Server Virtualization Transforms Storage Management
Originally published as a ThursdayTIP to the respondent network of TheInfoPro. Would you like to receive all of the ThursdayTIPs the minute they are released on a complimentary basis? Then join TheInfoPro’s respondent network.
Post-Irene, many East Coast IT pros headed to the VMware event this week in Las Vegas. For those staying at home, we’ll look at the impact of server virtualization.
Storage professionals are worried. Server virtualization offers many benefits to server teams by allowing density and portability, and by reducing hardware costs and easing management. The storage story is almost the opposite. Respondents in our most recent storage study identified capacity growth as the major outcome of server virtualization. In fact, the top three impacts are all negative for storage professionals, with increased troubleshooting complexity and bottlenecks from I/O density filling out the group. The 5% who saw a benefit for storage were expecting reduced costs.
Narratives on the topic reveal further subtle challenges:
- “Since servers are virtualized, you need to make sure you have awesome procedures and tools to know what is going where, and you need to be able to adapt quickly. Storage will quickly become the hindrance or problem area. Manageability is the keyword.” – storage pro at a large-enterprise telecom/technology company
- “Even more importantly, gradually the boundary of storage management is being pushed. It will be the server virtualization that will manage all kinds of replication relationships. They’re allocating the storage already. We do it one time, and then there is a gradual consumption of capacity when you start loading more machines to the virtualization platforms.” – storage pro at a large-enterprise financial services company
Even team responsibilities are being repositioned. Storage provisioning responsibilities are now shared, with the storage team focusing on the bulk allocations, and the server team covering the individual server ones.
Storage vendors need deep integration with server virtualization solutions. While EMC would seem to have an advantage by owning a majority of VMware, NetApp and other vendors have developed similarly strong integrated solutions.
Storage management is transforming. As technologies like replication move up to the hypervisor level of the enterprise stack, long-term storage strategies must consider if the value of high-end storage arrays still matches the cost.
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Tags: EMC Late to Autotiering Party … Takes Over Turntable
Originally published as a ThursdayTIP to the respondent network of TheInfoPro. Would you like to receive all of the ThursdayTIPs the minute they are released on a complimentary basis? Then join TheInfoPro’s respondent network.
Storage tiers have existed since storage networking allowed shared storage, reducing cost by allowing different price/performance selections for data. Over the last year, the focus for autotiering moved within the array, exploiting the price/performance variations of different drive types: SSD, FC, SAS and SATA. Drive choices have been available for some time; it is the automation of tiering that is generating interest today. Below are a few examples of how your peers talk about the subject:
- “We have some tiering now. [We have] EMC VMAX as tier 1, we have IBM and NetApp rebranded, and VMAX has tiering in the box. Right now the thing our manager is pushing for is to determine whether tiering in a box is cost- effective, because if you have to grow a tier, you may need another engine.”
- “HDS’s VSP device does self-tiering and fits in a 19-inch rack.”
Compellent pioneered block level autotiering within the array as far back as 2005. The major vendors scrambled to include the technology on their roadmaps, with some developing it, while others acquired it like Dell (via Compellent), or HP (via 3PAR).
EMC came to market late, taking several release cycles to develop matching technology. Yet already, they are the leading vendor for this technology. Significantly, EMC has an overwhelming lead among respondents with pilot or other plans for autotiering. Coming from behind, EMC has redefined the segment and taken mindshare ownership.
Interest in autotiering is still experimental with most spending less than $50K. As 73% of current users are planning to spend more on the technology next year, we are clearly just at the beginning of its lifecycle.
Autotiering is not just a block prerogative. F5 Networks appear on short lists as well by delivering such capabilities in NAS environments. Some vendors like BlueArc are not yet appearing in significant numbers in our interviews, but are getting positive feedback like the following statements:
- “F5 for ‘ILM’ auto-tiering.”
- “I like [BlueArc's] multitiered file systems.”
TheInfoPro Recommendation: IT professionals should make sure their preferred vendors are offering this technology for SAN and NAS environments, but verify that the cost savings generated will not be consumed by overheads of the technology and the management that is sometimes required.
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NetApp acquires Engenio division of LSI Corporation.
NetApp decided to acquire the Engenio division of LSI Corporation for $480 million.
How does this help LSI and NetApp?
LSI gets cash to invest in its core chip business. Having already closed its storage software virtualization business (from their July 2009 StoreAge acquisition), selling Engenio means LSI now focuses on that component business. Engenio was costing LSI $35 million to $40 million in operating expenses.
NetApp’s CEO Tom Georgens knows what he is getting in this deal, as he came to NetApp from LSI’s Engenio.
NetApp gets to solve two issues. Firstly, this is about the growing ‘big data’ segment. Big data describes the terabyte to petabyte datasets that are being created by sensor networks, genomics, security video, satellite photography, etc. The Engenio arrays have the solid bandwidth needed for these applications.
Secondly, this gives NetApp an alternative block storage to put behind their ONTAP software. TheInfoPro’s IT Professional network has registered FC/block storage as sometimes being a challenge for the ONTAP/FAS mix. Having a solid FC offering also tracks for server virtualization with TheInfoPro research shows three of four respondents storing virtual machine images on FC/block storage.
What is the future for existing Engenio customers? Dave Hitz is fairly clear that the current advanced software features of Engenio will not be a continued focus. You can expect ONTAP to be proffered for those functions in the future. This approach could put the current OEM business at risk, particularly for partners like Oracle who compete directly with NetApp. IBM is a different story, as it already resells the NetApp v-series, and Engenio, so this is good news for them.
Other existing Engenio OEM partners who add value to the underlying array such as Teradata, BlueArc and Sepaton will now be facing a tough decision if the Engenio arrays start arriving with ONTAP on board.
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Data dedupe is still a relatively small market, but it’s one that is growing strongly and one that is dominated …
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Q309 Storage Report from TheInfoPro Highlights Winning Storage Technologies and Vendors in 2010
The in-depth study reveals that while 45% of F1000 respondents plan to increase storage spending in the coming months, 29% still expect major budget decreases. In contrast, 41% of MSEs plan to increase storage spending this year, while 25% expect further reductions.
Of the 300 plus interviews conducted, most show that major spending increases won’t resume until new business application installs once again create massive demands on storage needs, In the interim, storage shops will focus on productivity improvement and hardware inventory adjustments to prepare for virtualization and cloud support needs.
For more specifics on the data, please visit: http://www.theinfopro.com/2010/01/tippr-012510/
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