The window below uses a presentation tool called Prezi. Just use the arrow keys to step back and forth through the presentation or click the play button. You can also navigate the graph yourself.

 

 

The window below uses a presentation tool called Prezi. Just use the arrow keys to step back and forth through the presentation or click the play button. You can also navigate the graph yourself.

 

Are you considering deploying an iSCSI storage network, and would like to learn some of the best practices of configuring the environment, from host to storage? Well, now you can learn from an expert. The SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum will be sponsoring a live webcast with our guest speaker, Dennis Martin from Demartek. Dennis will share first-hand expertise and actionable best practices to effectively deploy iSCSI storage networks. A live Q&A will also be included. It doesn't matter if you have a large, medium or small environment, Dennis will provide application specific recommendations that you won't want to miss. When: April 21^st Time: 8:00 am PT / 11:00 am ET Free registration: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/26785 The SNIA ESF has several other web events planned for the rest of this calendar year.   Let us know what topics are important to you. We want to make these events highly educational.

Are you considering deploying an iSCSI storage network, and would like to learn some of the best practices of configuring the environment, from host to storage? Well, now you can learn from an expert. The SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum will be sponsoring a live webcast with our guest speaker, Dennis Martin from Demartek. Dennis will share first-hand expertise and actionable best practices to effectively deploy iSCSI storage networks. A live Q&A will also be included. It doesn’t matter if you have a large, medium or small environment, Dennis will provide application specific recommendations that you won’t want to miss.

When: April 21^st

Time: 8:00 am PT / 11:00 am ET

Free registration: http://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/26785

The SNIA ESF has several other web events planned for the rest of this calendar year.  Let us know what topics are important to you. We want to make these events highly educational.

The SNIA co-sponsors the Storage Networking World (SNW) conference twice a year. At the Spring 2011 SNW show, the CDMI specification was updated to version 1.0.1h (online at http://cdmi.sniacloud_com.com) and the first commercial implementation of CDMI was announced.

The SNIA also put out a press release on the latest developments and progress that CDMI has made, including some new research results:

SNIA is establishing relationships with National and
International Standards Groups; Recent Market Research Reveals
CDMI will be Mainstream in RFPs

Santa Clara, Calif. (April 4th, 2011) — The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI), today announced that the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), released as an official SNIA Architecture one year ago, continues to make significant steps toward broad acceptance.

“A critical part of delivering an industry wide standard is building a strong ecosystem of partners, alliances and supporting programs,” said David Slik, Co–Chair of SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Work Group. “As demonstrated by initiating relationships with nationally and internationally recognized standards bodies and our forthcoming CDMI Plugfest, we are making strong progress around delivering not only a strong standard, but a widely accepted and valued one.”

SNIA’s CDMI standard has been refined over the past year and is now being readied for further de jure standardization. The SNIA has joined the DAPS38 Technical Committee (which is responsible for Cloud Computing, among other technology standards) of INCITS – the primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The SNIA has also requested a Category A Liaison relationship with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC38 subcommittee for Distributed Application Platforms and Services (DAPS).

CDMI has been citied in numerous cloud roadmaps and studies, including those from ITU–T (International Telecommunication Union), TeleManagement Forum, SIENA (the European Standards and Interoperability for eInfrastructure Implementation Initiative), and NIST (the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology). The maturing CDMI Reference Implementation has been through initial testing of the NIST SAJACC (Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart Adoption of Cloud Computing) use cases..

SNIA CSI 2011 sponsored activities include Plugfests , with the first taking place April 19–21, 2011 at the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Cloud Plugfest allows vendors to bring their implementations of CDMI and the Open Grid Forum’s Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) to test, identify, and fix bugs in a collaborative setting with the goal of providing a forum in which companies can develop interoperable products. For additional details on participating in the Cloud Plugfest, please visit www.snia.org/cloud/cloudplugfest/ .

SNIA CSI will repeat its “SNIA Cloud Burst Summit” in Santa Clara, California, on September 22, 2011 as an extended program with the SNIA Storage Developer Conference (SDC). In 2010, over 100 attendees participated in the Cloud Burst Summit, joining other cloud strategists and deployment professionals in this highly successful inaugural program that featured noted industry luminary Geoffrey Moore as the keynote speaker on the topic of clouds and IT transformation.

SNIA CSI has also partnered with Storage Strategies NOW to help bring to market research that will help inform the industry of the key insights around cloud storage. This information, which can be found in the IT Professionals Cloud Adoption Survey released today, will provide a valuable service to help users, vendors and the industry at–large track how adoption and use of cloud technologies should be considered. To learn more, visit www.ssg–now.com.

Deni Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW added, “Our findings include that Email (66%) is the primary application for cloud storage, followed by backup (59%) and front office applications (45%). Additionally, 53% say that SNIA’s CDMI will be part of cloud storage RFPs/proposals; and 30% of respondents say SNIA’s CDMI is very important for public/hybrid cloud standard”.

Deni Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW added, “Our findings include that Email (66%) is the primary application for cloud storage, followed by backup (59%) and front office applications (45%). Additionally, 53% say that SNIA’s CDMI will be part of cloud storage RFPs/proposals; and 30% of respondents say SNIA’s CDMI is very important for public/hybrid cloud standard”.

To learn more about SNIA and CSI stop by the SNIA CSI Cloud Pavilion on Tuesday and Wednesday during SNW Expo Hall hours.

About the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative
The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) fosters the growth and success of the market for cloud storage for vendors, service providers, and users. Members of the CSI work together to advance the adoption of the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) standard, educate the IT communities about cloud storage, perform market outreach that highlights the virtues of cloud storage, and collaborate with other industry associations on cloud storage technical work. CSI member companies represent a variety of segments in the IT industry and include Actifio, Asigra, Broadcom, CA Technologies, Cisco, Cleversafe, CoreVault, Desktone, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Iron Mountain, LSI Corporation, Mezeo, NetApp, Novell, Oracle, Scality, Sepaton, SpectraLogic, StorSimple, SwiftTest, Terasky, Terremark, and Xiotech. For more information on SNIA’s Cloud Storage activities, visit snia.org/cloud and get involved in the conversation at twitter.com/sniacloud_com or http://groups.google.com/group/snia-cloud.

About SNIA
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not–for–profit global organization, made up of some 400 member companies spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA’s mission is to lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For additional information, visit the SNIA web site at www.snia.org.

The SNIA co-sponsors the Storage Networking World (SNW) conference twice a year. At the Spring 2011 SNW show, the CDMI specification was updated to version 1.0.1h (online at http://cdmi.sniacloud_com.com) and the first commercial implementation of CDMI was announced.

The SNIA also put out a press release on the latest developments and progress that CDMI has made, including some new research results:

SNIA is establishing relationships with National and
International Standards Groups; Recent Market Research Reveals
CDMI will be Mainstream in RFPs

Santa Clara, Calif. (April 4th, 2011) — The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI), today announced that the Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI), released as an official SNIA Architecture one year ago, continues to make significant steps toward broad acceptance.

“A critical part of delivering an industry wide standard is building a strong ecosystem of partners, alliances and supporting programs,” said David Slik, Co–Chair of SNIA Cloud Storage Technical Work Group. “As demonstrated by initiating relationships with nationally and internationally recognized standards bodies and our forthcoming CDMI Plugfest, we are making strong progress around delivering not only a strong standard, but a widely accepted and valued one.”

SNIA’s CDMI standard has been refined over the past year and is now being readied for further de jure standardization. The SNIA has joined the DAPS38 Technical Committee (which is responsible for Cloud Computing, among other technology standards) of INCITS – the primary U.S. focus of standardization in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The SNIA has also requested a Category A Liaison relationship with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC38 subcommittee for Distributed Application Platforms and Services (DAPS).

CDMI has been citied in numerous cloud roadmaps and studies, including those from ITU–T (International Telecommunication Union), TeleManagement Forum, SIENA (the European Standards and Interoperability for eInfrastructure Implementation Initiative), and NIST (the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology). The maturing CDMI Reference Implementation has been through initial testing of the NIST SAJACC (Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart Adoption of Cloud Computing) use cases..

SNIA CSI 2011 sponsored activities include Plugfests , with the first taking place April 19–21, 2011 at the SNIA Technology Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The Cloud Plugfest allows vendors to bring their implementations of CDMI and the Open Grid Forum’s Open Cloud Computing Interface (OCCI) to test, identify, and fix bugs in a collaborative setting with the goal of providing a forum in which companies can develop interoperable products. For additional details on participating in the Cloud Plugfest, please visit www.snia.org/cloud/cloudplugfest/ .

SNIA CSI will repeat its “SNIA Cloud Burst Summit” in Santa Clara, California, on September 22, 2011 as an extended program with the SNIA Storage Developer Conference (SDC). In 2010, over 100 attendees participated in the Cloud Burst Summit, joining other cloud strategists and deployment professionals in this highly successful inaugural program that featured noted industry luminary Geoffrey Moore as the keynote speaker on the topic of clouds and IT transformation.

SNIA CSI has also partnered with Storage Strategies NOW to help bring to market research that will help inform the industry of the key insights around cloud storage. This information, which can be found in the IT Professionals Cloud Adoption Survey released today, will provide a valuable service to help users, vendors and the industry at–large track how adoption and use of cloud technologies should be considered. To learn more, visit www.ssg–now.com.

Deni Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW added, “Our findings include that Email (66%) is the primary application for cloud storage, followed by backup (59%) and front office applications (45%). Additionally, 53% say that SNIA’s CDMI will be part of cloud storage RFPs/proposals; and 30% of respondents say SNIA’s CDMI is very important for public/hybrid cloud standard”.

Deni Connor, principal analyst, Storage Strategies NOW added, “Our findings include that Email (66%) is the primary application for cloud storage, followed by backup (59%) and front office applications (45%). Additionally, 53% say that SNIA’s CDMI will be part of cloud storage RFPs/proposals; and 30% of respondents say SNIA’s CDMI is very important for public/hybrid cloud standard”.

To learn more about SNIA and CSI stop by the SNIA CSI Cloud Pavilion on Tuesday and Wednesday during SNW Expo Hall hours.

About the SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative
The SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) fosters the growth and success of the market for cloud storage for vendors, service providers, and users. Members of the CSI work together to advance the adoption of the SNIA Cloud Data Management Interface (CDMI) standard, educate the IT communities about cloud storage, perform market outreach that highlights the virtues of cloud storage, and collaborate with other industry associations on cloud storage technical work. CSI member companies represent a variety of segments in the IT industry and include Actifio, Asigra, Broadcom, CA Technologies, Cisco, Cleversafe, CoreVault, Desktone, EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, Iron Mountain, LSI Corporation, Mezeo, NetApp, Novell, Oracle, Scality, Sepaton, SpectraLogic, StorSimple, SwiftTest, Terasky, Terremark, and Xiotech. For more information on SNIA’s Cloud Storage activities, visit snia.org/cloud and get involved in the conversation at twitter.com/sniacloud_com or http://groups.google.com/group/snia-cloud.

About SNIA
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a not–for–profit global organization, made up of some 400 member companies spanning virtually the entire storage industry. SNIA’s mission is to lead the storage industry worldwide in developing and promoting standards, technologies, and educational services to empower organizations in the management of information. To this end, the SNIA is uniquely committed to delivering standards, education, and services that will propel open storage networking solutions into the broader market. For additional information, visit the SNIA web site at www.snia.org.

The best way to get flash memory into computers isn’t to replace HDDs but to augment them.  For a vast majority of computer users the amount of storage they need is beyond what they can afford with flash memory alone.  This trend is liable not to change in the future even as the costs of flash memory go down because HDDs will increase in storage capacity  as well and the storage requirements of these users will increase as least as fast or perhaps even faster.   However, these users would love to get a higher performing computer and putting some flash memory in combination with a hard disk drive could be a very attractive means to do this. Hybrid HDDs that include some flash memory in the HDD are one approach but flash memory can also be installed in a computer motherboard or installed as a second drive.   A recent report from Coughlin Associates and Objective  Analysis explores these hybrid and paired storage and memory architectures.  The main requirement to accomplish the performance and cost advantages of a paired storage systems in managing what is stored on the flash memory, and what on the hard disk drive.  There are several software tools described in the report to provide this storage management.  Paired and hybrid storage can also reduce system power use. The combination of flash memory and HDDs is so compelling that the authors project a 53% adoption rate in desktop computers and a 25% adoption rate in notebook computers by 2016.  Furthermore, today’s media tablets will not provide for the needs of many business and power users who would like mobile products with more capability than can be provided by today’s tablets.  This will lead to a new category of “fat tablet” computers that combine some flash memory with hard disk drives as well as other enhancements to meet this market need.  The report projects that 40% of the total tablet market will be “fat tablets” by 2016. The report can be ordered from Coughlin Associates at:  http://www.tomcoughlin.com/techpapers.htm.

SSSI will be in booth 616 at Storage Networking World in the Santa Clara Convention Center on April 5-6.  The booths are open 12:30-3:00PM and 5:30-7:30PM on Tuesday, plus 11:00AM-3:00PM on Wednesday. The SSSI booth will feature a demonstration of the Performance Test Specification by Calypso on their tester.  White papers and other information on SSDs will be available as well. SSSI has been working with Storage Strategies NOW (www.ssg-now.com) on a survey about solid state storage technology adoption, practice, and deployment.  We’ll have copies of the survey in the booth or it can be completed on-line at http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/476489/Solid-State-and-High-Speed-Memory-Adoption-Practice-and-Deployment.  Qualified responses will receive a $7.50 Amazon gift card or have the option to have it donated to the Red Cross Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund. Come to SNW and ask SSSI about SSDs.

by: Gary Gumanow

Last Wednesday (2/24/11), I hosted an Ethernet Storage Forum iSCSI SIG webinar with representatives from Emulex and NetApp to discuss the benefits of iSCSI storage networks in SQL application environments. You can catch a recording of the webcast on BrightTalk here.

The webinar was well attended, and while we received so many great questions during the webinar we just didn’t have time to answer all of them. Which brings us to this blogpost. We have included answers to these unanswered questions in our blog below.
We’ll be hosting another webinar real soon, so please check back for upcoming ESF iSCSI SIG topics. You’ll be able to register for this event shortly on BrightTalk.com.

Let’s get to the questions. We took the liberty of editing the questions for clarity. Please feel free to comment if we misinterpreted the question.

Question: Is TRILL needed in the data center to avoid pausing of traffic while extending the number of links that can be used?

Answer: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has developed a new shortest path frame Layer 2 (L2) routing protocol for multi-hop environments. The new protocol is called Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links, or TRILL. TRILL will enable multipathing for L2 networks and remove the restrictions placed on data center environments by STP single-path networks.

Although TRILL may serve as an alternative to STP, it doesn’t require that STP be removed from an Ethernet infrastructure. Hybrid solutions that use both STP and TRILL are not only possible but also will be the norm for at least the near-term future. TRILL will also not automatically eliminate the risk of a single point of failure, especially in hybrid environments.

Another area where TRILL is not expected to play a role is the routing of traffic across L3 routers. TRILL is expected to operate within a single subnet. While the IETF draft standard document mentions the potential for tunneling data, it is unlikely that TRILL will evolve in a way that will expand its role to cover cross-L3 router traffic. Existing and well-established protocols such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) and Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) cover these areas and are expected to continue to do so.

In summary, TRILL will help multipathing for L2 networks.

Question: How do you calculate bandwidth when you only have IOPS?
Answer: The mathematical formula to calculate bandwidth is a function of IOPS and I/O size. The formula is simply IOP x I/O size. Example: 10,000 IOPS x 4k block size (4096 bytes) = 40.9 MB/sec.

Question: When deploying FCoE, must all 10GbE switches support Data Center Bridging (DCB) and FCoE? Or can some pass through FCoE?
Answer: Today, in order to deploy FCoE, all switches in the data path must support both FCoE forwarding and DCB. Future standards include proposals to allow pass through of FCoE commands without having to support Fibre Channel services. This will allow for more cost effective networks where not all switch layers are needed to support the FCoE storage protocol.
Question: iSCSI performance is comparable to FC and FCoE. Do you expect to see iSCSI overtake FC in the near future?
Answer: FCoE deployments are still very small compared to traditional Fibre Channel and iSCSI. However, industry projections by several analyst firms indicate that Ethernet storage protocols, such as iSCSI and FCoE, will overtake traditional Fibre Channel due to increased focus on shared data center infrastructures to address applications, such as private and public clouds. But, even the most aggressive forecasts don’t show this cross over for several years from now.
Customers looking to deploy new data centers are more likely today to consider iSCSI than in the past. Customers with existing Fibre Channel investments are likely to transition to FCoE in order to extend the investment of their existing FC storage assets. In either case, transitioning to 10Gb Ethernet with DCB capability offers the flexibility to do both.

Question: With 16Gb/s FC ratified, what product considerations would be considered by disk manufacturers?
Answer: We can’t speak to what disk manufacturers will or won’t do regarding 16Gb/s disks. But, the current trend is to move away from Fibre Channel disk drives in favor of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and SATA disks as well as SSDs. 16Gb Fibre Channel will be a reality and will play in the data center. But, the prediction of some vendors is that the adoption rate will be much slower than previous generations.
Question: Why move to 10GbE if you have 8Gb Fibre Channel? The price is about the same, right?
Answer: If your only network requirement is block storage, then Fibre Channel provides a high performance network to address that requirement. However, if you have a mixture of networking needs, such as NAS, block storage, and LAN, then moving to 10GbE provides sufficient bandwidth and flexibility to support multiple traffic types with fewer resources and with lower overall cost.
Question: Is the representation of number of links accurate when comparing Ethernet to Fibre Channel. Your overall bandwidth of the wire may be close, but when including protocol overheads, the real bandwidth isn’t an accurate comparison. Example: FC protocol overhead is only 5% vs TCP at 25%. iSCSI framing adds another 4%. So your math on how many FC cables equal 10 Gbps cables is not a fair comparison.

Answer: As pointed out in the question, comparing protocol performance requires more than just a comparison of wire rates of the physical transports. Based upon protocol efficiency, one could conclude that the comparison between FC and TCP/IP is unfair as designed because Fibre Channel should have produced greater data throughput from a comparable wire rate. However, the data in this case shows that iSCSI offers comparable performance in a real world application environment, rather than just a benchmark test. The focus of the presentation was iSCSI. FCoE and FC were only meant to provide a reference points. The comparisons were not intended to be exact nor precise. 10GbE and iSCSI offers the performance to satisfy business critical performance requirements. Customers looking to deploy a storage network should consider a proof of concept to ensure that a new solution can satisfy their specific application requirements.

Question: Two FC switches were used during this testing. Was it to solve an operation risk of no single point of failure?
Answer: The use of two switches was due to hardware limitation. Each switch had 8-ports and the test required 8 ports at the target and the host. Since this was a lab setup, we weren’t configuring for HA. However, the recommendation for any production environment would be to use redundant switches. This would apply for iSCSI storage networks as well.
Question: How can iSCSI match all the distributed management and security capabilities of Fibre Channel / FCoE such as FLOGI, integrated name server, zoning etc?
Answer: The feature lists between the two protocols don’t match exactly. The point of this presentation was to point out that iSCSI is closing the performance gap and has enough high-end features to make it enterprise-ready.
Question: How strong is the possibility that 40G Ethernet will be bypassed, with a move directly from 10G to 100G?
Answer: Vendors are shipping products today that support 40Gb Ethernet so it seems clear that there will be a 40GbE. Time will tell if customers bypass 40GbE and wait for 100GbE.

Thanks again for checking out our blog. We hope to have you on our next webinar live, but if not, we’ll be updating this blog frequently.

Gary Gumanow – iSCSI SIG Co-chairman, ESF Marketing Chair

The white paper "Two May be Better than One: Why Hard Disk Drives and Flash Belong Together" has been posted at http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi/knowledge/education/.  The paper discusses the use of both solid state storage and HDDs in the same system.  Specific mention is made of Paired Storage, a configuration where a small SSD allows fast boot up and quick access to frequently used files and the HDD provides high capacity at a low cost per GB.