48 am |March 15, 2019 Amazon Web Services, Analytics, API, Artificial Intelligence, Backup, Big Data, Cloud, Cohesity, Data Archiving, Data Availability, Data Fabric, Data Management, Data Protection, Data Security, Deep Learning, Disaster Recovery, Hyperconvergence, ILM, Machine Learning, NetApp, Reliability, Snapshots, Storage Field Day, Storage Tiering, Tech Field Day

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The NetApp Data Fabric Vision

The NetApp Data Fabric vision has always been clear to me. Maybe it was because of my 2 stints with them, and I got well soaked in their culture. 3 simple points define the vision.

The Data Fabric is THE data singularity. Data can be anywhere – on-premises, the clouds, and more.
Have bridges, paths and workflows management to the Data, to move the data to wherever the data may be.
Work with technology partners to build tools and data systems to elevate the value of the data

That is how I see it. I wrote about the Transcendence of the Data Fabric vision 3+ years ago, and I emphasized the importance of the Data Pipeline in another NetApp blog almost a year ago. The introduction of NetApp Data Availability Services (NDAS) in the recently concluded Storage Field Day 18 was no different as NetApp constructs data bridges and paths to the AWS Cloud.

NetApp Data Availability Services

The NDAS feature is only available with ONTAP 9.5. With less than 5 clicks, data from ONTAP primary systems can be backed up to the secondary ONTAP target (running the NDAS proxy and the Copy to Cloud API), and then to AWS S3 buckets in the cloud.

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StorPool – Block storage managed well

By cfheoh | March 13, 2019 - 8:34 am |March 13, 2019 100Gigabit Ethernet, API, Cloud, Clusters, Data Availability, Data Management, Disks, Filesystems, High Performance Computing, iSCSI, Linux, Lustre, Nexenta, NVMe, Openstack, Performance Benchmark, Performance Caching, Scale-out architecture, Server SAN, Software Defined Storage, Storage Field Day, Storage Optimization, Storpool, Tech Field Day, Virtualization, VMware

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Storage technology is complex. Storage infrastructure and data management operations are not trivial, despite what the hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure would like you to think. As the adoption of cloud infrastructure services grow, the small and medium businesses/enterprises (SMB/SME) are usually left to their own devices to manage the virtual storage infrastructure. Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) addressing the SMB/SME market are looking for easier, worry-free, software-defined storage to elevate their value to their customers.

Managed high performance block storage

Enter StorPool.

StorPool is a scale-out block storage technology, capable of delivering 1 million+ IOPS with sub-milliseconds response times. As described by fellow delegate, Ray Lucchesi in his recent blog, they were able to achieve these impressive performance numbers in their demo, without the high throughput RDMA network or the storage class memory of Intel Optane. Continue reading →

Clever Cohesity

By cfheoh | March 11, 2019 - 7:28 pm |March 11, 2019 Analytics, API, Appliance, Artificial Intelligence, Backup, Big Data, Business Continuity, Cloud, Clusters, Cohesity, Data, Data Archiving, Data Availability, Data Management, Data Protection, Data Security, Deep Learning, Disaster Recovery, Edge Computing, eDiscovery, Filesystems, Fog Computing, Hadoop, Hadoop Clusters, Hyperconvergence, Interica, Machine Learning, Object Storage, Scale-out architecture, Software Defined Storage, Storage Field Day, Tech Field Day, Veritas

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This is clever. This is very smart.

The moment the Cohesity App Marketplace pitch was shared at the Storage Field Day 18 session, somewhere in my mind, enlightenment came to me.

The hyperconverged platform for secondary data, or is it?

When Cohesity came into the scene, they were branded the latest unicorn alongside Rubrik. Both were gunning for the top hyperconverged platform for secondary data. Crazy money was pouring into that segment – Cohesity got USD250 million in June 2018; Rubrik received USD261 million in Jan 2019 – making the market for hyperconverged platforms for secondary data red-hot. Continue reading →

VAST Data must be something special

By cfheoh | February 28, 2019 - 9:59 pm |March 1, 2019 Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, CIFS, Cloud, Clusters, Composable Infrastructure, Data, Data Fabric, Data Management, Data Protection, Deduplication, Edge Computing, Filesystems, High Performance Computing, Infiniband, Machine Learning, NAS, NFS, NVMe, Object Storage, Scale-out architecture, Software Defined Storage, Tech Field Day, Vast Data, XtremIO

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Vast Data coming out bash!

The delegates of Storage Field Days were always the lucky bunch. We have witnessed several storage technology companies coming out of stealth at these Tech Field Days. The recent ones in memory for me were Excelero and Hammerspace. But to have one where the venerable storage doyen, Mr. Howard Marks, Vast Data new tech evangelist, to introduce the deep dive of Vast Data technology was something special.

For those who knew Howard, he is fiercely independent, very storage technology smart, opinionated and not easily impressed. As a storage technology connoisseur myself, I believe Howard must have seen something special in Vast Data. They must be doing something extremely unique and impressive that someone like Howard could not resist, and made him jump to the vendor side. This sets the tone of my blog.

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Minio – the minimalist object storage technology

By cfheoh | February 7, 2019 - 10:57 am |February 7, 2019 Amazon Web Services, Analytics, API, Appliance, Big Data, Cloud, Data, Data Archiving, Data Fabric, Data Management, Data Protection, Data Security, Deep Learning, Disaster Recovery, Edge Computing, Filesystems, Flash, FreeNAS, HDS, High Performance Computing, Hitachi Vantara, Industry 4.0, Katana Logic, Linux, Machine Learning, Minio, NAS, NetApp, NFS, Object Storage, Openstack, Redhat, Scale-out architecture, Tech Field Day

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The Marie Kondo Konmari fever is sweeping the world. Her decluttering and organizing the home methods are leading to a new way of life – Minimalism.

Complicated Storage Experience

Storage technology and its architecture are complex. We layer upon layer of abstraction and virtualization into storage design until at some stage, choke points lead to performance degradation, and management becomes difficult.

I recalled a particular training I attended back in 2006. I just joined Hitachi Data Systems for the Shell GUSto project. I was in Baltimore for the Hitachi NAS course. This was not their HNAS (their BlueArc acquisition) but their home grown NAS based on Linux. In the training, we were setting up NFS service. There were 36 steps required to setup and provision NFS and if there was a misstep, you start from the first command again. Coming from NetApp at the time, it was horrendous. NetApp ONTAP NFS setup and provisioning probably took 3 commands, and this Hitachi NAS setup and configuration was so much more complex. In the end, the experience was just unworldly for me.

Introducing Minio to my world, to Malaysia

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Category Archives: Tech Field Day