Analysis :: Microsoft still trying hard to get a share in the server market !

It is something that they haven't got "right" right from the word go and still continue to crackle. It is something that they never had their sights on,but now are forced to look at. It is the evergreen "Enterprise Server" market, that they are still weak at and according to me , they need to rework their strategy towards that space. They still look confused as to what they want to achieve out of it. A comprehensive comparison chart with "Linux" at Microsoft.Com just shows how desperate they are to get a share of the juicy server market. So does it work? No , according to me , it still does not. Many of the points mentioned there seems to by cynical and vague. Find out for yourself

Concept :: DAS to iSCSI SAN using Virtual Appliances

Now , users wanting to convert locally attached disk in ESX servers to an iSCSI storage area network (SAN) can do so with their SANiQ software. This just increases the trend of more and more storage cos wanting to conquer the Virtual storage space(Vmware) by giving out virtual appliances. The above mentioned technology allows your local disks on a DAS/ESX server to be exposed as iSCSI disks on SAN.This is interesting as, it is not easily configurable otherwise. This still conforms with the idea of Virtual Storage Appliances(VSA's) not replacing SAN's. But i guess,there would still be performance issues with this . Watch out for more on this later as it looks to be in its nascent stages.

Concept :: All about iSCSI !

I am compiling a list of common FAQ's to understand iSCSI better .

1 . What is iSCSI?
iSCSI is based upon existing industry standards, practises and applications that are known and understood by end users.
iSCSI is a network storage protocol that encompasses block level SCSI data in a TCP/IP frame, thus allowing servers to access storage resources over an existing IP infrastructure.
iSCSI is a combination of SCSI and Ethernet technologies that have been around for more than 20 years and are fully tried and tested.
iSCSI is a cost effective way to build SAN’s at much lower cost point, giving users greater consolidation in their environment.

2 . What is an iSCSI Appliance?
Our iSCSI Appliance has lots of disk storage attached. This disk can be SATA, FC or SCSI based. The iSCSI Appliance also has multiple Gigabit cards for sustaining the transfer rates that are required by the servers on the network. The Appliance also offers a high degree of redundancy against component failure and typically two or more processors.
In addition to this Snapshots can be taken for the disk being offered up along with mirroring and high availability.

3 . What are the drawbacks of Fibre Channel compared to iSCSI?
Fibre Channel is still viewed as an alien architecture. It requires special training and high-priced expertise to keep a Fibre Channel fabric operational. Fibre Channel also requires its own management software, which is not fully integrated with mainstream IP network management. So, although Fibre Channel fabrics have many technical strengths, overall they require additional skill sets and tools.

4 . Do you think packet loss will be an issue in IP storage protocols?
Packet or frame loss also can occur in Fibre Channel fabrics if links are over-subscribed or poorly implemented. For IP storage, the TCP session control will insure that there is recovery from packet loss, should it occur. However, if the network is properly designed, this recovery mechanism won't be invoked frequently. I doubt that many users will start putting mission-critical IP storage data over congested or lossy network links.

5 . Which in your view will succeed, in order over time, between FCIP, iFCP and iSCSI and why?
Good question. We will see all three protocols used initially, but I think that over time you will see FCIP fall out of favor. FCIP is just FC tunneling and it perpetuates a lot of the problems associated with large or extended Fibre Channel fabrics. The more FCIP products deployed, the more these issues will surface and customers will look at alternatives.
iSCSI may gradually displace Fibre Channel, both as a transport protocol and as an interface for storage devices.

6 . Is there a difference between an iSCSI HBA and an iSCSI NIC?
The iSCSI adapter vendors are all in a toot about what to call these things. Companies from the IP space like Alacritech or Intel are content to call them iSCSI NICs. Companies from the Fibre Channel space like QLogic want to call them iSCSI HBAs. The acronym "NIC" seems to have a commodity connotation, whereas "HBA" implies some additional value.

7 . How would you define how iSCSI works in layman's terms?
Information that is key to modern business is ultimately stored on disk in the form of blocks of data. That block data is written to and read from disk using the SCSI protocol, which is optimized for low-overhead movement of data from disks to file servers, application servers or workstations. The iSCSI protocol carries those SCSI commands for reads and writes of data to disk using TCP/IP.
In short, for the layman, iSCSI simplifies storing or retrieving of blocks of data by using familiar, well-understood IP networking protocols and infrastructure and traditional SCSI commands.

Analysis :: Vmware helps SRM make a comeback !

This is interesting for me as I once worked in this space (Storage Resource Monitoring - SRM) . All I will do here is send out a link , because the whole post is interesting. I once worked for Veritas CommandCentral(which was pretty nascent at that time) and then onto to work with its competitor SUN-acquired Storagetek(Global Storage Manager). SRM was quite a hot topic those days, however the industry is not very excited about it these days. It still interests me though :). Read the full post here

News :: EMC opens $160M R&D center in Singapore

EMC said it will hire more than 100 engineers and spend U.S.$160 million to open a new 15,000-square-foot research center in Singapore. (EMC already has a smaller engineering operation established in that country.) EMC announced its plans to up its research and development (R&D) efforts worldwide last month.

News :: Zmanda announces service-centre in Pune

Read the full story here

Analysis :: Netapp sues SUN !

The latest sue is from Netapp and it comes in the wake of ZFS' popularity. Netapp claims that SUN has been unfairly distributing ZFS technology(which infringes 7 Netapp patents) to third parties , without informing those parties about the infringement of Netapp patents. This could particularly get bitter where SUN's open ZFS is the closest competition to the Netapp FS. Jonathan Schwartz ,CEO , SUN however responded saying - "We're all focused on innovation and winning customers, not litigation," he wrote. Sun uses its patent portfolio, he explained, to protect communities and indemnify customers.

"Sun indemnifies its customers, so I'd encourage all interested parties to compare the economics of ZFS and Thumper to what you're currently forced to pay -- the savings are absolutely shocking," Schwartz said. "The rise of the open-source community cannot be stifled by proprietary vendors. I guess not everyone's learned that lesson."

I am sure there is more to come on this . :)

News-n-Analysis :: Zmanda launches Open-format Windows backup solution

Zmanda has launched an open-format backup solution for Windows in the Amanda family.Good news for all backup folks who wanted an open-ended backup solution on Windows. By the word open-ended i mean, a backup solution that will allow you to backup and restore in formats compatible with Winzip,Pkzip,Compressed Folders etc. This means any data backed up from a Windows box can be restored back even if you do not have Amanda installed , or if you have any of Winzip , Pk-zip or the Compressed Folders feature from Windows itself. Isn't that so cool ? The obvious advantage of this would be that, it eliminates vendor lock-in and takes you out from the jaws of a legacy backup provider to whom you are paying huge sums of money and can't find a way to migrate out ! And more so , its coming off the stable of a leading open-source provider - Zmanda. Here's the link ->
http://www.zmanda.com/press_zmanda_08_29_2007.html

Concept :: Why SMI-S compliance ?

Many of us know what SMI-s means and what it does ? But how important and relevant is the compliance of SMIS in today's times ? Well it is very important. The primary reason being heterogenous storage systems and varied product lines from different vendors that demand compliance from a centralised storage standard. This standard needs to works across various channel technologies and vendor specifics.This standard is essentially SMI-S or Storage Management Initiative Specification that works with these variations.

Essentially SMIS is an object oriented API for managing storage resources on a SAN (NAS included).THE SMI-S API's have base classes that represent common properties that all vendors share.The vendor provides interfaces to the outside world to access information on its product through SMI-S and this is called SMI-S compliance.SMI-S can collect data about a huge category of SAN components that include HBA's,Hosts,Switches,Disk Arrays,Tape libraries etc.

SNIA has a program called "CTP (Conformance Testing Program)" . Vendor products need to pass this test to acquire a SNIA-compliant mark for their product.More details at www.snia.org

Coming next : How does SMI-S increase efficiency of Storage Mgmt Software ? , SMI-S terms

Concept :: More on Linux Multipathing

This is how the EVMS and LVM2 interact with the Device mapper . EVMS(Enterprise. Vol Mgmt System) and the LVM2( an extension to Logical Vol Mgmt System (LVM) for 2.4) are user interfaces to interact with the kernel on logical device mgmt.

Basic SCSI terminologies around multipathing:

Physicalpath -> Unique combination of a SCSIinitiator and a SCSItarget,

Device -> SCSI Logicalunit ,

Path -> Logical Connection along a physical path to a prticular device.

Also read - > multipathing user-space tools like multipath , dmsetup , dmraid , udev , hotplug.

Analysis :: How does SMI-S increase efficiency of Storage Management Software ?

SMI-S(Storage Management Initiative-Spec) facilitates three very basic tasks that almost every SAN Mgmt Software needs to provide :

a) Discovery -> Discovery of SMI-S conformant devices from a SAN mgmt server.

b) Monitoring -> The SMI-S client can gather status about each device like health , fault management checks etc.

c) Control -> An SMI-S client enables an IT administrator to actively manage devices in a SAN. For e.g. LUN masking , LUN mapping provided the client has Access Control to LUN's from those host FC ports.

Apart from this , SMI-s facilitates a lot of other services like Multipathing , Copy Services that provide a standardised way of going about things.This standardisation increases efficiency and productivity for vendors who dont need to write vendor-centric or applications using proprietary protocols anymore .

Analysis :: Who's doing well and who's not !

IBM , HP or EMC ??

IDC reports on storage growth
For all the bluster from IBM that accompanied IDC's storage hardware report, the worldwide quarterly disk storage tracker for Q1 2007 from IDC told the same old story: EMC in the lead in the storage market with revenues of $912 million, virtually even with the same quarter last year (where IDC shows its revenues at $911 million).

Hewlett-Packard (HP) lost 1% in revenue, but topped IBM in second place with $575 million in revenue. However, in terms of market share, IDC put HP and IBM in a "statistical tie" at 13.4% and 12.7% revenue share, respectively. EMC was sitting pretty at 21.2% market share but IDC also gave it some bad news. Systems costing less than $50,000 accounted for the majority of the overall market's 5.9% growth from a year ago to $4.3 billion in revenues, according to analyst Brad Nisbet, who was quoted in a press release.

Concepts :: gGlossary pick

Appliance - A network product designed to perform a specialized task with minimal user administration . In storage virtualization , an appliance is an embedded virtualization engine attached to a SAN.

Block level addressing - An algoithm for identifying blocks of data stored on disk / tape by number. Also known as Logical Block Addressing (LBA). Block address numbers are converted to physical locations on storage such as cylinder , head , sector for disk media.

CDB - Known as SCSI Command Descriptor Block. Used to transfer commands, status, data between an Initiator and Target through SCSI.

Concept :: Server Virtualisation from Vmware !

Hey guyz ,
Server Virtualisation has been a hot buzzword for quite some time after it emerged in the early 2K's and then went into hibernate mode for a while.But now , its hotting up even more after EMC's acquisition of Vmware and , the controversial teaming up of Xensource with Microsoft pumping up a lot of furore from the open source community. But all said and done , what is Server Virtualisation from an amateur's point of view ? Well here's it.

Server Virtualisation is basically virtualising systems and consolidating hardware for better resource utilisation and maximising ROI,TCO(return on investment,total cost of ownership) . Sounds too jargon'ish ?? Hmmmm..Well in simple terms , imagine ten hardware systems hosting ten different platforms with each one running enterprise server roles. What if you had to consolidate hardware and run these 10 platforms on one/two hardware systems. Well , your fist answer would be "How about configuring a dual/quadra boot" ? Nice answer , but if you had to have all the systems up and running enterprise server models simultaneously , your answer falls flat.

The solution to this problem is :-> Server Virtualisation.

So how does it work and look like ? Well , we have more than one virtualisation vendors and its difficult to take all of them up here. But let me take the example of one of the leading(if i may say) virtualisation vendors,Vmware. Vmware has around 8 years experience in the field of virtualisation and are now a part of EMC(one of the leading storage vendors). So how does it work ? Well, there are two models to the Vmware virtualisation strategy

1 . Their virtual infrastructure that runs on a bare metal and doesnt need a host OS.This is called as the "Vmware ESX server". I would say ,this is server virtualisation in the purer sense , as it directly virtualises system services with the hardware. So this will essentially have an ESX Server running on Intel/AMD/etc and will run one or more instances of windows/unix/linux/mac etc as guest OS'es.

2 . Their virtual infrastructure server that runs on a host OS(Win,Unix) and relies on the host OS services for virtualising services within Guest OS'es. This is their older virtualisation model and is called Vmware Server / GSX Server.

So how does this work ? The Vmware infrastructure virtualises each of the services (Processor , RAM Memory , Storage , Networking , OS Services ) to each of the guest OS (virtual machines) as if they were directly accessing these services provided by the hardware.Give a thought to how this can be done .If not , wait for my next article :) .

How does this look like ? Well , i am attaching two snapshots that display two virtual machines running within my host SuSE OS.This is the Vmware GSX Server model(although it runs thru Vmware workstation).The first screenshot shows a Fedore Core 4 desktop(with a "gnome-terminal" opened) running as guest OS while the second shows a Windows 2K3 Server(hope u can c the windows explorer there).






Interesting , right ? Hmmm ,,watch this space on more on server virtualisation .Will look to throw more light on other suites in this space - Xen , Zones etc ...

Back to blogging !

Hey folks , 
             I have been out of tech blogging for a while but promise to b rite back 
 peddle from now on .. Hope to be back on the storage circuit on topics like 
 Virtualisation , Network attached storage ,  SMIS ... Watch this space for more ....

News :: EMC to provide data classification for files without the use of agents

EMC is hoping to make the most from its acquisitions of Legato , Documentum and Smarts to deliver a significant product ( one of its kind ) . Read more here ->

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid5_gci1216226,00.html

News :: Hitachi Data Systems grab the Enterprise Storage Array award for the second time in 2 years

HDS ( Hitachi Data Systems) have grabbed the enterprise Storage Array Award for the second time in a row , whereas the biggest surprise has been SUN Microsystems which has slipped from second place last year to last place this time around . You can catch the story at ->

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/originalConten...

Fun @ my workplace

My friends @ SUN , Murtaza and Vikash have taken the literal meaning of my blog address and have cliked a picture (without my knowing), that expresses the same.

News :: SRM Software,SUN-STK Business Analytics wins Best Storage Resource Management Software award at Big Bytes Storage Expo awards(Byte n Switch)

It really feels great when the product that you are working for gets rewarded by an open body storage publication for good work. I am talking about SUN-STK Business Analytics Software that won the Award for Best Storage Resource Mgmt software at the Big Bytes Storage expo at Burlingame , California . Catch the news at -> http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=1...

Concept :: Volume Management on Linux ?? -> EVMS , LVM2

Hey guyz !!! If you are lookin for Volume Management on Linux , then the EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System) and LVM2(the successor of LVM) are a good read. It is pretty interesting to see how both of them use the newly added DM(Device mapper , introduced in Linux Kernel 2.6.x). The device mapper itself is interesting , as the entire multipathing logic/support has been added here.

The multipathing support revolves around what are known as "priority groups" . These priority groups contains a list of paths to follow for each device path in the storage environment. The paths from each of the groups are selected in a round-robin fashion so as to facilitate I/O load balancing and high availability . Pretty cool !!

U can look at :

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5957

http://evms.sourceforge.net/

http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/librar...

http://sourceware.org/lvm2/