Managing the information that drives the enterprise
Vol 10 No 8 October 2011
WHATrsquoS NEW IN STORAGE NETWORKS bull BUDGETS GETTING BETTER
STORAGESTATUS REPORT
Solid-State StorageSLC MLC eMLC what does it all mean It means solid-state
storage is cheaper than ever and available in even more form factors
ALSO INSIDESolid-state goes mainstream
Virtual desktops and storage
Data protection and the cloud
VMware Your new storage vendor
FROM OUR SPONSORS
3 STORAGE October 2011 Cover image by John Kuczala
STORAGEinside | october 2011
Solid-state goes mainstream5 EDITORIAL Solid-state storage technology has made the move from
upstart to mainstream and along the way it has created an aftermarketof related products and services by RICH CASTAGNA
A dialog about VDI and storage9 STORWARS A systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice about designing storage to support virtual desktops by TONY ASARO
Status report Solid-state storage13 Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storage marketplace
establishing itself as a viable alternative for high-performance apps by PHIL GOODWIN
Storage networking alternatives23 All the old standardsmdashFibre Channel iSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but Fibre Channel over Ethernet and virtualized IO are waiting in the wings to help remake our storage networks and consolidate our data centers by DENNIS MARTIN
Storage managers poised to tap new technologies33 As budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to
emerging techs and cloud services to help them deal with virtualized environments data growth and performance demands by RICH CASTAGNA
Data protection implications with cloud services41 HOT SPOTS More and more companies are moving to a cloud model
that allows them to outsource the underlying cloud infrastructure That model has widespread implications for users and data protectionby LAUREN WHITEHOUSE
Your new storage vendor might be VMware44 READWRITE VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentions
about encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which could serve as a wakeup call for the data storage industry by ARUN TANEJA
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated47 SNAPSHOT The number of companies doing storage tiering today is
about the same as three years ago but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated by RICH CASTAGNA
From our sponsors49 Useful links from our sponsors
server rooms that require GPs NaviGatioN
We get that virtualization can drive a better ROI Highly certified by Microsoft VMware HP and others we can evaluate design and implement the right solution for youWersquoll get you out of this mess at CDWcomvirtualization
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copy2011 CDW LLC CDWreg CDWbullGreg and PeOPLe WHO Get Ittrade are trademarks of CDW LLC
t
Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
5
HERErsquoS A GREAT SCENE in Jean Shepherdrsquos A Christmas Story where Ralphand his buddies convince Flick to lick a metal flagpole on a cold snowyday to disprove the old tale that a wet tongue will stick to cold metal Ofcourse they end up proving that itrsquos actually true and Flick gets stuck tothe flagpole fire department racing to the scene
Being the first to do something or succumbing to the dares of othersand taking the first steps can be pretty scarymdashand the results can be unpredictable But in the world of IT you do have a choice You can play itsafe and keep buying ldquotraditionalrdquo technology from well-established vendorsor you can take a chance on a startup or some new-fangled technology
Solid-state storage was like that ice-cold flagpole with lots of peoplelooking at it and talking about it but not so many ready to make the leapItrsquos new stuff and data storage shops tend to take their sweet time warmingup to new technologies Solid-statersquos speed and conservative power re-quirements are interesting enough but itrsquos really different and the economicssurrounding the technology arenrsquot familiar to most of us That last partmeans it costs a heckuva lot more than anything else we store data on
Using traditional measurements like unit sales and revenue yoursquod haveto say that solid-state storage is barely moving the meter in the overallenterprise storage picture But there are other signs to consider I thinkyou can tell if a product is maturing or at least positioning itself to grab a significant chunk of market share by the context it has created and ifan ecosystem of related products is beginning to take shape around thetechnology
Itrsquos a lot like the aftermarket thatrsquos feeding off the cell phone industrywith scores of vendors selling protective cases ring tones skins holdersstraps and so on When a core technology has enough impact to pull allthat other stuff along with it therersquos no denying it has arrived
editorial | rich castagna
Solid-state goes mainstreamIf you judge a technology by the products that crop up around it and the new techs it spawns
then itrsquos pretty hard to argue that solid-state storage hasnrsquot reached a certain level of maturity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
6 STORAGE October 2011
Thatrsquos exactly whatrsquos happening with solid-state storage now Not toolong ago the solid-state story was about a handful of vendors trying tojigger consumer technology to meet enterprise requirements Todaybased on the number of press releases I receive there are approximately8 billion solid-state storage companies with cool new products (Irsquom exag-gerating itrsquos probably only 4 billion) But with the proliferation of newproducts and an emerging solid-state ecosystem the focus has shiftedWersquore finding ourselves less hung up on specs and inner workings andmore interested in applications
Mind you itrsquos fine to want to know basic specs and to understand howthey might affect performance in your environment but do you need toknow all the gory details Withhard disks itrsquos enough to knowstats like capacity interface androtational speed Do you truly needto understand how perpendicularmagnetic recording technologyworks It just works and it meansareal density is increasing at anabsurd rate Ditto for solid-state
Therersquos plenty of evidence tosupport my contention that solid-state storage has come of age Just look at the productsthemselves We tend to call them solid-state drives buttheyrsquove evolved well beyond mere plug-in replacements forhard disksmdasha stopgap implementation at best The implementation op-tions are abundant and more varied than those for hard disks solid-statecan be used as persistent storage in servers or arrays and as a perform-ance super-booster in a variety of cache deployments
The solid-state ecosystem isnrsquot just getting more diverse the applicationsare also getting more impressive I was recently briefed on a softwareproduct that helps speed up solid-state storage in application environ-ments kind of an app that makes flash flashier And a number of hardwarevendors are pushing their solid-state storage systems in the direction ofcloud storage service providers Thatrsquos wild when you consider that cloudstorage services mostly failed about 15 years ago because they relied on
The implementationoptions are abundantand more varied thanthose for hard diskssolid-state can beused as persistentstorage in servers or arrays and as aperformance super-booster in a variety ofcache deployments
storage infrastructures that were too expensive to support a subscriptionmodel Todayrsquos answer to that is to try some of the most expensive stor-age on earth instead But itrsquos a whole new world
The applications for solid-state just keep coming Itrsquos almost unheardof at even this early stage to consider implementing virtual desktops without using some solid-state storage to quell the boot storms But solid-state isnrsquot just an infrastructure solution DBAs are drooling over thepumped-up performance that solid-state storage promises for databaseapplications
So with an emerging aftermarket you have to think that solid-statestorage has really arrived Yes it still costs a fortune but thatrsquos one of the old parameters yoursquoll just have to leave behind 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the November 2011 issue
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
7 STORAGE October 2011
Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress
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Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
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of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
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INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
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EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
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Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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FROM OUR SPONSORS
3 STORAGE October 2011 Cover image by John Kuczala
STORAGEinside | october 2011
Solid-state goes mainstream5 EDITORIAL Solid-state storage technology has made the move from
upstart to mainstream and along the way it has created an aftermarketof related products and services by RICH CASTAGNA
A dialog about VDI and storage9 STORWARS A systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice about designing storage to support virtual desktops by TONY ASARO
Status report Solid-state storage13 Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storage marketplace
establishing itself as a viable alternative for high-performance apps by PHIL GOODWIN
Storage networking alternatives23 All the old standardsmdashFibre Channel iSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but Fibre Channel over Ethernet and virtualized IO are waiting in the wings to help remake our storage networks and consolidate our data centers by DENNIS MARTIN
Storage managers poised to tap new technologies33 As budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to
emerging techs and cloud services to help them deal with virtualized environments data growth and performance demands by RICH CASTAGNA
Data protection implications with cloud services41 HOT SPOTS More and more companies are moving to a cloud model
that allows them to outsource the underlying cloud infrastructure That model has widespread implications for users and data protectionby LAUREN WHITEHOUSE
Your new storage vendor might be VMware44 READWRITE VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentions
about encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which could serve as a wakeup call for the data storage industry by ARUN TANEJA
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated47 SNAPSHOT The number of companies doing storage tiering today is
about the same as three years ago but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated by RICH CASTAGNA
From our sponsors49 Useful links from our sponsors
server rooms that require GPs NaviGatioN
We get that virtualization can drive a better ROI Highly certified by Microsoft VMware HP and others we can evaluate design and implement the right solution for youWersquoll get you out of this mess at CDWcomvirtualization
soLveD
copy2011 CDW LLC CDWreg CDWbullGreg and PeOPLe WHO Get Ittrade are trademarks of CDW LLC
t
Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
5
HERErsquoS A GREAT SCENE in Jean Shepherdrsquos A Christmas Story where Ralphand his buddies convince Flick to lick a metal flagpole on a cold snowyday to disprove the old tale that a wet tongue will stick to cold metal Ofcourse they end up proving that itrsquos actually true and Flick gets stuck tothe flagpole fire department racing to the scene
Being the first to do something or succumbing to the dares of othersand taking the first steps can be pretty scarymdashand the results can be unpredictable But in the world of IT you do have a choice You can play itsafe and keep buying ldquotraditionalrdquo technology from well-established vendorsor you can take a chance on a startup or some new-fangled technology
Solid-state storage was like that ice-cold flagpole with lots of peoplelooking at it and talking about it but not so many ready to make the leapItrsquos new stuff and data storage shops tend to take their sweet time warmingup to new technologies Solid-statersquos speed and conservative power re-quirements are interesting enough but itrsquos really different and the economicssurrounding the technology arenrsquot familiar to most of us That last partmeans it costs a heckuva lot more than anything else we store data on
Using traditional measurements like unit sales and revenue yoursquod haveto say that solid-state storage is barely moving the meter in the overallenterprise storage picture But there are other signs to consider I thinkyou can tell if a product is maturing or at least positioning itself to grab a significant chunk of market share by the context it has created and ifan ecosystem of related products is beginning to take shape around thetechnology
Itrsquos a lot like the aftermarket thatrsquos feeding off the cell phone industrywith scores of vendors selling protective cases ring tones skins holdersstraps and so on When a core technology has enough impact to pull allthat other stuff along with it therersquos no denying it has arrived
editorial | rich castagna
Solid-state goes mainstreamIf you judge a technology by the products that crop up around it and the new techs it spawns
then itrsquos pretty hard to argue that solid-state storage hasnrsquot reached a certain level of maturity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
6 STORAGE October 2011
Thatrsquos exactly whatrsquos happening with solid-state storage now Not toolong ago the solid-state story was about a handful of vendors trying tojigger consumer technology to meet enterprise requirements Todaybased on the number of press releases I receive there are approximately8 billion solid-state storage companies with cool new products (Irsquom exag-gerating itrsquos probably only 4 billion) But with the proliferation of newproducts and an emerging solid-state ecosystem the focus has shiftedWersquore finding ourselves less hung up on specs and inner workings andmore interested in applications
Mind you itrsquos fine to want to know basic specs and to understand howthey might affect performance in your environment but do you need toknow all the gory details Withhard disks itrsquos enough to knowstats like capacity interface androtational speed Do you truly needto understand how perpendicularmagnetic recording technologyworks It just works and it meansareal density is increasing at anabsurd rate Ditto for solid-state
Therersquos plenty of evidence tosupport my contention that solid-state storage has come of age Just look at the productsthemselves We tend to call them solid-state drives buttheyrsquove evolved well beyond mere plug-in replacements forhard disksmdasha stopgap implementation at best The implementation op-tions are abundant and more varied than those for hard disks solid-statecan be used as persistent storage in servers or arrays and as a perform-ance super-booster in a variety of cache deployments
The solid-state ecosystem isnrsquot just getting more diverse the applicationsare also getting more impressive I was recently briefed on a softwareproduct that helps speed up solid-state storage in application environ-ments kind of an app that makes flash flashier And a number of hardwarevendors are pushing their solid-state storage systems in the direction ofcloud storage service providers Thatrsquos wild when you consider that cloudstorage services mostly failed about 15 years ago because they relied on
The implementationoptions are abundantand more varied thanthose for hard diskssolid-state can beused as persistentstorage in servers or arrays and as aperformance super-booster in a variety ofcache deployments
storage infrastructures that were too expensive to support a subscriptionmodel Todayrsquos answer to that is to try some of the most expensive stor-age on earth instead But itrsquos a whole new world
The applications for solid-state just keep coming Itrsquos almost unheardof at even this early stage to consider implementing virtual desktops without using some solid-state storage to quell the boot storms But solid-state isnrsquot just an infrastructure solution DBAs are drooling over thepumped-up performance that solid-state storage promises for databaseapplications
So with an emerging aftermarket you have to think that solid-statestorage has really arrived Yes it still costs a fortune but thatrsquos one of the old parameters yoursquoll just have to leave behind 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the November 2011 issue
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
7 STORAGE October 2011
Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress
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Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation
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Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge
of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their
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copy2011 Iron Mountain Incorporated All rights reserved Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the US and other countries
sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
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3 STORAGE October 2011 Cover image by John Kuczala
STORAGEinside | october 2011
Solid-state goes mainstream5 EDITORIAL Solid-state storage technology has made the move from
upstart to mainstream and along the way it has created an aftermarketof related products and services by RICH CASTAGNA
A dialog about VDI and storage9 STORWARS A systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice about designing storage to support virtual desktops by TONY ASARO
Status report Solid-state storage13 Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storage marketplace
establishing itself as a viable alternative for high-performance apps by PHIL GOODWIN
Storage networking alternatives23 All the old standardsmdashFibre Channel iSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but Fibre Channel over Ethernet and virtualized IO are waiting in the wings to help remake our storage networks and consolidate our data centers by DENNIS MARTIN
Storage managers poised to tap new technologies33 As budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to
emerging techs and cloud services to help them deal with virtualized environments data growth and performance demands by RICH CASTAGNA
Data protection implications with cloud services41 HOT SPOTS More and more companies are moving to a cloud model
that allows them to outsource the underlying cloud infrastructure That model has widespread implications for users and data protectionby LAUREN WHITEHOUSE
Your new storage vendor might be VMware44 READWRITE VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentions
about encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which could serve as a wakeup call for the data storage industry by ARUN TANEJA
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated47 SNAPSHOT The number of companies doing storage tiering today is
about the same as three years ago but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated by RICH CASTAGNA
From our sponsors49 Useful links from our sponsors
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t
Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
5
HERErsquoS A GREAT SCENE in Jean Shepherdrsquos A Christmas Story where Ralphand his buddies convince Flick to lick a metal flagpole on a cold snowyday to disprove the old tale that a wet tongue will stick to cold metal Ofcourse they end up proving that itrsquos actually true and Flick gets stuck tothe flagpole fire department racing to the scene
Being the first to do something or succumbing to the dares of othersand taking the first steps can be pretty scarymdashand the results can be unpredictable But in the world of IT you do have a choice You can play itsafe and keep buying ldquotraditionalrdquo technology from well-established vendorsor you can take a chance on a startup or some new-fangled technology
Solid-state storage was like that ice-cold flagpole with lots of peoplelooking at it and talking about it but not so many ready to make the leapItrsquos new stuff and data storage shops tend to take their sweet time warmingup to new technologies Solid-statersquos speed and conservative power re-quirements are interesting enough but itrsquos really different and the economicssurrounding the technology arenrsquot familiar to most of us That last partmeans it costs a heckuva lot more than anything else we store data on
Using traditional measurements like unit sales and revenue yoursquod haveto say that solid-state storage is barely moving the meter in the overallenterprise storage picture But there are other signs to consider I thinkyou can tell if a product is maturing or at least positioning itself to grab a significant chunk of market share by the context it has created and ifan ecosystem of related products is beginning to take shape around thetechnology
Itrsquos a lot like the aftermarket thatrsquos feeding off the cell phone industrywith scores of vendors selling protective cases ring tones skins holdersstraps and so on When a core technology has enough impact to pull allthat other stuff along with it therersquos no denying it has arrived
editorial | rich castagna
Solid-state goes mainstreamIf you judge a technology by the products that crop up around it and the new techs it spawns
then itrsquos pretty hard to argue that solid-state storage hasnrsquot reached a certain level of maturity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
6 STORAGE October 2011
Thatrsquos exactly whatrsquos happening with solid-state storage now Not toolong ago the solid-state story was about a handful of vendors trying tojigger consumer technology to meet enterprise requirements Todaybased on the number of press releases I receive there are approximately8 billion solid-state storage companies with cool new products (Irsquom exag-gerating itrsquos probably only 4 billion) But with the proliferation of newproducts and an emerging solid-state ecosystem the focus has shiftedWersquore finding ourselves less hung up on specs and inner workings andmore interested in applications
Mind you itrsquos fine to want to know basic specs and to understand howthey might affect performance in your environment but do you need toknow all the gory details Withhard disks itrsquos enough to knowstats like capacity interface androtational speed Do you truly needto understand how perpendicularmagnetic recording technologyworks It just works and it meansareal density is increasing at anabsurd rate Ditto for solid-state
Therersquos plenty of evidence tosupport my contention that solid-state storage has come of age Just look at the productsthemselves We tend to call them solid-state drives buttheyrsquove evolved well beyond mere plug-in replacements forhard disksmdasha stopgap implementation at best The implementation op-tions are abundant and more varied than those for hard disks solid-statecan be used as persistent storage in servers or arrays and as a perform-ance super-booster in a variety of cache deployments
The solid-state ecosystem isnrsquot just getting more diverse the applicationsare also getting more impressive I was recently briefed on a softwareproduct that helps speed up solid-state storage in application environ-ments kind of an app that makes flash flashier And a number of hardwarevendors are pushing their solid-state storage systems in the direction ofcloud storage service providers Thatrsquos wild when you consider that cloudstorage services mostly failed about 15 years ago because they relied on
The implementationoptions are abundantand more varied thanthose for hard diskssolid-state can beused as persistentstorage in servers or arrays and as aperformance super-booster in a variety ofcache deployments
storage infrastructures that were too expensive to support a subscriptionmodel Todayrsquos answer to that is to try some of the most expensive stor-age on earth instead But itrsquos a whole new world
The applications for solid-state just keep coming Itrsquos almost unheardof at even this early stage to consider implementing virtual desktops without using some solid-state storage to quell the boot storms But solid-state isnrsquot just an infrastructure solution DBAs are drooling over thepumped-up performance that solid-state storage promises for databaseapplications
So with an emerging aftermarket you have to think that solid-statestorage has really arrived Yes it still costs a fortune but thatrsquos one of the old parameters yoursquoll just have to leave behind 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the November 2011 issue
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
7 STORAGE October 2011
Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress
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Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
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of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
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STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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We get that virtualization can drive a better ROI Highly certified by Microsoft VMware HP and others we can evaluate design and implement the right solution for youWersquoll get you out of this mess at CDWcomvirtualization
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copy2011 CDW LLC CDWreg CDWbullGreg and PeOPLe WHO Get Ittrade are trademarks of CDW LLC
t
Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
5
HERErsquoS A GREAT SCENE in Jean Shepherdrsquos A Christmas Story where Ralphand his buddies convince Flick to lick a metal flagpole on a cold snowyday to disprove the old tale that a wet tongue will stick to cold metal Ofcourse they end up proving that itrsquos actually true and Flick gets stuck tothe flagpole fire department racing to the scene
Being the first to do something or succumbing to the dares of othersand taking the first steps can be pretty scarymdashand the results can be unpredictable But in the world of IT you do have a choice You can play itsafe and keep buying ldquotraditionalrdquo technology from well-established vendorsor you can take a chance on a startup or some new-fangled technology
Solid-state storage was like that ice-cold flagpole with lots of peoplelooking at it and talking about it but not so many ready to make the leapItrsquos new stuff and data storage shops tend to take their sweet time warmingup to new technologies Solid-statersquos speed and conservative power re-quirements are interesting enough but itrsquos really different and the economicssurrounding the technology arenrsquot familiar to most of us That last partmeans it costs a heckuva lot more than anything else we store data on
Using traditional measurements like unit sales and revenue yoursquod haveto say that solid-state storage is barely moving the meter in the overallenterprise storage picture But there are other signs to consider I thinkyou can tell if a product is maturing or at least positioning itself to grab a significant chunk of market share by the context it has created and ifan ecosystem of related products is beginning to take shape around thetechnology
Itrsquos a lot like the aftermarket thatrsquos feeding off the cell phone industrywith scores of vendors selling protective cases ring tones skins holdersstraps and so on When a core technology has enough impact to pull allthat other stuff along with it therersquos no denying it has arrived
editorial | rich castagna
Solid-state goes mainstreamIf you judge a technology by the products that crop up around it and the new techs it spawns
then itrsquos pretty hard to argue that solid-state storage hasnrsquot reached a certain level of maturity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
6 STORAGE October 2011
Thatrsquos exactly whatrsquos happening with solid-state storage now Not toolong ago the solid-state story was about a handful of vendors trying tojigger consumer technology to meet enterprise requirements Todaybased on the number of press releases I receive there are approximately8 billion solid-state storage companies with cool new products (Irsquom exag-gerating itrsquos probably only 4 billion) But with the proliferation of newproducts and an emerging solid-state ecosystem the focus has shiftedWersquore finding ourselves less hung up on specs and inner workings andmore interested in applications
Mind you itrsquos fine to want to know basic specs and to understand howthey might affect performance in your environment but do you need toknow all the gory details Withhard disks itrsquos enough to knowstats like capacity interface androtational speed Do you truly needto understand how perpendicularmagnetic recording technologyworks It just works and it meansareal density is increasing at anabsurd rate Ditto for solid-state
Therersquos plenty of evidence tosupport my contention that solid-state storage has come of age Just look at the productsthemselves We tend to call them solid-state drives buttheyrsquove evolved well beyond mere plug-in replacements forhard disksmdasha stopgap implementation at best The implementation op-tions are abundant and more varied than those for hard disks solid-statecan be used as persistent storage in servers or arrays and as a perform-ance super-booster in a variety of cache deployments
The solid-state ecosystem isnrsquot just getting more diverse the applicationsare also getting more impressive I was recently briefed on a softwareproduct that helps speed up solid-state storage in application environ-ments kind of an app that makes flash flashier And a number of hardwarevendors are pushing their solid-state storage systems in the direction ofcloud storage service providers Thatrsquos wild when you consider that cloudstorage services mostly failed about 15 years ago because they relied on
The implementationoptions are abundantand more varied thanthose for hard diskssolid-state can beused as persistentstorage in servers or arrays and as aperformance super-booster in a variety ofcache deployments
storage infrastructures that were too expensive to support a subscriptionmodel Todayrsquos answer to that is to try some of the most expensive stor-age on earth instead But itrsquos a whole new world
The applications for solid-state just keep coming Itrsquos almost unheardof at even this early stage to consider implementing virtual desktops without using some solid-state storage to quell the boot storms But solid-state isnrsquot just an infrastructure solution DBAs are drooling over thepumped-up performance that solid-state storage promises for databaseapplications
So with an emerging aftermarket you have to think that solid-statestorage has really arrived Yes it still costs a fortune but thatrsquos one of the old parameters yoursquoll just have to leave behind 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the November 2011 issue
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
7 STORAGE October 2011
Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress
Visit wwwefficientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater
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Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation
PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage
Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge
of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their
information regardless of format mdash Iron Mountain With unmatched experience putting us at your side makes
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
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Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
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46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
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Smarter tiering
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48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
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Storage May 2010Copyright 2011 TechTarget No part of this publication may be transmitted or reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writingfrom the publisher For permissions or reprint information please contact Mike Kelly VP and Group Publisher (mkellytechtargetcom)
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
5
HERErsquoS A GREAT SCENE in Jean Shepherdrsquos A Christmas Story where Ralphand his buddies convince Flick to lick a metal flagpole on a cold snowyday to disprove the old tale that a wet tongue will stick to cold metal Ofcourse they end up proving that itrsquos actually true and Flick gets stuck tothe flagpole fire department racing to the scene
Being the first to do something or succumbing to the dares of othersand taking the first steps can be pretty scarymdashand the results can be unpredictable But in the world of IT you do have a choice You can play itsafe and keep buying ldquotraditionalrdquo technology from well-established vendorsor you can take a chance on a startup or some new-fangled technology
Solid-state storage was like that ice-cold flagpole with lots of peoplelooking at it and talking about it but not so many ready to make the leapItrsquos new stuff and data storage shops tend to take their sweet time warmingup to new technologies Solid-statersquos speed and conservative power re-quirements are interesting enough but itrsquos really different and the economicssurrounding the technology arenrsquot familiar to most of us That last partmeans it costs a heckuva lot more than anything else we store data on
Using traditional measurements like unit sales and revenue yoursquod haveto say that solid-state storage is barely moving the meter in the overallenterprise storage picture But there are other signs to consider I thinkyou can tell if a product is maturing or at least positioning itself to grab a significant chunk of market share by the context it has created and ifan ecosystem of related products is beginning to take shape around thetechnology
Itrsquos a lot like the aftermarket thatrsquos feeding off the cell phone industrywith scores of vendors selling protective cases ring tones skins holdersstraps and so on When a core technology has enough impact to pull allthat other stuff along with it therersquos no denying it has arrived
editorial | rich castagna
Solid-state goes mainstreamIf you judge a technology by the products that crop up around it and the new techs it spawns
then itrsquos pretty hard to argue that solid-state storage hasnrsquot reached a certain level of maturity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
6 STORAGE October 2011
Thatrsquos exactly whatrsquos happening with solid-state storage now Not toolong ago the solid-state story was about a handful of vendors trying tojigger consumer technology to meet enterprise requirements Todaybased on the number of press releases I receive there are approximately8 billion solid-state storage companies with cool new products (Irsquom exag-gerating itrsquos probably only 4 billion) But with the proliferation of newproducts and an emerging solid-state ecosystem the focus has shiftedWersquore finding ourselves less hung up on specs and inner workings andmore interested in applications
Mind you itrsquos fine to want to know basic specs and to understand howthey might affect performance in your environment but do you need toknow all the gory details Withhard disks itrsquos enough to knowstats like capacity interface androtational speed Do you truly needto understand how perpendicularmagnetic recording technologyworks It just works and it meansareal density is increasing at anabsurd rate Ditto for solid-state
Therersquos plenty of evidence tosupport my contention that solid-state storage has come of age Just look at the productsthemselves We tend to call them solid-state drives buttheyrsquove evolved well beyond mere plug-in replacements forhard disksmdasha stopgap implementation at best The implementation op-tions are abundant and more varied than those for hard disks solid-statecan be used as persistent storage in servers or arrays and as a perform-ance super-booster in a variety of cache deployments
The solid-state ecosystem isnrsquot just getting more diverse the applicationsare also getting more impressive I was recently briefed on a softwareproduct that helps speed up solid-state storage in application environ-ments kind of an app that makes flash flashier And a number of hardwarevendors are pushing their solid-state storage systems in the direction ofcloud storage service providers Thatrsquos wild when you consider that cloudstorage services mostly failed about 15 years ago because they relied on
The implementationoptions are abundantand more varied thanthose for hard diskssolid-state can beused as persistentstorage in servers or arrays and as aperformance super-booster in a variety ofcache deployments
storage infrastructures that were too expensive to support a subscriptionmodel Todayrsquos answer to that is to try some of the most expensive stor-age on earth instead But itrsquos a whole new world
The applications for solid-state just keep coming Itrsquos almost unheardof at even this early stage to consider implementing virtual desktops without using some solid-state storage to quell the boot storms But solid-state isnrsquot just an infrastructure solution DBAs are drooling over thepumped-up performance that solid-state storage promises for databaseapplications
So with an emerging aftermarket you have to think that solid-statestorage has really arrived Yes it still costs a fortune but thatrsquos one of the old parameters yoursquoll just have to leave behind 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the November 2011 issue
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
7 STORAGE October 2011
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Visit wwwefficientvirtualstoragecom to learn how your organization can drive greater
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Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation
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Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
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9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge
of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their
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Safeguard your Information Visit us at ironmountaincom
categoRIze aRcHIVe IMage dIScoVeR deStRoY
copy2011 Iron Mountain Incorporated All rights reserved Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the US and other countries
sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
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Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
6 STORAGE October 2011
Thatrsquos exactly whatrsquos happening with solid-state storage now Not toolong ago the solid-state story was about a handful of vendors trying tojigger consumer technology to meet enterprise requirements Todaybased on the number of press releases I receive there are approximately8 billion solid-state storage companies with cool new products (Irsquom exag-gerating itrsquos probably only 4 billion) But with the proliferation of newproducts and an emerging solid-state ecosystem the focus has shiftedWersquore finding ourselves less hung up on specs and inner workings andmore interested in applications
Mind you itrsquos fine to want to know basic specs and to understand howthey might affect performance in your environment but do you need toknow all the gory details Withhard disks itrsquos enough to knowstats like capacity interface androtational speed Do you truly needto understand how perpendicularmagnetic recording technologyworks It just works and it meansareal density is increasing at anabsurd rate Ditto for solid-state
Therersquos plenty of evidence tosupport my contention that solid-state storage has come of age Just look at the productsthemselves We tend to call them solid-state drives buttheyrsquove evolved well beyond mere plug-in replacements forhard disksmdasha stopgap implementation at best The implementation op-tions are abundant and more varied than those for hard disks solid-statecan be used as persistent storage in servers or arrays and as a perform-ance super-booster in a variety of cache deployments
The solid-state ecosystem isnrsquot just getting more diverse the applicationsare also getting more impressive I was recently briefed on a softwareproduct that helps speed up solid-state storage in application environ-ments kind of an app that makes flash flashier And a number of hardwarevendors are pushing their solid-state storage systems in the direction ofcloud storage service providers Thatrsquos wild when you consider that cloudstorage services mostly failed about 15 years ago because they relied on
The implementationoptions are abundantand more varied thanthose for hard diskssolid-state can beused as persistentstorage in servers or arrays and as aperformance super-booster in a variety ofcache deployments
storage infrastructures that were too expensive to support a subscriptionmodel Todayrsquos answer to that is to try some of the most expensive stor-age on earth instead But itrsquos a whole new world
The applications for solid-state just keep coming Itrsquos almost unheardof at even this early stage to consider implementing virtual desktops without using some solid-state storage to quell the boot storms But solid-state isnrsquot just an infrastructure solution DBAs are drooling over thepumped-up performance that solid-state storage promises for databaseapplications
So with an emerging aftermarket you have to think that solid-statestorage has really arrived Yes it still costs a fortune but thatrsquos one of the old parameters yoursquoll just have to leave behind 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the November 2011 issue
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
7 STORAGE October 2011
Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress
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Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation
PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage
Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge
of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their
information regardless of format mdash Iron Mountain With unmatched experience putting us at your side makes
information easier to manage We can do more together
Safeguard your Information Visit us at ironmountaincom
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copy2011 Iron Mountain Incorporated All rights reserved Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the US and other countries
sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
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leading competitor
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Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
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48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
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Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
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storage infrastructures that were too expensive to support a subscriptionmodel Todayrsquos answer to that is to try some of the most expensive stor-age on earth instead But itrsquos a whole new world
The applications for solid-state just keep coming Itrsquos almost unheardof at even this early stage to consider implementing virtual desktops without using some solid-state storage to quell the boot storms But solid-state isnrsquot just an infrastructure solution DBAs are drooling over thepumped-up performance that solid-state storage promises for databaseapplications
So with an emerging aftermarket you have to think that solid-statestorage has really arrived Yes it still costs a fortune but thatrsquos one of the old parameters yoursquoll just have to leave behind 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Click here for a sneak peek at whatrsquos coming up in the November 2011 issue
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
7 STORAGE October 2011
Storage designed for virtualization keeps custom golf club maker on par with progress
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Scan the QR code with your smart phone to see how Fluid Data gives PING the freedom to innovate and grow as a business or visit wwwcompellentcomPINGDrivesInnovation
PING drives innovation with Fluid Datatrade storage
Eric Hart NetworkInfrastructure Manager PING
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
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of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
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Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
9 STORAGE October 2011
tHE FOLLOWING is a discussion I had with Keith Norbie vice presidentof sales at Nexus Information Systems Nexus is a system inte-grator that focuses on virtualization and storage Keith and I talkedabout virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and its implementationchallenges directly related to storage
Tony Whatrsquos your role in your organization and what have you been doingso far in the VDI space specific to storageKeith Irsquove been with Nexus for 12 years and in the industry for 20 with afocus on storage in the last 11 years
Wersquove developed a storage vision with virtualization as the centerpieceWersquove sized workloads for databases or backup and looked at IO profilesin a number of different characteristic formats and scientifically measuredthem IOPS is an important factor for VDI to deliver what I call a ldquoDirecTVrdquosystem for users
Tony You take a look at how many desktops yoursquore going to have andwhat the IO workload is going to be on a storage systemKeith Yes and therersquos another depth beyond basic IOPS analysis Thereare characteristics including how bursty and unpredictable those IOPScan be We get into the scientific measurement process to understandhow users are using workloads Everyonersquos got a laptop or some kind ofIO initiator in each of their devices and all the storage requirementshave been localized out to those points As hectically fragmented as VDIis you need to look at each of those endpoints and find out what they require beyond static IOPS utilization Everyone talks about boot stormbut I would say itrsquos as much that as it is antivirus and selective intense-usage purposes Have you ever had Word kind of hang on you becauseyou try to reformat something and it wanted to reformat the entire document based on a stylized setting
StorWars | tony asaro
A dialog about VDI and storageA systems integrator on the front lines of virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI) implementation offers some solid advice
Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
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Whatrsquos new instorage networks
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Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
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Smarter tiering
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46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
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Smarter tiering
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48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
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Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
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Tony It happens frequentlyKeith It puts your computer into like a 30-minute freeze Imagine thatacross 1000 units You just completely took your entire back office downThat doesnrsquot happen pervasively across every single user using Word atthe same time but itrsquos the things you havenrsquot really experienced yet inthe modern massive implementation of VDI that become factors youhave to account for
Tony I was just talking to a school district that has approximately 1000users on VDI right now They were getting boot storms eight times a daybecause students log in and log off with each periodKeith Irsquoll give you another real-world scenario I ran across an organizationthat had a SAN They had plenty of storage with lots of free capacity Every-thing was running They almost felt their storage was idle They naturallyjust threw in the VDI and virtualized some desktops for users in their callcenters Well the problem was the IO generated on the SAN had 15 spin-dles and they couldnrsquot generate enough IOPS for their couple of hundredusers They simply created a very bad user experience They couldnrsquot figureout that it was because they simply were running it on an under-horse-powered array
Tony Have you found that the initial adoption of VDI has been stalled because of not really understanding the nuanced issues created by virtualdesktopsKeith Yes Irsquoll just say the technology available from multiple array man-ufacturers and VDI software makers and the technology thatrsquos out thereis very robust and very doable But itrsquos both a lot harder than you thinkand a lot easier Folks who want to just jump off and do it and not thinkmdashthose are the folks who are going to get burned in this area
Tony What are some of the ways you can overcome the IOPS issueswithin a VDI environmentKeith It depends on the environment and how much in each of those areaswe discussed you need to factor for In the case of the IOPS requirementsjust throwing more spindles at it impacts heating cooling and rack spaceYes you can just throw in more spindles but that comes with a significantdownside You need to factor in the front end plus managing all that capacity Itrsquos a dynamic math equation thatrsquos really individualized per
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
10 STORAGE October 2011
environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
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11 STORAGE October 2011
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
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Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
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bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
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environment Irsquom not a fan of ripping out everything and bringing insomething totally new I want to understand each of the components in the environment and then modify to meet the mathematical fulfillments of what the environment is telling you
Tony And you can build these mathematical models even around the lackof predictabilityKeith Yes because a great deal is predictable Our measurements giveus all the known usage spikes whether itrsquos from boot storms antivirus orother factors We know when people are logging on but every environmentis a little different
Tony Planning some performance headroom for those things you canrsquotpredict is very importantKeith Exactly And therersquos another factor there are a lot of emergingtechnologies Taking advantage of some technology breakthroughs canbe really beneficial to get them that plus one 2
Tony Asaro is senior analyst and founder of Voices of IT
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
11 STORAGE October 2011
Your Information is at RiskProtect What Matters Most
As the amount of information your organization has to manage and protect continues to grow the challenge
of managing the potential risk increases exponentially How can you ensure your organizationrsquos information
is not at risk Partner with the company thousands have trusted to store protect and manage their
information regardless of format mdash Iron Mountain With unmatched experience putting us at your side makes
information easier to manage We can do more together
Safeguard your Information Visit us at ironmountaincom
categoRIze aRcHIVe IMage dIScoVeR deStRoY
copy2011 Iron Mountain Incorporated All rights reserved Iron Mountain and the design of the mountain are registered trademarks of Iron Mountain Incorporated in the US and other countries
sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
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Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
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bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
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bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
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bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
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bull Deduplication for Dummies
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See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
sSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
13 STORAGE October 2011
OLID-STATE DISK is of course nothing of the sort Whereas a disk is a roundflat object solid-state storage is really just memory chips That may seemlike a silly semantic distinction but itrsquos actually important to bear that inmind when architecting a data access solution Solid-state drives (SSDs)also referred to as flash memory and flash cache have more in commonwith memorymdashspecifically cache memorymdashthan with spinning hard diskdrives (HDDs) Although SSDs are commonly deployed ldquobehind the storage-
STATUS REPORT Solid-state storage
Solid-state storage has carved out a niche in the storageecosystem establishing itself as a viable alternative
for high-performance applications BY PHIL GOODWIN
area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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area network (SAN)rdquo and provisioned as part of the total storage pool they behave like large repositories of cache Thatrsquos important to consider whendesigning solid-state storage into a storage solution
SSD CHIP TECHNOLOGIESThree solid-state storage technologies dominate the market today single-level cell (SLC) multi-level cell (MLC) and enterprise multi-level cell (eMLC)This may seem like an ldquoinside baseballrdquo discussion but yoursquoll need to under-stand the different SSD technologies (just as you do with HDD technologies)to make the appropriate deployment choice
MLC is currently the most preva-lent consumer-grade solid-state stor-age whereas most enterprise-classproducts are built around SLC MLC offers a significantly lower price pointon a per-GB basis but also has a significantly lower useful life Individ-ual SLC memory cells can sustain ap-proximately 100000 write operationsbefore failure but MLC cells are onlygood for about 3000 to 10000 writeoperations before they fail Cell failurecan be one cause of SSD performancedegradation and may be the reason a solid-state device gradually becomesunacceptable over time Obviously MLC devices will retain their capacity andperformance only about one-tenth as long as SLC for a given write workloadItrsquos therefore important to ask the vendor to describe the ldquouse profilerdquo fortheir product and to factor it into the cost-per-unit equation A product thatlooks like an irresistible deal at half the price of other systems is no bargainif its useful life is just a small fraction of the higher priced product
Enterprise MLC is a newer technology gaining traction in the industryWith an estimated life of 20000 to 30000 write cycles eMLC reaches a mid-dle ground both in price and life span between SLC and MLC Nimbus DataSystems Inc has committed to eMLC technology using it in all its data stor-age products while other vendors are still using SLC To avoid write-relatedlifespan and degradation issues Nimbusrsquos controller software has ldquowear-levelingrdquo capabilities and aligns write blocks with flash cells Nimbus alsooffers a five-year warranty for those concerned with product longevity
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
14 STORAGE October 2011
A product that lookslike an irresistibledeal at half the priceof other systems isno bargain if its use-ful life is just a smallfraction of the higherpriced product
SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
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Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
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STORAGE
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SERVER-BASED SOLID-STATE STORAGEAnother emerging technology trend is toward host-based solid-state storagedelivered as PCI Express (PCIe) cards for insertion directly into the hostFusion-io Inc LSI Corp Texas Memory Systems Inc and Viking ModularSolutions all offer PCIe solid-state products Although provisioned likestorage host-based solutions behave very much like cache Being ldquoinfrontrdquo of the SAN has the advantage of avoiding network latency for readoperations yet data can be pre-positioned using automated storage tier-ing (AST) technologies depending upon the array vendorrsquos capabilities Onthe flipside itrsquos subject to host failure so storage managers should ensurethe PCIe solid-state storage is properly data protected through RAID mirroring or clustering
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
15 STORAGE October 2011
Loading the database indexes or even theentire database into SSD or optimally host-based flash memory can significantly improve data access speeds
Adding SSD as a cache tier can acceleratedata access to the most frequently re-quested information very much like anyother cache
Loading VDI images into solid-state storagecan solve the problem of ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periods of high user startup
Locating frequently requested data in cachestorage near the requestor can speed dataaccess and reduce the load on central SANs
For applications with high-intensity IO requirements solid-state infrastructure canmeet the needs of and reduce powercoolingconsumption by up to 80 compared tosimilar 15K hard disk drive configurations
Database acceleration
Cache tier
Boot storms
Data location and hybrid cloud
All solid-state infrastructure
Solid-state storage use cases
EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
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STORAGE
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EMC Corp is joining the fray and has announced its ldquoProject Lightningrdquowhich is its first PCIe host-based storage product (scheduled for availabilitylater in 2011) This product will be fully accessible using EMCrsquos Fully Auto-mated Storage Tiering (FAST) software so that it works seamlessly withEMCrsquos arrays across the SAN The initial product will be based on SLC tech-nology to maximize the longevity performance and reliability of the device
SOFTWARE IS KEY TO PERFORMANCE LONGEVITYMost solid-state storage vendors would agree that software is critical to the performance of their storage devices LSI offers its MegaRAIDCacheCade 20 software designed to optimize both reads and writesby managing writes to specific blocks CacheCade complements LSIrsquosMegaRAID SSD controller cards for use with SSD devices or arrays
Hewlett-Packard (HP) Co similarly points to its data location algorithmfor optimizing solid-state performance in its 3PAR arrays The companytouts this optimization algorithm for its ability to avoid the gradual per-formance degradation that may occur otherwise Other vendors such asAvere Systems Inc and NetApp Inc use non-volatile random access mem-ory (NVRAM) to buffer and manage write operations all of which is man-aged by their own proprietary software to find the appropriate write path
IO Turbine Inc which was recently acquired by Fusion-io developed Accelio software that allows SSDs to be provisioned across VMware virtualmachines (VMs) The VMs can use Accelio to share SSD or other flash storageAccelio can be used with virtually any SSDflash product and supportsVMware vMotion functionality
USE CASES FOR SOLID-STATE STORAGEDatabase performance enhancement Most storage managers recognizethat SSD offers blazingly fast read operations making it ideal for databaseenvironments with read-intensive applications In this scenario the data-base indexes are typically loaded into SSD or flash storage for quick lookupsfollowed by accessing the HDDs to fetch the actual data However with theincreasing size and affordability of solid-state storage devices some organi-zations are finding it possible to load an entire database into the SSD whichsignificantly speeds up all database functions
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel in Jackson Calif has been testingdatabase performance with a combination of Dell EqualLogic arrays
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
16 STORAGE October 2011
Up to 85 of computing capacity sits idle in distributed environmentsA smarter planet needs smarter infrastructureLetrsquos build a smarter planet ibmcomdynamic
IBM the IBM logo and ibmcom are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at ldquoCopyright and trademark informationrdquo at wwwibmcomlegalcopytradeshtml
Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
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Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
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STORAGE
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Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
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Get more bang for your backup today
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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Fusion-io PCIe-based solid-state storage and IO Turbinersquos Accelio software(Jackson Rancheria is a beta test site for Accelio) The casino has a 300 GBMicrosoft SQL Server database supporting its gaming operations which is a read-intensive app Approximately 80 of the servers are virtualized using VMware ESX
Shane Liptrap senior systems engi-neer at Jackson Rancheria Casino ampHotel reports excellent test resultsldquoInitial setup of the Accelio softwareonly took about an hour and was similar to creating VMware resourcepoolsrdquo he said ldquoWe saw a definite improvement in performance UsingAccelio with a 150 GB Fusion-io SSDour read latency dropped 60 Using a320 GB Fusion-io flash card it dropped90rdquo This configuration took the loadoff the SAN and Liptrap expects to seebetter reliability and failover in addition to better response time as theconfiguration is moved into production
Cache tier Several vendors are increasingly adding solid-state storageto their arrays as a ldquocache tierrdquo Although this is also referred to as tier 0the lines between a distinct storage tier and cache are increasingly blurredNetApp in particular is taking this approach with the added twist of apply-ing data deduplication to its Flash Cache NetApp claims deduplication canimprove capacity utilization by up to 10-to-1 VM images in Flash Cache canbe improved by 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 Adding deduplication instantly improvesthe economics of adding Flash Cache to a configuration
HPrsquos 3PAR arrays use adaptive optimization to seamlessly blend the SSDand Fibre Channel (FC) HDD tiers in the array Datapipe Inc a managedservices vendor in Jersey City NJ uses 3PAR arrays to handle the require-ments of a diverse set of customers Datapipe offers SSD as a value-addedoption to customers who need additional IO performance ldquoSSD isnrsquot cheapso you really need to get a bang for the buckrdquo said Sanford Coker Datapipersquosdirector of storage administration He recommends host-based flash memorywhen possible In many cases Coker will deploy SSD for database appli-cations to support a wide variety of industries from financial and phar-maceutical to new media and cloud SSD is indispensible to him when aguaranteed IO level is required
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
18 STORAGE October 2011
ldquoUsing Accelio witha 150 GB Fusion-ioSDD our read latency dropped60 Using a 320 GBFusion-io flash cardit dropped 90rdquomdashSHANE LIPTRAP senior systems engineer
Jackson Rancheria Casino amp Hotel
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
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Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
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Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
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bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
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bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
Dataram Corp a 44-year-old firm best known for RAM products is oneof the companies promoting cache tiering with its XcelaSAN appliance Oneuse case for this cache tiering device is adding IO capacity to existingconfigurations By adding a small amount of SSD Dataram believes cus-tomers can avoid more costly upgrades to tier 1 and tier 2 arrays Moreoverthey claim to be able to deliver thesame aggregate IO and capacity ofFC storage with a cheaper combina-tion of SSD and SATA devices
Boot storms An excellent app fornetworked storage is virtual desktopinfrastructure (VDI) support VDI causes ldquoboot stormsrdquo during periodsof high user system start up and be-cause that activity is a purely read application itrsquos ideal for the extremeIO performance of SSD Deduplicationas in the case of NetApp reduces thecost of solving this problem
Data location and hybrid cloud Solid-state technology can also be usedto position data closer to the user to reduce data access latency caused bydistance This will usually involve an SSD appliance rather than a PCIe cardor just another tier The Demand-Driven Storage architecture on Avere Sys-temsrsquo FXT SSD arrays is an example of such an implementation FXT arrayscan be used with a centralized data center setting private cloud or hybridcloud These arrays can be clustered to provide high availability with Averersquostiered file system to ensure data consistency
Automated tiering software can automatically move data between tierseven over a wide-area network (WAN) so the most frequently accesseddata is moved to the location or locations where itrsquos in high demand
One application that fits well into this use case is on-demand videostreaming Datapipe supports these types of applications for some of its customers ldquoWhen a new video comes out it gets a lot of hits By elevatingthese videos to a solid-state tier we can handle a lot more data requests in ashorter time span resulting in better user experiencesrdquo Datapipersquos Coker said
All solid-state storage Not many people consider an all-solid-state infrastructure assuming the cost would be prohibitive Nimbus Data Systems hopes to change that perception Nimbus designs its own eMLCflash memory units and offers them with the aforementioned five-year
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
19 STORAGE October 2011
VDI causes ldquobootstormsrdquo during periods of high usersystem start up and because thatrsquospurely a read appli-cation itrsquos ideal forthe extreme IO performance of SSD
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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bull Preventing Data Overload
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bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
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STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
20 STORAGE October 2011
Why itrsquos important to know
SSD is typically used to refer tosolid-state storage thatrsquos pack-aged in a hard disk form factor
This is a type of flash that storesa single bit in each chip cell itrsquosthe fastest most reliable longestlasting and most expensive typeof NAND flash
This is a NAND flash chip thatstores two bits per cell itrsquos slower and doesnrsquot last as long as SLC but itrsquos much cheaper
eMLC is a ldquosouped-uprdquo version of MLC flash with a controller and software that remedies some of the shortcomings of MLC itrsquos becoming more popular in enterprise solid-stateproducts
PCIe is a high-speed serverbus technology thatrsquos used by a number of server-based solid-state storage products
This is high-speed memory thatrsquosextremely fast like DRAM but canretain data when the power isturned off itrsquos used as a cache in some flash solid-state storagesystems
Definition
Solid-state drive(or disk)
Single-level cell
Multi-level cell
Enterprise multi-level cell
PCI Express
Non-volatile random accessmemory
Solid-state defined
Acronym
SSD
SLC
MLC
eMLC
PCIe
NVRAM
warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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warranty However to make an all-solid-state product comparable to thoseoffered by more established array vendors you need the accompanyingsoftware to support the platform Nimbus includes the storage operatingsystem RAID deduplication snapshots thin provisioning replication andmirroring Nimbus claims its systems require up to 80 less power coolingand rack space compared to a 15K rpm HDD system An all-solid-state storage infrastructure may not replace high-capacity HDDs for near-line orarchive storage but it may be the right choice for IO-intensive applications
HARD DRIVES STRUGGLE TO KEEP PACEHard drive technology over the past several years has seen significant advances in areal density continuing the ever-falling per-GB cost curveBut hard disk drive IO throughput hasnrsquot kept up with the much fasterservers and networks over the same period of time Applications are becoming increasingly IO bound as the demand for data access increasesIn some cases storage managers must deploy extra unneeded capacity to get the aggregate IO throughput required to meet the applicationrsquos demands This unused capacity dramatically alters the economics of high-capacity drives
Nevertheless solid-state is no panacea ldquoSolid-state offers a lot of advan-tages but itrsquos not always the solutionrdquo Datapipersquos Coker advises ldquoTherersquosstill no substitute for good system design Application owners need to beprepared to work with their storage provider to properly tune and provisionthe right combination of SSD and HDD Moreover wersquove found that SSDstend to get slower over time You can work to manage them and reformatthem but at some point you have to be prepared to just replace them Itrsquosdifferent from managing HDDsrdquo
Solid-state storage though more expensive than HDDs on a per-GB basismay be substantially cheaper on a per-IO basis IT managers should con-sider the cost per IO in their economic analysis Add this to the lowerpower and cooling requirements and the TCO will likely make sense forapplication acceleration IT managers shouldnrsquot expect SSD to follow theHDD cost curve Itrsquos fundamentally a memory product so it will followthe memory cost curve As eMLC advances technologically it may makesolid-state even more attractive and broaden its applicability in the datacenter and cloud 2
Phil Goodwin is a storage consultant and freelance writer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
21 STORAGE October 2011
IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
BIL
ITY
CEN
TRA
LLY
MA
NA
GED
INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
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IMPROVEDUTILIZATION
CENTRALIZEDMANAGEMENT
RED
UC
EC
OM
PLE
XIT
Y
VO
LUM
EM
AN
AG
EMEN
T
STORAGEMANAGEMENT
CO
NTR
OL
VIR
TUA
LEN
VIR
ON
MEN
TS
MA
XIM
IZE
STO
RA
GE
CA
PAC
ITY
REDUCEDOPERATIONAL COSTS
INTELLIGENTARCHIVING
DATA PROTECTION
STORAGEOPTIMIZATION
END-TO-ENDVISIBILITY H
IGH
AVA
ILA
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ITY
CEN
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LLY
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NA
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INC
RE
AS
E D
ATA
AV
AIL
AB
ILIT
Y
RED
UC
EDR
ISK
SHETEROGENEOUSOPERATING SYSTEMS
CAPACITYMANAGEMENTP
ERFO
RM
AN
CE
MIG
RA
TIO
N
CLU
STE
RIN
G
CONSOLIDATESERVERS
CO
ST
EFFE
CTI
VE
MITIGATEDOWNTIME
GREENEFFICIENCY
PO
WER
SA
VIN
GS
DATACENTEREFFICIENCY
MAXIMIZE DATASTORAGE CAPACITY
MAXIMIZEDATA STORAGE
REDUCE DATA VOLUMESREDUCE BACKUP DATA
DATACENTERSTORAGE
AR
CH
IVE
UN
STR
UC
TUR
ED
DA
TA
POLICYBASEDARCHIVING
IDEN
TIFY
UN
US
EDS
TOR
AG
EC
APA
CIT
Y
IDENTIFY UNUSEDDATA CENTER STORAGE
EFFICIENT DATACENTER STORAGE
RECLAIM
LOSTDATA CENTERSTORAGE
RECLAIMDATA CENTERSTORAGE S
TOR
AG
E EF
FIC
IEN
CY
STORAGE SOFTWARE
SYMANTEC IS
THE LEADER IN99 OF THE FORTUNE 500reg RELY ON SYMANTEC STORAGE SOLUTIONSSecure optimize and manage data more efficiently at gosymanteccomstoragesoftwareleader
copy 2010 Symantec Corporation All rights reserved Symantec and the Symantec logo are registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the US and other countries Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
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Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
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copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
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bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
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bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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See ad page 17
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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
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bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
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bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
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See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
23 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE NETWORKING rarely gets much atten-tion and itrsquos frequently overshadowed by theserver and storage gear it links together Buttherersquos renewed interest in storage networkingas new or enhanced technologies begin toshow up in our data centers Sure therersquos lotsto talk about with new server technologiesvirtualization operating systems and appsbut all those technologies ultimately requirea place to store their data so they rely onstorage networking technologies to handle the task
Therersquos a wide variety of storage networkingtechnologies with something to fit everybudget and storage requirement Storage networking technologies continue to advanceto meet todayrsquos growing requirements and toanticipate future needs Some of these techsare proven and being deployed now or in thenear-term Others are relatively new or notyet very well understood so their future isnrsquot as clear
Storage networkingalternatives
All the old standardsmdashFCiSCSI and NASmdashare still going
strong but FCoEand virtualized IO are waiting in the wings tohelp remake our storage networks
BY DENNIS MARTIN
Storage networkingalternatives
THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
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bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
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bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
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bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
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THE BROAD RANGE OF STORAGE NETWORKSStorage networking includes direct-attached storage (DAS) network-attached storage (NAS) and storage-area networks (SANs) Wersquoll look atsome of the interface technologies used in storage networking includingthe familiar lineup of Fibre Channel(FC) iSCSI and serial-attached SCSI(SAS) and some of the newer or lesswidely used interfaces such as FibreChannel over Ethernet (FCoE) Wersquollneed to examine file serving inter-faces such as Common Internet FileSystem (CIFS) and Network File Sys-tem (NFS) Finally wersquoll explore someIO virtualization technologies thathave some interesting possibilities
Therersquos often debate about whichstorage networking interface is themost popular with predictions of obsolescence for some storage net-working interfaces After checking research firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipments by host interfacetype we find that DAS FC storageiSCSI storage and NAS are eachmultibillion dollar businesses and none of them is going away anytimesoon Furthermore each one is projected to climb significantly in capacityshipped over the next few years
DIRECT-ATTACHED STORAGEDAS is the most common and best-known type of storage In a DAS imple-mentation the host computer has a private connection to the storage andalmost always has exclusive ownership of that storage The implementationis relatively simple and can be very low cost A potential disadvantage isthat the distance between the host computer and storage is frequentlylimited such as within a computer chassis or rackadjacent rack
However SAS traditionally known as a DAS type of interface is begin-ning to show some storage networking-type capabilities SAS switcheshave come to market recently that provide a relatively simple method for
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
24 STORAGE October 2011
After checkingresearch firm IDCrsquos data trackingstorage shipmentsby host interfacetype we find thatDAS FC storageiSCSI storage andNAS are each multibillion dollarbusinesses and noneof them is goingaway anytime soon
sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
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bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
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bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
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bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
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bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
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sharing storage among a small number of servers while maintaining thelow-latency SAS is known for
NETWORK-ATTACHED STORAGENAS devices also known as file servers share their storage resources withclients on the network in the form of ldquofile sharesrdquo or ldquomount pointsrdquo Theseclients use network file access protocols such as CIFSServer MessageBlock (SMB) or NFS to request files from the file server Because NAS operates on a network (usually TCPIP over Ethernet) the storage canbe physically distant from the clients
File servers running Windows or those that need to share storage withWindows clients use the CIFSSMB protocol Microsoft Corp has been enhancing this protocol for several years Windows 7 and Windows Server2008 R2 use SMB Version 21 which has a number of performance improve-ments over previous versions Another implementation of the CIFS SMBprotocol is Samba 36 which uses SMB Version 20 other implementationsof CIFSSMB use SMB Version 10
File servers running Unix or Linux natively support NFS There are threemajor versions of NFS NFSv2 NFSv3 and NFSv4 NFSv3 seems to be the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
25 STORAGE October 2011
Demartekrsquos labs offer a number of free storage networking re-sources on its Demartek Storage Networking Interface Compari-son reference page which has comparisons of many of theblock storage interfaces and includes history roadmaps and cabling information This information is updated periodically
For more information on Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)including test results of FCoE products please visit the DemartekFCoE Zone
The Demartek iSCSI Zone provides research and testing dataon iSCSI products and includes an iSCSI Deployment Guide
More storage networking resources from Demartek
most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
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Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
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Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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most commonly deployed version and itrsquos adequate for many applicationsand environments NFSv4 added performance and security improvementsand became a ldquostatefulrdquo protocol New features in NFSv41 include sessionsdirectory delegation and ldquoParallel NFSrdquo (pNFS) pNFS was introduced to sup-port clustered servers that allow parallel access to files across multipleservers
iSCSIiSCSI provides the advantages of SAN storage while using an Ethernet networking infrastructure iSCSI has tended to be deployed in small- andmedium-sized businesses (SMBs) because of its lower initial costs andperceived simplicity but it can scale up especially with 10 GbE technologyand is increasingly finding a place in larger enterprises
Because iSCSIruns over TCPIP andEthernet it can run on existing Ethernet networksalthough itrsquos recom-mended that iSCSItraffic be separatedfrom regular LANtraffic In theory iSCSI can use anyspeed of Ethernethowever the bestpractice is to use gigabit Ethernet orfaster Over the long-term iSCSI will beable to use any ofthe speeds on theEthernet roadmapsuch as 40 Gbps and 100 Gbps
Virtualized serverenvironments cantake advantage of
STORAGE
STORAGE October 2011
Some key storage networking terms
10 GbE 10 Gigabit Ethernet
CNA Converged network adapter
DCB Data Center Bridging
FC Fibre Channel
FCoE Fibre Channel over Ethernet
HBA Host bus adapter
iSCSI Internet SCSI
MR-IOV Multi-Root IO Virtualization
NAS Network-attached storage
NIC Network interface card
PCIe PCI Express
SAN Storage-area network
SAS Serial-attached SCSI
SATA Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
SR-IOV Single Root IO Virtualization
Storage networking lingo
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
26
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Quantum has helped some of the largest organizations in the world integrate
deduplication into their backup process The benefi ts they report are immediate and
signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
and improving the bottom line
Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
to disk backup They are acknowledged technical leaders In fact our DXi6500 was
just nominated as a ldquoBest Backup Hardwarerdquo fi nalist in Storage Magazinersquos Best
Product of the Year Awardsmdashitrsquos both faster and up to 45 less expensive than the
leading competitor
Get more bang for your backup today
Faster performance Easier deployment Lower cost
provide higher pleading competi
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Importan
Contact us to learn more at (8
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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bull Preventing Data Overload
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bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
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bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
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bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
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bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
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bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
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bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
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bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
Quantumrsquos DXi-Series Appliances with deduplication provide higher performance at lower cost than the leading competitor
Preserving The Worldrsquos Most Important Data Yourstrade
Contact us to learn more at (866) 809-5230 or visit wwwquantumcomdxi
copy2011 Quantum Corporation All rights reserved
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signifi cantmdashfaster backup and restore 90+ reduction in disk needs automated DR
using remote replication reduced administration timemdashall while lowering overall costs
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Our award-winning DXireg-Series appliances deliver a smart time-saving approach
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Q
d
s
u
a
O
t
j
P
le
G
F
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
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bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
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bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
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bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
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bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
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See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
iSCSI storage through the hypervisor or directly access iSCSI storagefrom the guest virtual machines (VMs) bypassing the hypervisor
As the adoption rate of 10 GbE technology increases iSCSI becomes increasingly attractive to organizations as they examine their long-termdata center plans Many of the iSCSI storage systems available today haveall the advanced storage features such as replication thin provisioningcompression data deduplication and others that are often required by enterprise data centers For many modern storage systems iSCSI is available as a host interface along with FC and other interfaces
FIBRE CHANNELFibre Channel has been used as both a device-level disk drive interfaceand a SAN fabric interface and has been deployed for approximately 15years FC carries the SCSI command protocol and uses either copper orfiber-optic cables with the appropriate connectors FC speed has doubledapproximately every three or four years with 8 Gbps products becomingavailable in 2008 for SAN fabric con-nections and 16 Gbps products justbeginning to emerge All high-endstorage subsystems and manymidrange products use FC as either the only host interface or one of multiple interfaces
Fibre Channel is used as a diskdrive interface for enterprise-classdisk drives with a maximum interfacespeed of 4 Gbps to an individual diskdrive (the speed of the interfaceshouldnrsquot be confused with the transfer rate of an individual disk drive) Theindustry is moving away from FC as an enterprise-class disk drive interfaceand shifting to 6 Gbps SAS for enterprise drives including hard disk drives(HDDs) and solid-state drives (SSDs)
FC provides excellent performance availability and scalability in a loss-less network thatrsquos isolated from general LAN traffic Fibre Channel infra-structures are common in large data centers where there are full-timedata storage administrators Itrsquos not uncommon to see FC fabrics withhundreds or thousands of active Fibre Channel SAN ports
Some 16 Gbps FC SAN fabric products will become available in late 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
28 STORAGE October 2011
FC provides excellent perform-ance availabilityand scalability in alossless networkthatrsquos isolated fromgeneral LAN traffic
Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
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Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
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STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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Use cases for 16 Gbps FC include large virtualized servers server consoli-dations and multi-server applications The increasing acceptance of SSDsfor enterprise workloads will also help consume some of the increasedbandwidth that 16 Gbps FC brings In addition storage vendors are alreadyworking on a 32 Gbps FC SAN interface thatrsquos expected to appear in productsin three or four years
FIBRE CHANNEL OVER ETHERNETFibre Channel over Ethernet is a new interface that encapsulates the FCprotocol within Ethernet packets using a relatively new technology calledData Center Bridging (DCB) DCB is a set of enhancements to traditionalEthernet and is currently implemented with some 10 GbE infrastructuresFCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps link while maintain-ing compatibility with existing FibreChannel storage systems
FCoE introduces a new type ofswitch and a new type of adapterEthernet switches capable of sup-porting FCoE require DCB and thenew host adapters are known as converged network adapters (CNAs)because they can run Ethernet andFC (via FCoE) at the same time Someof the CNAs have full hardware offloadfor FCoE iSCSI or both in the same way that Fibre Channel host busadapters (HBAs) have hardware offload for Fibre Channel DCB switchesare capable of separately managing different traffic types over the sameconnection and can allocate percentages of the total bandwidth to thosediffering traffic types By combining the previously separate Ethernet andFibre Channel switches adapters and cables the long-term costs of storageand data networking can be reduced
As enterprises plan new data centers or new server and storage infrastructure FCoE and DCB technology should be carefully examinedThey offer the potential for increased performance a reduction in thenumber of adapters needed and a commensurate reduction in electricpower consumption while working with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
29 STORAGE October 2011
FCoE allows FC traffic to run over alossless 10 Gbps linkwhile maintainingcompatibility withexisting FibreChannel storagesystems
IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
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STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
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bull Preventing Data Overload
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bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
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IO VIRTUALIZATIONIO virtualization is about virtualizing the IO path between a server and a storage device and is therefore complementary to server virtualizationWhen we virtualize we decouple the logical presentation of a device fromthe physical device itself to use the resources more effectively or to shareexpensive resources This can be done by splitting the device into smallerlogical units combining devices into larger units or by representing the devices as multiple devices This concept can apply to anything that usesan adapter in a server such as a network interface card (NIC) RAID controllerFC HBA graphics card and PCI Express (PCIe)-based solid-state storage For example NIC teaming is one wayof combining devices into a singleldquolargerrdquo device Virtual NICs are a wayto represent multiple devices from a single device
A pair of related technologiesknown as Single Root IO Virtualization(SR-IOV) and Multi-Root IO Virtualiza-tion (MR-IOV) are beginning to be implemented SR-IOV is closer tobecoming a reality than MR-IOV butboth provide some interesting benefitsThese technologies work with servervirtualization and allow multiple operating systems to natively sharePCIe devices SR-IOV is designed formultiple guest operating systems within a single virtual server environmentto share devices while MR-IOV is designed for multiple physical servers(which may have guest virtual machines) to share devices
When an SR-IOV-capable adapter is placed in a virtual server environ-ment and the hypervisor supports SR-IOV then the functions required tocreate and manage virtual adapters in the virtual machine environmentare offloaded from the hypervisor into the adapter itself saving CPU cycles on the host platform and improving performance to nearly that of a physical server implementation Many Ethernet adapters FC HBAs and some RAID controllers are SR-IOV capable today
MR-IOV takes IO virtualization a step further and extends this capabilityacross multiple physical servers This is accomplished by extending thePCIe bus into a chassis external to the servers possibly at the top of the
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
30 STORAGE October 2011
When we virtualizewe decouple thelogical presentationof a device from the physical deviceitself to use theresources moreeffectively or toshare expensiveresources
rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
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bull Preventing Data Overload
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rack all the servers in the rack would then connect to this PCIe chassisusing a relatively simple PCIe bus extender adapter Network graphics orother adapters especially expensive adapters can then be placed into theexternal chassis to allow sharing of the adapters by multiple servers
An interesting application of this type of technology would be to useSR-IOV- or MR-IOV-capable RAID controllers or SASSerial Advanced Tech-nology Attachment (SATA) adapters for moving guest VMs without theneed for a SAN Also imagine an SR-IOV-capable NIC that could servicerequests for connections between guest virtual machines that were in the same physical server eliminating the need for an external switch
The long pole in this tent is getting support from the hypervisor vendorsAs of this writing only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports SR-IOV for alimited set of NICs Microsoft has been rather tight-lipped about featuresin the next version of Windows but it wouldnrsquot be too surprising to seesome SR-IOV support in the next version of Windows Hyper-V Itrsquos notknown at this time if SR-IOV support will show up in VMware productsanytime soon 2
Dennis Martin has been working in the IT industry since 1980 and is the founderand president of Demartek a computer industry analyst organization and testinglab
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
31 STORAGE October 2011
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
Year after year some companies stick with legacy data protection software not designed to handle todayrsquos IT realities The result Business at risk frustrated users out-of-control costs and compromised business agility In a word insanity
With its revolutionary single-platform architecture Simpana software enables you to solve these problems right now and far into the future It will lower operational labor and infrastructure costs streamline integration of new technologies like virtualization and cloud
computing and smooth adaptation to challenges like data center consolidation and eDiscovery requirements
The result Up to 50 reduction in storage-related costs and a far simpler saner way to manage access and recover business information In a word oneness
To learn how you can do far more with less and add real value to your end users and your business with Simpana software visit AchieveOnenesscom or call 888-311-0365
Switch to single-platform Simpanareg software for truly modern data and information management
copy1999-2011 CommVault Systems Inc All rights reserved CommVault the ldquoCVrdquo logo Solving Forward Simpana and AchieveOneness are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems Inc All specifications are subject to change without notice
Backup amp Recovery Archive Virtual Server Protection Information Governance Deduplication Disaster Recovery Search
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
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bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
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bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
bSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
33 STORAGE October 2011
UDGET CYCLES for the last couple of years have been slightly less brutal fordata storage managers as business slowly nurses an ailing economy backto health In the latest edition of the Storage magazineSearchStoragecomStorage Purchasing Intentions survey the data provided by the 699 surveyrespondents paints a picture of cautious optimism Things are getting betterbut maybe not all that quickly
Respondents represent all industry sectors led by computer-relatedbusinesses (139) financial services (115) health carepharmaceutical(103) manufacturing (85) and education (77) The average number ofemployees at the participating organizations was 19744 but the dividingline is 1000 employeesmdashhalf the respondents were above that mark andhalf were below
The average company revenue came in at $14 billion which is consistentwith the results from our last four surveys over a two-year period
Storage managers poised to tap new technologiesAs budgetary constraints slowly ease data storage shops are looking to emerging technologies and cloud services to help deal with virtualized environments data growth
and performance demands BY RICH CASTAGNA
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
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bull Preventing Data Overload
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bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
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bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
34 STORAGE October 2011
IN OUR SPRING 2011 survey respondents indicated theirstorage budgets would rise18 higher than their 2010budgets which was a fairlyhealthy jump over themeasly 06 reported previ-ously We frequently seebudgets adjusted upwardfrom their spring marks andwhile that trend continueswith the current survey itdoes so with a very modestuptick of just 01 pointsLarger companies are show-ing a stronger recovery witha 51 change over 2010rsquosbudget Midsized organiza-tions saw a 21 rise whichis approximately half a pointhigher than a year agosmaller companies are still struggling with basically flat budgets that grew by only 04
Budget belt loosens just a bitRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Average storage budget $3 million
bull Small and large companiesrsquo storage budgets dip to $900000 and $82 million respectively midsized firms are steady at $26 million
bull Highest-ever recorded average storage budget was $34 million in 2006
KEY STATISTIC
Biggest year-over-year budget gain 52 reported in the fall of 2006
-20
-15
-10
-05
00
05
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Fall rsquo11Spring rsquo11Fall rsquo10Spring rsquo10Fall rsquo09Spring rsquo09Fall rsquo08Spring rsquo08Fall rsquo07Spring rsquo07
C
hang
e
37 39
2932
-19
-04
006
18 19
Storage budget change year over year
ABOUT THE STORAGE PURCHASING INTENTIONS SURVEYThe Storage magazineSearchStoragecom Purchasing Intentions survey is fielded twice ayear this is the ninth year the survey has been conducted Storage magazine subscribersand SearchStoragecom members are invited to participate in the survey which gathersinformation related to storage managersrsquo purchasing plans for a variety of storage productcategories This edition had 699 qualified respondents across a broad spectrum of industrieswith the average company size measured as having revenue of $14 billion
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
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bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
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See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
35 STORAGE October 2011
GOING BACK to our very firstStorage Purchasing Inten-tions survey nine years agodisks and disk subsystemshave always accounted for the biggest chunk ofstorage budgets This yearfollows form with 37 ofbudgets (the biggest slice by far) earmarked for storage systems The percentage has hovered in the high 30s to low 40sdespite dramatically declin-ing disk prices largely be-cause companies now needso much more disk (andother storage) to accommo-date off-the-chart datagrowth The average installeddisk capacity is 269 TB thehighest number wersquove seenin the three years wersquovebeen asking this questionFor 2011 storage managersexpect to add an average of42 TB of new disk capacityranging from 20 TB for smallcompanies up to 86 TB forenterprises
Disk storage systems take biggest biteout of budget
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
Capacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
Current installed disk capacity (TB)
Big companies
Midsized companies
Small companies
57
693
352
20
49
86
Current installed disk capacity (TB) pluscapacity to be added in 2011 (TB)
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull NAS is the most installed storage systemtype with 62 of respondents having those systems Fibre Channel (FC) SANs are close behind at 57 easily outdistancing block rival iSCSI (38)
bull Midrange systems continue to be the most popular with 44 of disk system budgets allocated to them
bull In 2006 59 said FC arrays would be their main disk spend on this survey 35 say theyrsquoll add drives to existing systems rather than buy new FC systems (17) a trend that emerged in 2007
KEY STATISTIC
33 will increase management softwarespending mainly to manage more with thesame staff
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
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bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
36 STORAGE October 2011
SOLID-STATE STORAGE hasmoved from ldquoexoticrdquo toldquopracticalrdquo in fairly short order While its incursioninto the hard disk market is still barely a blip on thestorage radar solid-statedevices are finding their way into more and more organizations and in a variety of implementationsTwenty-five percent of respondents currently usesolid-state storage ahealthy 10 points higher than last fall and nine points more than last spring Another 9 said they plan to implementsome solid-state storagethis year while 30 considerthemselves in the evaluationphase Among companiescurrently using solid-stateaverage installed capacity is 76 TB Besides cost wear out has been frequentlycited as another shortcom-ing of solid-state storagebut only 12 said this endurance issue has kept them from using solid-state
Solid-state storage making a mark
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Fall 2009
Fall 2011
Using SSD now
ImplementingSSD this year
Evaluating SSD
No SSD plans36
30
9
25
35
54
3
8
Currently using planning to use or evaluating solid-state storage
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Solid-state storage shows up most fre-quently in arrays (71) with server-based solid-state (43) a popular alternative
bull 58 of those not using solid-state cite its high cost 37 say their hard disks are doing just fine while 35 need more solid-state education
bull 27 report having more than 10 TB of solid-state installed
bull Those planning to buy more solid-state will add an average of 63 TB
KEY STATISTIC
Average installed solid-state storage capacityis 76 TB
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
37 STORAGE October 2011
YOUrsquoD BE HARD-PRESSED tofind many data storagemanagers who arenrsquot givingcloud storage service offer-ings a serious once-overbut it may be a little tougherto find companies ready tocommit to the cloud Wecontinue to see incrementalgrowth and sustained inter-est with approximately 21of those surveyed usingnon-backup cloud storageservices to some degreeTwo years ago only 14 said they were cloud usersso while the overall numbersmay still be somewhatsmall the growth is realDisaster recovery (DR) is the most popular applicationfor cloud storage while themost likely suspect remoteoffices continues to lagAmong companies thatarenrsquot yet using any cloudstorage services for primaryor near-line applicationsonly 54 flatly rule outadding cloud services although another 26 areuncertain if theyrsquoll add cloudto their storage mix
Cloud storage still hazy
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Spring 2010
Fall 2011
Disasterrecovery
Data centernear-line data
Data centerprimary data
Remote-officeonline data
2
8
8
11
3
4
4
6
Cloud storage services used for primaryor near-line storage applications
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Current cloud users are bullish with more than 90 planning to add more cloud storage services in 2011
bull 15 of non-cloud users plan to take the plunge by using cloud storage for DR
bull Although therersquos still some confusion about what constitutes an internal cloud 14 of respondents say they already have one and another 8 have implementations planned
bull While hybrid cloud configurations are getting a lot of attention only 6 are using them now
KEY STATISTIC
Current cloud storage users have an averageof 16 TB of data parked in the clouds
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
38 STORAGE October 2011
WITH NEARLY 100 penetrationfew data storage shopshave avoided the effects ofserver virtualization Mostcompanies (45) still favorFibre Channel storage fortheir virtual servers partlybecause the systems werealready installed but alsobecause of fears of inade-quate performance with other types of storage in demanding virtualized serverenvironments Desktop virtualization doesnrsquot havesuch wide implementationyet but we found a surprising47 of respondents have virtualized at least some of their desktops Desktop virtualizers also prefer FCstorage (45) over iSCSI(27) and NAS (25) Storagevirtualization still lurking in the shadows of server virtualization is growing at a more leisurely but steadypace Thirty-two percent have virtualized at least some block or file storage23 are evaluating it Among current storage virtualization users 18 say alltheir file storage is virtualized and 14 say the same of their block storage The preferred methods of storage virtualization are via a storage array (44)or with an appliance (42)
Virtual servers and virtual storage
We havent virtualized our serversDirect-attached storage (DAS)
NAS
iSCSI SAN
Fibre Channel SAN18
13
9
15
45
Main type of storage being used for virtualized servers
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull 63 use more storage now with virtual servers than before
bull 36 say server virtualization has made storage management tougher
bull 50 plan to buy new tools to better manage storage for virtual servers
KEY STATISTIC
15 say theyrsquoll buy an appliance to virtualizetheir storage in 2011
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
39 STORAGE October 2011
TAKE DISK-BASED BACKUPdeduplication virtual serversand cloud backup and youwould probably figure dataprotection doesnrsquot look any-thing like it did a few yearsago Well yes and noBackup tends to change veryslowly For example the ldquotapeis deadrdquo dirge is on continu-ous play but new tape techscontinue to emerge Yeswersquore using it lessmdash73 spinoff someall backups to tapevs 85 three years agomdashandlibraries are shrinking (an average 96 slots vs 150 fiveyears ago) but tape is still a key part of backup andarchiving And while dedupeseems like just another fea-ture by now not even one-third of our respondents areusing it today Virtual serverbackup is in the spotlight asbackup app vendors tap intoVMwarersquos APIs to make theprocess less painful but 35still just load a backup clientinto each VM Cloud backupadoption is slow too with28 using some form ofcloud backup a number thathas doubled vs three yearsago But itrsquos been up anddown the last two yearswhich might indicate moretinkering than commitment
Data protectionrsquos slow evolution
0 5 10 15 20
Fall 2008
Fall 2011
Otherapplications
Remote sites
Database apps
Desktop andnotebook files
User files
Email17
10
10
12
8
6
7
4
3
6
4
4
2011 vs 2008 Use of cloud backup services
RUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Most popular target for disk-based backup is a NAS system (45)
bull 29 use data deduplication in their backup process 34 plan to add it this year
bull 47 will increase spending on cloud backup services vs last year
bull ldquoNot comfortable sending our companyrsquos data into a public cloudrdquo is the top (34) reason for not using cloud backup
bull 18 say virtual server backup is too complicated 18 say they back up too much
KEY STATISTIC
46 of cloud backup users have more than 10TB of backup data stored in the cloud overallusers have an average of 16 TB of backup datain the cloud
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
40 STORAGE October 2011
Efficiency is still in vogueRUNNING THE NUMBERS
bull Overall 36 of those surveyed use some form of primary storage data reduction and 36 are evaluating it
bull 27 use automated storage tiering (AST) and 32 are evaluating it
bull Email archiving is used by 41 of respondents 40 use file system archivers
KEY STATISTIC
Multiprotocol arrays are used by 36 of respondents to gain storage capacity efficiencies
ONE OF THE lasting effects of the punishing economy is a new emphasis on effi-ciency Technologies like thin provisioning gained asolid foothold over the pastfew years while newertechs like primary datadeduplication and compres-sion are stirring up plenty of interest if not a lot ofproduct choices (yet) Datastorage tiering languishedwhen it was called informa-tion lifecycle management(ILM) but has taken on newlife as an enabler for the efficient use of solid-stateand spinning disk technolo-gies Data archivers typicallyimplemented for complianceand storage managementare used by 70 of respon-dent organizations and 48 are looking to add new dataarchiving capabilities thisyear 2
Rich Castagna (rcastagnastoragemagazinecom) is editorial director of the Storage Media Group
Plan
to b
uyEv
alua
ting
No p
lans
38
31
27
32
37
8
12
11
12
10
19
31
30
31
31
35
26
32
25
22
Storage efficiency techs gaining ground
Thin provisioning
Storage tiering
Primary storage data compression
Primary storage data deduplication
Data archiving
Alre
ady
impl
emen
ted
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
tSolid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
41 STORAGE October 2011
HE CLOUD TODAY is a veritable alphabet soup of choices And regardless ofthe cloud services option selected there are data protection implicationsto consider
First letrsquos understand what wersquore talking about Here are a few definitionsto get you started
bull Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a computing model in whichthe equipmentmdashincluding servers storage and networking componentsmdashused to support an organizationrsquos operations is hosted by a serviceprovider and made available to customers over a network typically the Internet The service provider owns the equipment and is responsible forhousing running and maintaining it In this model cloud resources are virtual rather than physical and can be consumed as needed rather thanon a contractual basis Payment is typically made on a per-use basis IaaSconsumers have no control over the underlying cloud technology
bull Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is the delivery of a computing platformand solution stack as a service End users leverage a PaaS to build anddeploy Web applicationsservices available over a network typically theInternet Basically PaaS provides the capability to build or deploy apps on top of IaaS
bull Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model inwhich applications are hosted by a vendor or service provider and madeavailable to customers over a network typically the Internet With SaaSconsumers outsource the entire underlying technology infrastructure to a SaaS provider and have no responsibility or management oversight forSaaS-based IT components
Research by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) found that 82 of surveyed
hot spots | lauren whitehouse
Data protection implications with cloud services
More and more companies are moving to a cloud model that allows them to outsource the underlying
cloud infrastructure and that model has widespread implications for end users and data protection
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
42 STORAGE October 2011
organizations have plans to leverage cloud-based services to some extentover the next five years Adoption of cloud deployment models varieshowever Today exclusive SaaS usage significantly outpaces exclusiveIaaS usage by a 5-to-1 margin While the current scope of SaaS usage isrelatively limited within most organizations a significant shift is expectedto occur over the next 36 months Specifically while 28 of organizationsdeliver more than 20 of applications using SaaS today nearly two-thirds(59) expect SaaS will be responsible for providing at least 20 of apps totheir users by 2014
When organizations move from a ldquobuyrdquo to a ldquoleaserdquo model there are implications for data protectionThe traditional model of on-site appdeployment means that IT organiza-tions are responsible for the infra-structure as well as the necessarypeople processes and technology toenable the redundancy and recoveryneeded to meet service-level agree-ments (SLAs) for applications anddata
Moving from an on-site Exchangeimplementation to Google Gmail forexample or choosing Salesforcecominstead of on-site Microsoft DynamicsCRM offloads the overhead of an in-house solution Eliminating backup servers storage backup software licensesand portable media are only some of the costs associated with a moveto the cloud The OpEx cost and time savings of displacing high availabilitybackuprecovery and disaster recovery (DR) processes could be significantdepending on the scope of the solution In fact the savings could greatly influence a decision to outsource
That said there are other considerations to evaluate Specifically will theservice provider do as good a job of meeting SLAs as in-house solutionspeople and processes Whatrsquos the amount of uptime theyrsquoll guaranteeWhat safeguards are implemented to meet them How frequently arecopies made How long are copies retained What are the parameters for restitution should service levels not be met
When answering these questions things like multi-tenancy which
While 28 of organizations delivermore than 20 ofapplications usingSaaS today nearlytwo-thirds (59)expect SaaS will be responsible forproviding at least20 of applicationsto their users by 2014
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
43 STORAGE October 2011
prevents co-mingling of data and encryption to ensure therersquos no unau-thorized access to data will provide some peace of mind But itrsquos clearmany IT professionals still arenrsquot convinced that corporate data residingoutside the corporate firewall is secure
Cloud service models are sure to be disruptive to the status quo over thenext few years Companies that embrace change and have a high-riskhigh-reward adoption profile are already dabbling with these delivery modelsOrganizations lagging in adoption will likely try the model using applicationswith a lower risk or less strategic stature Surprisingly according to ESGresearch customer relationship management (CRM) software and email arethe top applications companies are willing to apply when leveraging a SaaSmodel and these are often key productivity systems for companies
In the end IT practitioners may not have a choice Recent ESG researchindicates that the loudest advocates for SaaS within an organization arenon-IT executives and business unit owners More than 40 of survey re-spondents conceded that decisions regarding the use of alternative appli-cation delivery models are being mademdashor at the very least influencedmdashbytheir business constituents That means there will be continuing pressureto investigate cloud services to cut costs even while concerns about dataprotection persist And data storage managers will have to work with theirplatform and service providers to ensure key questions about data protec-tion are answered 2
Lauren Whitehouse is a senior analyst focusing on backup and recovery softwareand replication solutions at Enterprise Strategy Group Milford Mass
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
44 STORAGE October 2011
fIVE OR SO YEARS ago I wrote about the impact server virtualization andVMware in particular was going to have on data storage To me the picturewas clear VMware enabled features that were traditionally considered thepurview of storage It was also blurring the line of demarcation betweenserver and storage and clearly entering into space that storage vendorshad assumed for decades was theirs Little did I know how true my premo-nition would prove to be
Even before the announcement of vSphere 5 in July 2011 VMware hadchanged the notion of disaster recovery (DR) high availability (HA) and data protection Even though DR and HA involve more than storage theyrsquovegenerally been considered the responsibility of storage admins But withthe announcement of vSphere 5 the message is apparent VMware wantsyour storage business Peek a little more under the covers and yoursquoll findVMware wants 100 of your business if yoursquore a small- to medium-sizedbusiness (SMB) and if yoursquore an enterprise they want a shot at your remote-office and branch-office (ROBO) storage business
Letrsquos look at some specifics With vSphere 5 VMware announced thevSphere Storage Appliance The appliance is software you install on yourapplication servers that have internal storage or direct-attached storage(DAS) In a cluster of servers vSphere Storage Appliance virtualizes all the DAS storage to create a common pool In effect it converts DAS intostorage-area network (SAN) storage All the benefits of VMware includingvMotion Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) HA and data protection become available to this otherwise non-shared storage environment Forsmall and midsized companies VMware enables functionality that mayhave been economically out of reach otherwise
Another example of VMwarersquos aggressive push into storage is its an-
readwrite | arun taneja
Your new storage vendor might be VMware
VMwarersquos latest releases suggest it has serious intentionsabout encroaching on storage vendorsrsquo turf which
might be a wakeup call for the data storage industry
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
nouncement of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 50 With thisrelease VMware enables IP-based replication of virtual machines (VMs)within the data center as well as across metro and wide-area network(WAN) distances Prior to the 50 release SRM relied on replication func-tionality from the underlying storage It was simply an orchestration layerBut now itrsquos a complete DR solu-tion even for companies that mayhave lower end storage that lacksreplication capabilities And nowthe storage systems at the pri-mary site and the DR site donrsquothave to be identical they can be whatever the user choosesWithout injecting a storage virtualization engine storage-based replication has generally required homogeneous storage onboth sites making for a relativelyexpensive solution Not anymoreOnce again the message is clear If yoursquore a smaller company thathasnrsquot invested in million dollarstorage systems VMware can provide complete DR solutionswithout the cost and hassle of more complicated systems With this latestrelease VMware even added failback capability to SRM so applications canbe rolled back to the production site once the systems there are recovered
Even prior to the introduction of vSphere 5 VMware HA had enabled highavailability for applications within the physical server or between physicalservers Traditionally HA had required expensive clustering solutions thatonly a larger enterprise with the budget expertise and a specialized IT staffcould afford
The implications to the IT industry are profound For smaller enterprisesVMware now enables DR and other functionality they couldnrsquot even dreamabout before The implications are also significant for larger enterprises asthe new features may enable DR for tier 2 and tier 3 applications at littlecost With excellent recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery pointobjectives (RPOs) now attainable for all applications there will no longer
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
45 STORAGE October 2011
For smaller enterprisesVMware now enablesDR and other function-ality they couldnrsquot evendream about beforeThe implications arealso significant for larger enterprises asthe new features mayenable DR for tier 2and tier 3 applicationsat little cost
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
be excuses about DR and business continuity being practical only for tier 1applications It may also mean that even remote-office applications canbecome a consistent part of overall IT
The message for the data storage industry is loud and clear drive thefunctionality upwards or die If you focus only on the larger enterprisesVMware will take care of the smaller ones But fighting VMware isnrsquot theanswer for storage companies VMware is doing what any smart companywould do Theyrsquore shooting for the moon and while they will respect trueinnovation (and work with it) theyrsquoll cruise along the path of data center(not just server) virtualization
The biggest winner in this is you and your IT group Your ability to serveyour organizationrsquos business units has been improved by several notchesAnd if the storage industry feels the pressure and acts in a constructivemanner they might also be winners
PS I expect similar moves from Microsoft and Citrix but I suspecttheyrsquoll be less dramatic and less threatening to the storage industry 2
Arun Taneja is founder and president at Taneja Group an analyst and consultinggroup focused on storage and storage-centric server technologies He can bereached at arunttanejagroupcom
STORAGE
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
46 STORAGE October 2011
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
Storage tiering gets more sophisticated and automated Common wisdom says solid-state storagemdashbecause itrsquos such a hot performer butcosts a pretty pennymdashhas pushed IT shops to tier their storage resources Yes andno The number of firms tiering storage today is about the same as three years ago(55 vs 51) but tiering practices are getting more sophisticated with the additionof solid-state In 2008 16 said they used solid-state storage for tier 0 today 42have replaced spinning disks at the max tier Still most firms top out at tier 1 usingFibre Channel (FC) arrays with 37 using 4 Gbps FC and 26 tiering on 8 Gbps FCRegardless of what makes up your tiers the sheer number of tiers can be a criti-cal management factor Users have learned to keep it simple three years ago24 reported four or more tiers but now only 14 own up to so many Thatrsquosgood because 31 still use manual methods to move data among tiers 26 haveautomated and 39 say their tiering is somewhat automated mdashRich Castagna
ldquo The process really needs to be fully automated as the volume of data we are dealing with (13 PB) is beyond our capability to manually control fullyrdquo
mdashSurvey respondent
snapshot
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
47 STORAGE October 2011
75
How many tiers of disk storage do you use
TB of solid-state storage used for tier 0 on average
42
26
17
16
2011
2010
2009
2008
0 10 20 30 40 50
Do you use tier 0 or solid-state drive storage ( Yes)
Two 48
14Four or more
Three 38
Whatrsquos your biggest pain point relatedto your tiered storage system
21 Classifying data so that itrsquos sent to the right tier
19 Moving data between tiers
18 Establishing policies that determine data movement
16 Poor performance on lower tiers
14 Keeping track of where data currently resides
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
Solid-state ismainstream
Virtual desktopsand storage
SSD status report
Whatrsquos new instorage networks
Storage shopsrsquobuying plans
Cloud servicesdata protection
VMware Newstorage vendor
Smarter tiering
Sponsorresources
48 STORAGE October 2011
STORAGE
COMING IN
NovemberOverpaid Underpaid
or Just RightFor the ninth year in a row we surveystorage professionals to see how theirsalaries and benefits stack up Ourexclusive survey includes analysis of such key factors as educationexperience specialization geographiclocation and industry segments
NAS System Buying DecisionsFile storage is growing at a faster pacethan for any other kind of storage socompanies are adding more and biggerNAS systems than ever before In thisguide wersquoll highlight the newest fea-tures of leading NAS systems andoffer suggestions to help ensure youget the system that will best satisfyyour companyrsquos file storage needs
Disaster Recovery ReadinessMonitoring Apps
Putting together a disaster recovery(DR) plan can be an arduous processand testing a plan is often difficulttime-consuming and expensive A newclass of application can offer somemuch-needed help These DR monitorsdonrsquot replace real testing but they canscour your systems and find the gapsin your DR planning
And donrsquot miss our monthly columnsand commentary or the results of
our Snapshot reader survey
TechTarget Storage Media Group
Vice President of Editorial Mark SchlackEditorial Director Rich Castagna
Senior Managing Editor Kim HefnerExecutive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrien
Creative Director Maureen JoyceContributing Editors
Tony Asaro James Damoulakis Steve Duplessie Jacob Gsoedl W Curtis Preston
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienSenior News Director Dave RaffoSenior News Writer Sonia R Lelii
Senior Writer Carol SliwaSenior Managing Editor Kim HefnerAssociate Site Editor Megan Kellett
Assistant Site Editor Rachel KossmanEditorial Assistant Hillary OrsquoRourke
Executive Editor Ellen OrsquoBrienAssistant Site Editor Rachel Kossman
Senior Site Editor Andrew BurtonManaging Editor Heather Darcy
Assistant Site Editor John HilliardFeatures Writer Todd Erickson
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyAssistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
Senior Site Editor Sue TroyUK Bureau Chief Antony Adshead
Assistant Site Editor Francesca Sales
TechTarget Conferences
Director of Editorial Events Lindsay JeanlozEditorial Events Associate Jacquelyn Hinds
Storage magazine Subscriptions wwwSearchStoragecom
Storage magazine275 Grove Street Newton MA 02466
editorstoragemagazinecom
STORAGE
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 4
bull Storage Management
bull Preventing Data Overload
See ad page 32
bull The Benefits of Modernizing Your Data Protection
bull Osterman Research The Risks of Social Media
See ad page 8
bull Fluid Data Storage A How To Guide
bull 7 Ways Compellent Optimizes VMware Server Virtualization
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
SPONSOR RESOURCES
bull Strategies to Decrease Overall Storage Solution Costs in WMware Environments
bull Optimizing Storage for Server Virtualization Why an Enterprise-Class Fully-VirtualizediSCSI SAN is more Cost Effective than Legacy NAS SAN and DAS in Virtual Server Environments
bull Case Study Boston Medical Center cuts data center power bill by 50 and saves up to$32 million with virtualized storage server and desktop solutions
bull FalconStor NSS Virtual Appliance 30-day trial
bullWAN-optimized Replication Built into FalconStor Solutions
bull Global Application and SAN Acceleration with Solid-state Storage
bull The Value of Storage Virtualization
bull AIIM Case Study
See ad page 17
bull Confidently maximize virtual investments with IBM Integrated Service Management
bull Analyst Whitepaper Storage-efficient Data Protection and Retention
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 12
bull Guide to Improving Your Tape Storage Practices
See ad page 27
bull Deduplication for Dummies
bull Quantum Targets Disk-Based Backup Price-Performance Leadership with New DXi 20
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria
SPONSOR RESOURCES
See ad page 22
bull Optimizing Information Management in the Cloud
bull Cloud and Midmarket Success Criteria