The inexorable growth of the market for Ethernet storage continued in the first half of 2010 – in fact we’re getting very close to Ethernet storage being the majority of networked storage in the Enterprise.

According to IDC’s recent Q2 2010 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, Ethernet Storage (NAS plus iSCSI) revenue market share climbed to 45%, up from 39% in 2009, 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007, as shown below.

	2007	2008	2009	Q2 2010
FC SAN	72%	68%	61%	55%
iSCSI SAN	6%	10%	13%	15%
NAS	22%	22%	26%	30%

In terms of capacity market share, we have already see the crossover point, with Ethernet Storage at 52% of the total PB shipped, up from 47% in 2009, 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007, as shown in the following table.

	2007	2008	2009	Q2 2010
FC SAN	62%	58%	53%	48%
iSCSI SAN	8%	13%	15%	18%
NAS	29%	29%	32%	34%

The inexorable growth of the market for Ethernet storage continued in the first half of 2010 - in fact we're getting very close to Ethernet storage being the majority of networked storage in the Enterprise.

According to IDC's recent Q2 2010 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, Ethernet Storage (NAS plus iSCSI) revenue market share climbed to 45%, up from 39% in 2009, 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007, as shown below.

	2007	2008	2009	Q2 2010
FC SAN	72%	68%	61%	55%
iSCSI SAN	6%	10%	13%	15%
NAS	22%	29%	26%	30%

In terms of capacity market share, we have already see the crossover point, with Ethernet Storage at 52% of the total PB shipped, up from 47% in 2009, 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007, as shown in the following table.

	2007	2008	2009	Q2 2010
FC SAN	62%	58%	53%	48%
iSCSI SAN	8%	13%	15%	18%
NAS	29%	29%	32%	34%

The inexorable growth of the market for Ethernet storage continued in the first half of 2010 – in fact we’re getting very close to Ethernet storage being the majority of networked storage in the Enterprise.

According to IDC’s recent Q2 2010 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, Ethernet Storage (NAS plus iSCSI) revenue market share climbed to 45%, up from 39% in 2009, 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007, as shown below.

	2007	2008	2009	Q2 2010
FC SAN	72%	68%	61%	55%
iSCSI SAN	6%	10%	13%	15%
NAS	22%	29%	26%	30%

In terms of capacity market share, we have already see the crossover point, with Ethernet Storage at 52% of the total PB shipped, up from 47% in 2009, 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007, as shown in the following table.

	2007	2008	2009	Q2 2010
FC SAN	62%	58%	53%	48%
iSCSI SAN	8%	13%	15%	18%
NAS	29%	29%	32%	34%

DISKCON USA 2010 - Santa Clara, CA September 9 & 10, 2010 - Conference and Trade show, Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara, CA Keynote Dinner - September 9, 2010 - Santa Clara Convention Center, Ballrooms E&F, 6pm No Host Cocktails and 7pm Dinner Announcing our Keynote Dinner Speaker - Clod Barrera, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Technical Strategist for IBM's Systems Storage, "The Innovator's Dream - Storage Systems in an Age of New Requirements and New Technology" Exhibit hours: Thu 10 am - 5 pm; Fri 10 am - 4 pm Note: SNIA SSSI members will speak at the following times: Tom Coughlin - Friday, September 10, 2010 # 1:15pm - 4:30pm # Futures of Storage Tom Coughlin, Eden Kim - Friday, September 10, 2010 # 9:00am - 12:00noon # Market Analyst Session # Dr. Tom Coughlin, Founder & President, Coughlin & Associates: Invest in New Technologies or Divest in Market Share: Hard Disk Drive and Component Companies Face a Critical Decision to Grow or Die #Eden Kim, CEO, Calypso Systems, Inc.: Calypso 2010 Blind Survey of SSD Performance #Esther Spanjer, Director, SSD Technical Marketing, SMART Modular Technologies - Poster Session: Enterprise SSD vs. Client SSD

Calypso recently presented an Industry Blind Survey of SSD Performance at the Flash Memory Summit. The survey compared (9) MLC, (8) SLC, and (1) 15K RPM SAS HDD.  The Chart shows all sample drives at RND 4K IOPS x Block Size for 65:35 R/W mix.  Small Blocks are in the back, large Blocks are in the front, IOPS are the Y axis.  This Chart clearly shows the general Steady State performance of SLC and MLC SSDs while referencing a 15K RPM SAS HDD. Take aways?  There is a lot of variance in performance between SSDs, but it is nice to see an apples to apples comparison on a Device Level.  RND 4K IOPS at a 65:35 R/W mix is a good corner case benchmark.  All  numbers are Steady State and comply with the recently released SNIA SSS Performance Test Specification.   All measurements were taken on the SNIA compliant Calypso Reference Test Platform.

Few weeks ago I was invited to present the state of the pNFS to the Purdue University. They are interested to be one of the early adopters and I jumped on that opportunity to promote pNFS. The presentation included the deep dive in the protocol and the need for scalability and I continued with the current state of the protocol and the initial client implementations in Linux and Open Solaris. The presentation and the discussion that followed addressed some basic questions that I expected around why should users trust that NFSv4.1/pNFS will not have the same faith as NFSv4.0. This is a legitimate question that often the pNFS developers in Linux ask themselves and the answer that I gave was same as the developers; pNFS will address many of the HPC needs. After additional details on scalability, performance, availability all the people in the room agreed that it is worth to look closer at pNFS. I recommended them to start looking at the current Fedora distribution that has both server and client pNFS file layout. As Purdue is a heavy Lustre user, they further asked how would Lustre support pNFS. If you didn't know, there are patches available for Lustre to support pNFS. I introduced Purdue team to the chief developer of Lustre so they can be the first to test the prototype patches. This will help the promotion of pNFS in academia. We need to continue our team effort to promote everywhere in universities pNFS.

by Gary Gumanow Following up from the previous blogpost on iSCSI over DCB, this blogpost highlights just some of the benefits that DCB can deliver. Welcome back. DCB extends Ethernet by providing a network infrastructure that virtually eliminates packet loss, enabling improved data networking and management within the DCB network environment with features for priority flow control (P802.1Qbb), enhanced transmission selection (P802.1Qaz), congestion notification (P802.1Qau), and discovery. The result is a more deterministic network behavior. DCB is enabled through enhanced switches, server network adapters, and storage targets. DCB delivers a "lossless" network, and makes the network performance extremely predictable. While standard Ethernet performs very well, its performance varies slightly (see graphic). With DCB, the maximum performance is the same, but performance varies very little. This is extremely beneficial for data center managers, enabling them to better predict performance levels and deliver smooth traffic flows. In fact, when under test, DCB eliminates packet re-transmission because of dropped packets making not only the network more efficient, but the host servers as well. SEGREGATING AND PRIORITIZING TRAFFIC In the past, storage networking best practice recommendations included physically separating data network from storage network traffic. Today's servers commonly have quad-port GbE adapters to ensure sufficient bandwidth, so segregating traffic has been easy - for example, two ports can be assigned for storage networks and two for data networks. In some cases these Ethernet adapters aggregate ports together to deliver even greater throughput for servers. With the onslaught of virtualization in the data center today, consolidated server environments have a different circumstance. Using virtualization software can simplify connectivity with multiple 10 GbE server adapters - consolidating bandwidth instead of distributing it among multiple ports and a tangle of wires. These 10 GbE adapters handle all the traffic - database, web, management, and storage - improving infrastructure utilization rates. But with traffic consolidated on fewer larger connections, how does IT segregate the storage and data networks, prioritize traffic, and guarantee service levels? Data Center Bridging includes prioritization functionality, which improves management of traffic flowing over fewer, larger pipes. In addition to setting priority queues, DCB can allocate portions of bandwidth. For example, storage traffic can be configured as higher priority than web traffic - but the administrator can allocate 60% of bandwidth to the storage traffic and 40% to the Web, ensuring operations and predictable performance for all. Thanks again for checking back here at this blog. Hopefully, you find this information useful and a good use of your last four minutes, and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know. Regards, Gary

Given that it’s the middle of summer it may be hot where you are, but the SNIA Cloud activities are heating up for the remainder of this year, and you don’t want to be left out.

SNIA Summer Symposium

At the end of July every year SNIA hosts a Symposium in San Jose for all the groups. The Cloud Storage TWG will be meeting from Monday afternoon through Thursday morning. The agenda is posted publicly and non-SNIA members are encouraged to attend.

Also at the Symposium Monday night is a Birds of Feather (BOF) session where we will be doing a demo of CDMI and OCCI working together in a common infrastructure. There will be time for details on the implementation and discussion afterward.

Thursday morning will be a special session to update folks on the SNIA Cloud activities for the remainder of the year. Besides the in person session at the Symposium, the session will also be broadcast as an online Webinar for folks who cannot make it in person. More information and a registration link is available on the SNIA Website.

Storage Developer Conference

In September will be the annual Storage Developer Conference (SDC) and this year Cloud is a big part of the agenda. There will be a CDMI Plugfest throughout the week, a Cloud Hands on Lab for developers, and Cloud Tracks all week including some big cloud related keynotes. But *wait* there’s more. Following SDC at the same hotel on Thursday September 23rd will be the…

SNIA Cloud Burst Event

This is an event that is squarely focused on Cloud Storage and brings together end users, cloud providers and storage vendors for a unique experience including demos, a showcase and in depth sessions on this part of the overall cloud industry. More information is available on the Cloud Burst page.

Storage Networking World

For the past two SNWs, there has been a Cloud Pavilion with great traffic and interest from the attendees for those that participate. At this fall’s SNW in Dallas, we will repeat this successful program with a limited number of slots. In addition we will again have a hands on lab for cloud that is always well attended (by end users only). If you are looking for a speaking opportunity, please consider being a sponsor of the cloud summit at SNW where end users come to learn about the cloud and the offerings that are available.

SNW Europe

Last year SNW Europe was a huge success for the SNIA Cloud Participants, with a year over year increase in record attendance. This year will see an increasing set of activities around the cloud, including a new Cloud Pavilion and Hands on Labs. There are a limited number of slots for these and they will sell out early. Included is an opportunity for a speaking engagement as well.

“Membership has it’s privileges”

Many of these opportunities are open only to Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) member companies. The membership fees help to fund these activities for the members and augment the work of the volunteers with paid resources. If you can help get your company involved, please contact Marty Foltyn (marty@bitsprings.com) for more information.

SSS Performance Test Specification Coming Soon A new Performance Test Specification (PTS) for solid state storage is about to be released for Public Technical Review by the SNIA SSSI and SSS TWG.  The SNIA PTS is a device level performance specification for solid state storage testing that sets forth standard terminologies, metrics, methodologies, tests and reporting for NAND Flash based SSDs.  SNIA plans to release the final PTS v 1.0 later this year as a SNIA architecture tracking for INCITS and ANSI standards treatment. Why do we need a Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification? Lack of Industry Standards / Difficulty in Comparing SSD Performance There has been no industry standard test methodology for measuring solid state storage (SSS) device performance. As a result, each SSS manufacturer has utilized different measurement methodologies to derive performance specifications for their solid state storage (SSS) products. This made it difficult for purchasers of SSS to fairly compare the performance specifications of SSS products from different manufacturers. The SNIA Solid State Storage Technical Working Group (SSS TWG), working closely with the SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI), has developed the Solid State Storage Performance Test Specification (SSS PTS) to address these issues. The SSS PTS defines a suite of tests and test methodologies that effectively measure the performance characteristics of SSS products. When executed in a specific hardware/software environment, SSS PTS provides measurements of performance that may be fairly compared to those of other SSS products measured in the same way in the same environment. Key Concepts Some of the key concepts of the PTS include proper pre test preparation, setting the appropriate test parameters, running the prescribed tests, and reporting results consistent with PTS protocol.  For all testing, the Device Under Test (DUT) must first be Purged (to ensure a repeatable test start point), preconditioned (by writing a prescribed access pattern of data to ensure measurements are taken when the DUT is in a steady state), and measurements taken in a prescribed steady state window (defined as a range of five rounds of data that stay within a prescribed excursion range for the data averages). Standard Tests The PTS sets forth three standard tests for client and enterprise SSDs:  IOPS, Throughput and Latency and measured in IOs per second, MB per second and average msec.  The test loop rounds consist of a Random data pattern stimulus in a matrix of R/W mixes and Block Sizes at a prescribed demand intensity (outstanding IOs - queue depth and thread count).  The user can extract performance measurements from this matrix that relate to workloads of interest.  For example, 4K RND W can equate to small block IO workloads typical in OLTP applications while 128K R can equate to large block sequential workloads typical in video on demand or media streaming applications. Reference Test Environment The SNIA PTS is hardware and software agnostic.  This means that the specification does not require any specific hardware, OS or test software to be used to run the PTS.  However, SSD performance is greatly affected by the system hardware, OS and test software (the test environment).  Because SSD performance is 100 to 1,000 times faster than HDDs, care must be taken not to introduce performance bottlenecks into the test measurements from the test environment. The PTS addresses this by setting forth basic test environment requirements and lists a suggested Reference Test Platform in an informative annex.  This RTP was used by the TWG in developing the PTS.  Other hardware and software can be used and the TWG is actively seeking industry feedback using the RTP and other test environment results. Standard Reporting The PTS also sets forth an informative annex with a recommended test reporting format.  This sample test format reports all of the PTS required test and result information to aid in comparing test data for solid state storage performance. Facilitate Market Adoption of Solid State Storage The SSS PTS will facilitate broader market adoption of Solid State Storage technology within both the client and enterprise computing environments. SSS PTS version 0.9 will be posted very shortly at http://www.snia.org/publicreview for public review. The public review phase is a 60-day period during which the proposed specification is publicly available and feedback is gathered (via http://www.snia.org/tech_activities/feedback/) across the worldwide storage industry. Upon completion of the public review phase, the SSS TWG will remove the SSS PTS from the web site, consider all submitted feedback, make modifications, and ultimately publish version 1.0 of the ratified SSS PTS. PTS Press Release...... Watch for the press release on or about July 12, and keep an eye on http://www.snia.org/forums/sssi for updates.

Given that it's the middle of summer it may be hot where you are, but the SNIA Cloud activities are heating up for the remainder of this year, and you don't want to be left out.

SNIA Summer Symposium

At the end of July every year SNIA hosts a Symposium in San Jose for all the groups. The Cloud Storage TWG will be meeting from Monday afternoon through Thursday morning. The agenda is posted publicly and non-SNIA members are encouraged to attend.

Also at the Symposium Monday night is a Birds of Feather (BOF) session where we will be doing a demo of CDMI and OCCI working together in a common infrastructure. There will be time for details on the implementation and discussion afterward.

Thursday morning will be a special session to update folks on the SNIA Cloud activities for the remainder of the year. Besides the in person session at the Symposium, the session will also be broadcast as an online Webinar for folks who cannot make it in person. More information and a registration link is available on the SNIA Website.

Storage Developer Conference

In September will be the annual Storage Developer Conference (SDC) and this year Cloud is a big part of the agenda. There will be a CDMI Plugfest throughout the week, a Cloud Hands on Lab for developers, and Cloud Tracks all week including some big cloud related keynotes. But *wait* there's more. Following SDC at the same hotel on Thursday September 23rd will be the...

SNIA Cloud Burst Event

This is an event that is squarely focused on Cloud Storage and brings together end users, cloud providers and storage vendors for a unique experience including demos, a showcase and in depth sessions on this part of the overall cloud industry. More information is available on the Cloud Burst page.

Storage Networking World

For the past two SNWs, there has been a Cloud Pavilion with great traffic and interest from the attendees for those that participate. At this fall's SNW in Dallas, we will repeat this successful program with a limited number of slots. In addition we will again have a hands on lab for cloud that is always well attended (by end users only). If you are looking for a speaking opportunity, please consider being a sponsor of the cloud summit at SNW where end users come to learn about the cloud and the offerings that are available.

SNW Europe

Last year SNW Europe was a huge success for the SNIA Cloud Participants, with a year over year increase in record attendance. This year will see an increasing set of activities around the cloud, including a new Cloud Pavilion and Hands on Labs. There are a limited number of slots for these and they will sell out early. Included is an opportunity for a speaking engagement as well.

"Membership has it's privileges"

Many of these opportunities are open only to Cloud Storage Initiative (CSI) member companies. The membership fees help to fund these activities for the members and augment the work of the volunteers with paid resources. If you can help get your company involved, please contact Marty Foltyn (marty@bitsprings.com) for more information.