Tag:

Storage

HP announces new Flat Backup direct from 3PAR to StoreOnce

by Philip Sellers December 2, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

Today, at HP Discover EMEA, HP announced new flat backup capabilities allowing 3PAR snapshots to be directly backed up to StoreOnce deduplicated backup arrays. The new capability is called Express Protect and allows for direct backup without third party backup software for VMware vSphere deployments. Snapshots taken on 3PAR arrays can be initially moved to StoreOnce for long term retention, eliminating several layers of software currently required to protect the same workloads.

To enable the feature, a virtual appliance called the StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central is deployed which connects to vCenter, StoreOnce and 3PAR arrays allowing for array-based snapshots with application aware consistency using Microsoft’s VSS technology. Recovery Manager Central integrates directly with VMware vCenter allowing administrators to control flat backups from their familiar vCenter view. In addition, administrators may also initiate flat backups from the StoreOnce RMC console. StoreOnce RMC allows users to restore a snapshots stored on StoreOnce to the original or a third party 3PAR array. The backups occur at the LUN level for the array and would backup all virtual machines in the LUN.

The StoreOnce RMC does not allow for file level restoration in the way that traditional backup software does, so it may not be a complete backup replacement, but it should allow for better and more flexible backups for VMware environments. For static servers whose data is kept in a database, this solution may become a great fit by eliminating multiple layers of software currently used for the same protection. Realistically, third party software and StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central will need to coexist to fully protect environments, but StoreOnce RMC may allow for faster protection on more frequent intervals than third party backups for many virtual machines.

StoreOnce RMC is licensed on a per rack basis with prices starting at $2500 for the VMware solution. StoreOnce RMC also requires a Catalyst license on the StoreOnce arrays. (I incorrectly reported that StoreOnce RMC was freely available. I apologize for this error.)

In the initial release, the StoreOnce Recovery Manager Central is limited to VMware vSphere but the capability is planned to expand to other software in the future.

Disclaimer: HP invited and paid for my trip to attend HP Discover EMEA. The views and opinions I’ve written were not dictated or approved by HP and are my own.

December 2, 2014 2 comments

Is there such a thing as an Enterprise InkJet? HP’s OfficeJet Pro X thinks so…

by Philip Sellers October 30, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

Laser printers and enterprise seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. But a little over a year ago, I was introduced to an enterprise inkjet printer line – the HP OfficeJet Pro X. In many ways, it resembles an HP LaserJet printer in size and design. It looks like an office printer – something substantial that could handle the demands of an office printing thousands of pages per month. It looks like it belongs in an enterprise. But everything I knew about inkjet said, there is no way this could work for enterprise. Inkjets print slowly, I thought, one line at a time. Inkjets are more expensive than laser, I thought, and ink smears. But, the OfficeJet Pro X is not a traditional inkjet and what makes it enterprise ready is a long list of differences from what normally defines ink printing. HP has rethought core inkjet technology in a way that makes it a viable enterprise solution for printing.

OfficjetProX

The OfficeJet Pro X Differences

A Whole Lot of Pigment and Less Water in the Ink

Sad Water Droplet One of the key differentiators of the OfficeJet Pro X line is the ink used for the printer. According to Larry Tracy, a product manager for the Pro X, the inks have a heavier pigment load and less water than traditional inks. Less water means the print dries faster as its moving through the device. Unlike laser printers that use heat and a fuser to transfer the image to the page, the ink printers have no drying mechanism in them – no fans or heaters. In addition, the durability of the print is much better, according to Tracy. The print on the pages doesn’t smear or run. You may use a highlighter over the print without smudging it and it has superior life versus other inkjet printers. In fact, Tracy says that in their testing the paper will begin to degrade long before the print itself begins the break down.

The PageWide Print Bar

The OfficeJet Pro X features a stationary print bar that is the same width as the sheet of paper, something HP calls PageWide technology. The PageWide print head features over 420,000 nozzles. Unlike traditional inkjets where the ink well and nozzels are integrated into the print cartridge, the OfficeJet Pro X print head is not changed with every ink replacement. This print head has monitoring built in to detect a misfiring nozzle and can allow surrounding nozzles to increase their volume to fill in. In addition, there are spare nozzles that can be used in the event of a blockage or failure.

Heavy Pigment Ink + Pagewide = Speed

An inkjet that prints up to 70 pages per minute is remarkable. Demos that I have seen of the OfficeJet Pro X576dm during HP Discover and on a demo unit that HP has provided hold true to that speed. 70 pages per minute is available in what HP calls General Office mode, but don’t make the mistake of calling it draft mode like other printers offer. Draft mode is a degraded quality print with less precision and crispness. The OfficeJet Pro X’s General Office mode doesn’t significantly compromise the quality of the print. The print is still very crisp and clean on the page.

LaserJet Cross-Pollenation

For enterprise, there is a second, higher-end line printers known as the OfficeJet Pro X Enterprise line that integrates HP Flow scanning and routing with other enterprise features. Similiar the HP Flow models of LaserJet printers, these machines are meant to replace traditional copies and scanners with multi-function printers. In addition, the HP Universal Print driver that allows businesses to use the same driver for many HP printer models also works with the OfficeJet Pro X line.

When talking with Larry Tracy, I also found out why the OfficeJet Pro X looks like a very close cousin to the HP LaserJet printers. This printer was developed in Boise, ID, in the birthplace of the HP LaserJet. A lot of enterprise features created in the LaserJet line are also in this OfficeJet Pro X Enterprise line of printers, including software for pin based secure printing, integration with HP’s Flow workflow and scanning software, and badge readers.

Lots of Traditional HP Printing Goodness

In many ways, the OfficeJet Pro X line is a departure from its ink predecessors. But its not a complete departure from its heritage. The OfficeJet Pro X includes many of the expected features like HP ePrint and AirPrint support, both wired and wireless connectivity, USB storage and print from USB thumb drive support, and a multi-page document fed and flatbed scanner integrated. The OfficeJet Pro X also has faxing and copying capabilities from a touch-screen display and with a bit of configuration, the touch screen can be used to scan documents directly to a file share or HP software on a networked computer. According to Tracy, a software update earlier this year allows for one of the two onboard USB ports on an OfficeJet Pro X to be used for persistent storage so that secure documents can be stored until accessed and printed by PIN code. The OfficeJet Pro X printers will also duplex prints and copies automatically, which is a required business feature.

The OfficeJet Pro X Cost Advantage

As a consultant years ago, I performed printing studies for companies and comparing the cost of buying a personal or workgroup laser printer versus the cheap inkjet printers (think $50 big-box variety printers) I often found in their offices. For a normal office workload, the inexpensive inkjet costs the company more in ink than an laser would cost per page. Plus, buying the printer-du-jour from a big-box store means stocking multiple different ink refills, increasing costs and frustration. Calculating the cost per page over the course of a year or several years, I would surprise each customer I worked with at how much they could reduce their printing costs by switching to workgroup or personal laser printers. And while its been ten years since I was a consultant, many of the things I found then are still true today. But the OfficeJet Pro X seems to be a very different animal.

When Buyers Lab, an independent testing institution, reviewed the OfficeJet Pro X printer, they found that the cost per page is about 1.1 cents per page for black and white and about 6.5 cents per full color page. Those prices per page beat out all small laser multifunction printers Buyers Lab had tested. Buyers Lab reported the average small workgroup laser MFP costs 2.4 cents per page in black and white and 11.5 center per page in full color. But, the OfficeJet Pro X beat even the lowest cost per page laser multi-functions cost 1.5 cents per page black and white and 7.8 cents per page for color. Buyers Lab defined the small laser multifunction printer as printers with duty cycle less than 5,000 pages per month. When you move into a mid-size workgroup MFP, the results change a little with some higher-priced laser multifunction printers able to beat the OfficeJet Pro X’s cost per page, but the OfficeJet Pro X still slightly better than the average cost per page for this class of printers.

Printing and the Environmental Impact

When you think of printing, you think of paper and you may think of trees. Boldly saying that a printer is eco-friendly may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but the fact remains that some documents must be printed, so when given a choice, choose a printer that uses less resources.

OfficeJetProXink One of the lesser talked about stories with the OfficeJet Pro X line is the eco-friendliness of this printer compared to lasers and other inkjets. The OfficeJet Pro X printers produce less waste than other printers, both laser and inkjet. Ink cartridges for the printer yield 9,200 pages from the black cartridge and 6,000 pages for each of the three color cartridges. As a comparison, most laser printers in the same class yield 4,000 – 7,000 pages. The Buyers Lab performed a study and pitted the OfficeJet Pro X against a Lexmark and found that the Lexmark required almost twice as many ink replacements to produce 150,000 pages. HP has also worked hard to reduce the amount of waste associated with each ink replacement in terms of packaging and precious metals included with the ink wells.

The second major aspect of environmental friendliness for this printer is its power consumption. Compared to Laser printers, the OfficeJet Pro X consumes about 8 to 10 times less power – which equates to using less power when printing than a Laser printer when sitting idle. Many Laser printers do not completely power down the fuser because it would require extra time to before the first page is printed. Keeping the fuser warm pulls more power than the OfficeJet Pro X when it is in full print mode. The printer is Energy Star qualified.

But its not just HP’s word. Marlene Orr, a senior analyst for printers and MFP’s for Buyers Lab, was quoted as saying “From an environmental perspective, these units also use significantly less energy and create less consumables waste than comparable small workgroup laser printers and MFPs recently tested.”

Any of these environmental features will benefit its owners from a total cost of ownership – aka “in the wallet.” With less power consumption and cheaper cost per page in printing, these printers will save long-term for their owners. Plus, from my perspective, I despise the throw-away printer mentality, with the uber-cheap printers whose ink refill costs more than the printer. These are designed to be cheap and not last, which isn’t a good use of natural resources. The OfficeJet Pro X is a system that’s built for a business level workload, with a duty cycle of up to 75,000 pages.

Next Steps…

My demo HP OfficeJet Pro X 576dw arrived a week ago and I’ve just started setting it up for evaluation. My initial reaction is really positive. To be completely transparent, I’m a big HP printing fan. I made the choice a long time ago to stick with HP printers in my home office and advocate for the same at work. I’ve attempted to help my former customers with printers of all makes and models, but when I came to my picks for my home, its always been an HP. So, I will be the first to admit my bias, but it does come from years of experience dealing with issues from other printer brands – Epson, Lexmark (Dell) and Canon.

So, in a couple weeks, I’ll be posting a personal review from my experiences with the OfficeJet Pro X576dw. And, look for an announcement for your chance to win an OfficeJet Pro X for your own environment.

Disclosure: HP provided the Officejet Pro X576dw to me free of charge for review and testing. All views and opinions in this blog post are my own, gathered from research and first hand information. The views expressed were not dictated by HP.

October 30, 2014 5 comments

Compute Datacenter Software Storage Virtualization

HP announces Hyper-Converged Systems based on StoreVirtual VSA

by Philip Sellers October 14, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

HP unveiled the HP Converged System 200-HC StoreVirtual based on HP ProLiant SL2500 series of scalable computing servers and the HP StoreVirtual VSA today at VMworld in Barcelona. The CS 200-HC StoreVirtual features VMware vSphere 5, the HP StoreVirtual VSA, and HP OneView for management. The CS 200-HC StoreVirtual line comes in two different models – one with all SAS for higher capacity and one with a mix of SSD and SAS drives for better performance.

Four nodes of compute fit into just 2U of rack space, with shared redundant power for the unit. From a physical size standpoint, these nodes fit somewhere between a Moonshot card and a BladeSystem blade in terms of sizing. While they more closely resemble a blade, there is no shared interconnect back-plane. Each node comes with dedicated 10Gb Ethernet and 1Gb Ethernet network ports and has 6 dedicated disks.

A new addition to the software mix for the Converged System 200-HC line is HP OneView InstantOn – a streamlined deployment utility that lets customers spin up vSphere with StoreVirtual VSA in a matter of minutes. According to HP, all that a customer needs to provide is IP addresses and basic license information in order to have a fully working system delivered directly from the factory.

CS 200-HC

A comparison of the hardware configuration shows just a few differences between the two initial StoreVirtual models:

CS 240-HC StoreVirtual System

4 nodes, each with
2 sockets, 8 cores each socket at 2.0Ghz
128GB of RAM each node
2 x 10GbE and 2 x 1GbE NICs per node
6 x 1.2TB SAS SFF drives per node

CS 242-HC StoreVirtual System

4 nodes, each with
2 sockets, 10 cores each socket at 2.8GHz
256GB of RAM each node
2 x 10GbE and 2 x 1GbE NICs per node
4 x 1.2TB SAS SFF drives per node
2 x 400GB SSDs per node

In terms of scale, up to 8 of the CS 240-HC line units can be coupled together to form up to 32-node clusters and not all of those nodes need to be in a single site because of StoreVirtual’s native replication and multi-site capabilities.

StoreVirtual VSA features Autonomic Optimization, a fancy name for storage sub-lun tiering that the CS 242-HC StoreVirtual is using. This allows for more often accessed blocks of data to be moved from SAS onto SSD and less used to be moved from SSD down to SAS yeilding greater performance from the storage subsystem. StoreVirtual also provides a wide range of interoperability options for customers who have already invested in dedicated StoreVirtual 4000 hardware solutions or who have existing StoreVirtual VSA deployments. In addition, native replication is available to any other StoreVirtual, regardless of form factor, and StoreVirtual offers support for vSphere Metro Storage Clusters, offering the ability to create multi-datacenter replication solutions around the technology. Beyond native replication, HP StoreVirtual also includes Peer Motion capabilities to allow movement of data from one StoreVirtual environment to another for easy migration.

The advantage to moving to a Converged System solution, according to HP, is easier management and a better support experience for the solution. The solution is tested and supported together as a package, offering customers a single point of contact for their support. The firmware, drivers and software are all tested together and the will receive recipe updates so that known good combinations of the software can be run on the platform.

Choice is always at the forefront of HP’s strategy for customers and the hyper-converged system announcement is no different. The HP Converged System 200-HC models are available in both a StoreVirtual VSA and EVO:RAIL configuration. The primary difference between the two configuration is the virtual storage appliance, with the EVO:RAIL configuration coming with VMware’s vSAN, though I cannot find any specifics of the EVO:RAIL hardware configuration at this time.

When I was in Houston, TX, for a Converged Systems Tech Day last month, HP staff talked with me about the overall Converged System strategy and there were several key points to the overall strategy. With all Converged Systems, there is an accelerated deployment timeline with the solution. Since it has been tested and integrated, the product should deploy quickly so that customers realize faster time to value. The second point is easy procurement, with a single SKU for the entire solution. The single SKU also provides single solution support, with a specialized team that supports the entire solution rather than the individual components. Customers who have built their own solutions from ProLiant and HP Storage have probably experienced the piece-meal support experience, even while in a single vendor. HP’s Converged Systems eliminates that problem by sending all support to a dedicated support team to team to troubleshoot problems and that team understands the entire solution, not just an individual component.

The new Converged System 200-HC StoreVirtual models will be available for purchase in December. The Converged System 200-HC EVO:RAIL configuration will be available first quarter of 2015.

For more information, check out Around the Storage Block post and video on the CS 200-HC StoreVirtual solution and go to www.hp.com/go/hyper-converge.

October 14, 2014 1 comment

Datacenter Storage

HP readies 3PAR StoreServ with vVol support ahead of vSphere 6

by Philip Sellers August 28, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

HP says that they are ready and waiting with Virtual Volume (vVol) support on the 3PAR StoreServ platform when VMware releases vSphere 6. One of the most discussed topics in storage at VMworld is vVol support and HP says that they have been working with VMware since the pre-acquisition days of 3PAR to implement and support vVols on the platform. The HP 3PAR StoreServ has also the test architecture for fiber channel with vVols for VMware.

I was able to get a demo of the support at the HP booth during VMworld this week. The vVol objects look a lot like standard 3PAR Virtual Volumes (VV’s) on the platform. The two technologies share the same name, which could lead to some confusion, but they do act differently. vVols create the individual VM objects against the 3PAR system utilizing the Common Provisioning Group (CPG) as the object that they create into. 3PAR VV’s are the traditional LUNs that get provisioned from the pool of disks and are also carved out of a CPG.

From 3PAR CLI, the vVol support on 3PAR looks a lot like standard 3PAR VV’s on the platform. The thing that becomes clear is that vVols will create exponentially more objects on the 3PAR for the storage administrator to manage against. Today, within a single 3PAR VV (LUN), you may have 10 or 12 virtual machines. The storage administrator’s view is a single object, the VV.

This pivots with vVols where the VM provisioning in vSphere creates 2 objects on the 3PAR, a Config- and a Data- object. In addition, at least 5 objects for a running VM are active on the 3PAR, potentially increasing the number of objects in the storage admin’s view 50x or more. Adding an additional problem, the naming is generated with the Config- and Data- prefix along with a identifier string which may make correlation difficult. HP is working to ease the management headaches that a potential 50x increase in objects to manage.

3PAR has implemented separate commands in the 3PAR CLI to handle vVols, using things like showvvol instead of showvv administrators currently use. What’s more, its not an all or nothing choice. vVols and normal 3PAR VV’s can coexist on the same array and in the same vSphere hosts. Even while the object count increases in the 3PAR console, the usable information also increases. Since the objects correspond to an individual VM, its easier to use 3PAR’s reporting and CLI to pinpoint performance issues and address them. vVols also unlock native array capabilities at the VM level, like performing array based snapshots on an individual VM instead of an entire LUN all from the normal workflow and interface of the vSphere client.

vVols support relies on VMware API’s for Storage Awareness (VASA) providers to communicate between vSphere and the storage arrays. According to a presentation by Ivan Iannaccone (@IvanIannaccone), HP has put their VASA providers directly onto the 3PAR controllers, meaning that customers will not need an additional layer of software located outside of the array to enable vVol support.

I asked a couple HP folks about replication and vVols and at this point, it is not present in the vSphere implementation. HP says 3PAR is ready to handle replication with vVols since they are basically the same as LUN virtual volumes on the platform, but it will need VMware to deliver support in vSphere first. That also means users with Peer Persistence configurations cannot benefit from vVols until a later time.

To find out more and see vVols on 3PAR in action, check out this older video that Calvin Zito, @HPStorageGuy, posted back in 2012 showing of vVol on 3PAR. In the video, Calvin focuses on the 3PAR InServ Management Console (IMC) to show the virtual volumes. The demo I saw focused on the 3PAR CLI, but you will get the idea.

August 28, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter PowerCLI Software Storage Virtualization

Book Review: Learning PowerCLI

by Philip Sellers August 27, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

<br /> Whether you’re a new user or an advanced user, Learning PowerCLI by Robert van den Nieuwendijk is a fantastic reference to VMware PowerCLI. van den Nieuwendijk covers all the basics to get PowerCLI installed and running – getting you connected to ESXi hosts and vCenter. He also covers all of the basic and advanced PowerCLI cmdlets exposed to users as of vSphere 5.5. But, van den Nieuwendijk doesn’t stop there. He also delves deeper into utilizing esxcli within PowerCLI to accomplish administrative tasks that PowerCLI cmdlets don’t natively expose.

The book progresses users through a series of topics and groups tasks and administrative areas of vSphere together to logically cover a full range of administration. The book begins at the beginning, helping to get PowerCLI installed and operational and then moves into some of the basic PowerShell concepts that you will need to know before getting into more specific PowerCLI code. The book steps through the management of ESXi hosts, virtual machines, networking and storage. It also covers clustering and vCenter administration. It is a solid guide to the language and how to get things done using PowerCLI.

I had the pleasure of meeting Robert and talking with him about the book briefly at VMworld. He poured a lot of time and effort into making it a great book and resource for PowerCLI and it shows in the final form. I was able to read the book while in draft form as a technical reviewer and then again when published.

If you’re at VMworld, its available at the VMworld book store onsite. It’s also available at Amazon.com and booksellers around the world.

August 27, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Storage Virtualization

vSphere users get just the beta this year at VMworld

by Philip Sellers August 27, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

VMworld has a bit disappointing for core vSphere users this year. Its the first VMworld since at least 2008 where a major release of vSphere wasn’t made during the show. This year, we all have to settle for the vSphere 6 beta which was already publicly available. No news on timelines or release datas for vSphere 6. That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of news on other horizons (pun intended) and initiatives from the company, but for core virtualization, not a lot has been discussed.

VMware did publicly discuss some of the features of the upcoming vSphere 6 release, something everyone who has participated in the beta was unable to do because of non-disclosure agreements. Here is a quick run-down of the features that were publicly discussed:

Compute > Multi-vCPU Fault Tolerance support
Network > vMotion Enhancements across virtual switches and vCenter instances & support for routed vMotion
Storage > Virtual Volumes (vVols) support for storage

vSphere 6 will be bringing a number of improvements in terms of scale and sizing that customers will appreciate. The specifics weren’t covered in the keynote and I have not seen them publicly discussed.

Compute > SMP-FT

vSphere 6 adds multi-vCPU support for Fault Tolerance (SMP-FT), extending this technology to a wider range of uses. Most mission critical apps where Fault Tolerance would likely be adopted were more than 1 vCPU, so this is welcome news for administrators. There are still some limits to the technology, SMP-FT will support up to 4 vCPU and 64GB of RAM. Users will be limited to 4 VM running SMP-FT or 8 total vCPU running SMP-FT. Your FT logging network is required to be 10Gig to support SMP-FT. Julian Wood has some additional details in his blog post on the topic.

Network > vMotion

vMotion gets a number of enhancements, all of which should allow for easier administration. The critical one from an administrator’s point of view is the cross-vSwitch and cross-vCenter vMotion. Much like the shared nothing Storage vMotion that was added in vSphere 5.5, the cross-vCenter vMotion will allow a Virtual Machine to hop port groups between virtual switches, changing assignments. Previously, administrators were limited to either Standard vSwitches with the same port group name in order to cross clusters with vMotion or they needed to extend their Distributed vSwitch across clusters. But crossing a vCenter server is an entirely new capability and this is clearly targeted at multi-site scenarios allowing administrators to move workloads without the requirements of stretching a distributed switch and vCenter across sites. Chris Wahl has an excellent blog post about the new vMotion capabilities.

Storage > vVols

The big, well-discussed feature being added is Virtual Volumes (vVols) support. vVols allows vSphere to talk directly against the storage and provision virtual machines natively, without the need for LUNs. Each virtual machine, natively provisions several files on the storage – one for config, one or more for data and then at boot, the expected RAM files and log files required. This allows the storage administrator to have a native, VMware object level view of the data and using native storage tools, better identify problems and bottlenecks by identifying individual VMs or VM disks instead of a noisy LUN.

If you are familiar with NFS storage vendor Tintri, the whole concept will sound really familiar. With a Tintri, you present one large NFS datastore and then provision VMs inside of it. The storage is VM aware and has a lot of additional performance metrics and management. It allows for things like quality of service at a VM level.

In the vSphere side, the vSphere Administrator is presented with a storage system and they provision against it rather than being presented a LUN and having to format and manage capacity with VMFS datastores and datastore clusters. From the storage administrators view point, instead of having 10 LUNs, they may now have 5 times as many objects within their views. This is where the storage vendor’s implementation becomes a critical point. The views and management consoles will have to adapt and change.

vVols also allows the vSphere administrator to wrap tagging and policy controls around storage. The concept that VMware introduced with the VSAN in vSphere 5.5, policy based storage allows for an abstraction from the array and LUN constructs to a needs-based construct for deploying VMs. What does that mean? Well, to deploy a virtual machine, the user had to make a choice of which datastore to deploy onto. With vSphere 5.5, policies and tagging could allow administrators to define a service profile or level of service abstraction from the physical storage devices and let the user choose options like a Platinum storage location for mission critical applications or a Bronze storage location for dev/test. Those tags and policies allow for the decisions where to place a VM in storage without having to know that Array X is the one the user should use.

In the meantime, all vSphere users will be waiting for the new release and finalization of capabilities. With SMP-FT and vVols, users have been waiting for VMware to deliver these features for a long time and their discussion during the keynote on Tuesday drew lots of applause.

August 27, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

HP shows off 3PAR 7200 All Flash starter kit, $35K price

by Philip Sellers August 27, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

photo (2)

On Friday, HP announced the new HP 3PAR StoreServ 7200 All Flash array Starter Kit. HP is it off this week at VMworld in San Francisco. The new package is the dual-controller 3PAR StoreServ 7200 equipped with eight 480GB solid state drives, sports 75,000 IOPS of performance and has a street price of just $35,000.

The array has 3.5TB of raw storage and HP estimates that customers will see at least a 2:1 dedupe and thin provisioning savings on the array, yielding 7TB of usable storage. The Starter Kit uses the same 3PAR OS that is used across all of the HP 3PAR storage products. The drives are the same drives that HP introduced with the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all flash array back in June at HP Discover, offering a price of $2 per GB for all flash. From a software standpoint, the Starter Kit offers the Reporting Suite, Virtual Copy, and three-year Proactive Care Support. Customers may optionally license additional software features including the Online Import feature which allows easy transition from HP EVA or from EMC VNX or CX arrays.

In its all-flash form, the array can scale up to 230TB of raw storage and HP estimates users will see around 690TB of usable storage out of the array. At full scale, it offers over 250,000 IOPS of performance.

It seems to be yet another step in mainstreaming solid state for primary storage, with HP lowering the barrier to entry even further with this all-flash offering. [As a side note, I did notice the configuration being show in San Francisco has 12 drives and not 8, but I didn’t ask about that.]

August 27, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter News Storage

See the data, not just the storage with DataGravity

by Roger Lund August 21, 2014

written by Roger Lund

DataGravity @DataGravityInc has revealed what the announced secret gravity sauce is all about. Be sure to check out the press release ” DataGravity Unveils Industry’s First Data-Aware Storage Platform”

“NASHUA, N.H., August 19, 2014 – DataGravity today announced the launch of the DataGravity Discovery Series, the first ever data-aware storage platform that tracks data access and analyzes data as it is stored to provide greater visibility, insight and value from a company’s information assets. The DataGravity Discovery Series delivers storage, protection, data governance, search and discovery powered by an enterprise-grade hardware platform and patent-pending software architecture, enabling midmarket companies to glean new insights and make better business decisions.”

We often see new storage Array’s, with a impressive list of new features. Lets see how this stacks up.

From http://datagravity.com/sites/default/files/resource-files/DataGravity-DiscoverySeries-Datasheet-081714.pdf copyright Datagravity

Looks fairly standard, a nice sharp looking box. But what makes this unique?

Why the fuss? why do we care what is on our storage? With the increasing costs of data, many are looking to what what is taking the space, and using the disk.

“The unstructured data dilemma is growing, and IDC has been predicting technology would catch up to provide an answer to the market demand,” said Laura Dubois, program vice president of storage at IDC. “The DataGravity approach is transformational in an industry where innovation has been mostly incremental. DataGravity data-aware storage can tell you about the data it’s holding, making the embedded value of stored information accessible to customers who cannot otherwise support the cost and complexity of solutions available today.”

Source http://datagravity.com/datagravity-unveils-first-data-aware-storage

“The Digital Universe in 2020″ report, IDC estimates that the overall volume of digital bits created, replicated, and consumed across the United States will hit 6.6 zettabytes by 2020. That represents a doubling of volume about every three years. For those not up on their Greek numerical prefixes, a zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes, or just over 25 billion 4-TB drives.” Source http://www.networkcomputing.com/storage/2014-state-of-storage-cost-worries-grow/a/d-id/1113476

Today companies often lavage things like Hadoop, EMC ESA or new offerings like CloudPhysics to learn what people are using storage for in their environment, or to get data out of the system.

This becomes more complex with Big Data

That’s all great, but how does DataGravity change things?

From http://datagravity.com/sites/default/files/resource-files/DataGravity-DiscoverySeries-Datasheet-081714.pdf copyright DataGravity

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: End user role-based access

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Analyze your file shares

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Find Experts and Collaborators

Great, I See some neat features. But what about standard storage features, like data protection? And Data Protection?

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Preview, download and restore files

DataGravity Discovery Series Demo: Provision and protect your storage

I’m excited to see this at VMworld. VMworld attendees can see it in action at the DataGravity booth, #1647, August 24 through 28 in San Francisco.

I will be attending VMworld, and Tech Field Day. Make sure to check back to the DataGravity page. http://techfieldday.com/appearance/datagravity-presents-at-tech-field-day-extra-at-vmworld-us-2014/

Lets check out what others are saying about DataGravity

DataGravity – First Look

“Perhaps you’ve heard of DataGravity (@DataGravityInc), or perhaps you haven’t. They’ve been staying pretty quiet about what they’ve been working on. Today, however, they’re dropping the veil. Read on for a look into what you can expect from this exciting announcement!”

by James Green

Why is DataGravity Such a Big Deal?

“DataGravity just released their embargo and my little techie corner of the Internet is on fire. There’s a very good reason for that, but it might not be obvious at a glance. Read on to learn why DataGravity is a Big Deal even though it might not work out.”

by Stephen Foskett

Make sure to check the full articles out.

I hope you enjoyed the write up.

Roger Lund

August 21, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Storage Virtualization

Tintri releases Tentri OS 3.0, Tintri Global Center 1.1 and Tintri Automation Toolkit

by Roger Lund August 15, 2014

written by Roger Lund

Tintri has announced the release of Tentri OS 3.0, Tintri Glocal Center 1.1 and Tintri Automation Toolkit. A copy of the press release is shown below.

Tintri Introduces New Generation of Smart Storage with Multi-hypervisor Support and Industry’s First VM-level Automation Capabilities

TINTRI OS 3.0, TINTRI GLOBAL CENTER 1.1 AND TINTRI AUTOMATION TOOLKIT DELIVER ADVANCED CAPABILITIES FOR MULTI-HYPERVISOR VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENTS AND PRIVATE CLOUD DEPLOYMENTS

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.– August 14, 2014 – Tintri, the leading producer of application-aware smart storage for virtualization and cloud environments, today announced the availability of Tintri OS 3.0, Tintri Global Center 1.1 and Tintri Automation Toolkit. The new capabilities in these product releases enhance the industry’s only storage platform with VM-level operations for data management with multi-hypervisor support and end-to-end VM-level automation to accelerate virtualization and private cloud deployments.

“Much has been said about the strategic, operational and organizational implications associated with different cloud delivery models. While discussions about cost, security and application portability for public cloud are still raging, many large enterprises have decided to start their journey to cloud with private cloud. Whether it is on-premises private cloud or off-premises hosted cloud, there is a growing feeling that private cloud provides the most immediate onramp that enables enterprises to start reaping the benefits of the cloud based IT service model,” said Tim Stammers from 451 Research.

The new capabilities of Tintri OS, Tintri Global Center and Tintri Automation Toolkit provide a compelling and feature-rich foundation for private clouds based on enterprise virtualization.

“Virtual machines are at the heart of private cloud deployments, which demand a smart storage infrastructure that is simple to deploy and manage, self-tuning and responsive to dynamically changing workloads, and highly automated at the right unit of management: the VM,” said Ken Klein, Chairman and CEO of Tintri. “These are the defining characteristics of Tintri smart storage. Private cloud deployment is one of the fastest growing use cases for Tintri, and these new releases further enable customers on their cloud journeys.”

“We have a highly virtualized environment that requires both rapid updates and scaling, requirements that pose huge challenges for traditional storage. Tintri enables us to easily deploy and tear down virtual machines as needed by demand, drastically increasing the rate of change in cloud environments,” said a customer at the Department of Defense Cyber Range.

Key Capabilities of Tintri OS 3.0 include:

· Multi-hypervisor support

Tintri OS 3.0 adds support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization based on Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM). Support for multiple hypervisors enables customers to extend the benefits of Tintri smart storage to all of their virtualization environments and is a key requirement for moving to private cloud deployments. Customers can now deploy multiple hypervisors on a single VMstore.

“Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is a major component of Red Hat Cloud Infrastructure, which enables enterprises to build and manage their own private cloud environments,” said Radhesh Balakrishnan, general manager, Virtualization and OpenStack, Red Hat. “Tintri’s support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, via the new Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.3 API, will provide Red Hat customers an on-ramp to deploy high-level functionality required for robust yet simple cloud computing services based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform.”

· RBAC and AD/LDAP integration
Tintri OS 3.0 also includes role-based access control and integration with Microsoft Active Directory and LDAP directory services, providing simple and powerful access control and authentication for a Tintri VMstore on a per user basis.

Key Capabilities of Tintri Global Center 1.1 include:

· VMstore monitoring and reporting

Enables administrators to monitor their VMstores from a cluster-wide dashboard and drill down to individual VMstore dashboards. VMstore-level performance and capacity monitoring along with up to 30 days of historical reports are available for trend analysis and troubleshooting. Users can view aggregated alerts management across VMstores from a single pane of glass.

· Data protection and disaster recovery monitoring

Supports per-VM as well as per-VMstore replication monitoring and topology views for reporting on data protection and disaster recovery service level compliance.

Key Capabilities of Tintri Automation Toolkit include:

· With traditional storage, end-to-end scripting in virtualized environments is complex, error-prone, and requires expert storage-admin level knowledge of various storage constructs, such as LUNs and volumes. With the Toolkit based on PowerShell, virtualization and cloud data management workflows can be automated with little to no knowledge of traditional storage constructs and commands.

“The release of the Tintri Automation Toolkit provides Tintri partners with a unique opportunity to add value with implementations of storage for virtualization and cloud,” said Jonathan Kowall, Principal Storage Architect of Sovereign Systems. “Customers want to add capabilities like self-service and policy-based automation. The fact that traditional storage is not scriptable at the VM level is often a major roadblock and breaks end-to-end automation. With the Toolkit, we can help our customers in their journey to private cloud.”

The Tintri OS 3.0 provides enterprises unparalleled density with the ability to run large scale virtualization and private cloud deployments with up to 2,000 VMs on a VMstore T650. Furthermore, enterprises can now deploy and manage up to 64,000 VMs spread across 32 geographically dispersed VMstore systems from a single Tintri Global Center 1.1 instance.

For more details on this announcement, check out the Tintri blog and find out more info from the product pages for Tintri VMstore, Tintri Global Center and Tintri Automation Toolkit.

Additional Resources

· Department of Defense Cyber Range Case Study

· Follow Tintri on Twitter

· Follow Tintri on LinkedIn

About Tintri

Tintri builds smart storage that sees, learns and adapts, enabling IT organizations to focus on virtualized applications and business services instead of managing storage infrastructure. Tintri application-aware storage eliminates planning and complex troubleshooting by providing VM-level visibility, control, insight and agility. Tintri powers hundreds of thousands of virtual machines running business critical databases, enterprise apps, desktops and mobile apps, and private cloud deployments. Tintri helps global enterprises such as AMD, F5 Networks, GE, NEC, NTT, MillerCoors and Time Warner maximize their virtualization and cloud investments. For more information, visit www.tintri.com and follow us on Twitter: @tintriinc.
Red Hat and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Linux® is the registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the U.S. and other countries.

The OpenStack Word Mark and OpenStack Logo are either registered trademarks/service marks or trademarks/service marks of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries and are used with the OpenStack Foundation’s permission. We are not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.

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August 15, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Storage

HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 drives down flash to cost of spinning disk

by Philip Sellers July 7, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

This is part two of a two part series on enhancements to the HP 3PAR StoreServ platform announced at HP Discover in June.

As I posted in my first part of this series, one of the best benefits to being an invited blogger at HP Discover is the opportunities to talk with HP’s technical staff and product managers about specifics of their solutions. Last month, I had the opportunity to discuss HP’s cost savings announcements around the HP 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all-flash arrays.

I talked with Priyadarshi Prasad (@Priyadarshi_Pd), product line manager for HP 3PAR storage, about how 3PAR is trying to drive down costs of flash storage in arrays. Its not a single solution that is driving down the cost of solid state within 3PAR arrays according to Prasad. Its a progression of technology improvements that brings the cost of solid state down to $2 per GB and near the cost of spinning disk. And most importantly for customers, each of these capabilities is delivered while never compromising performance. HP 3PAR’s design philosophy has always been to offload as much of the operation to the drive or ASIC level to avoid taxing the CPU, since the CPU will at some point become a bottleneck.

Back in June of 2013, HP announced the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 all-flash array at HP Discover in Las Vegas. At that time, the solution was based around the industry standard eMLC solid state drives at a cost of around $13 per GB. In December 2013, HP announced its adoption of the industry standard cMLC drives and took control of solid state sparing. This allowed HP to drive down the costs of solid state by 50% on a cost per GB. According to Prasad, the cMLC drives was a 30% reduction in cost and the Adaptive Sparing technology brought a 20% savings.

The Adaptive Sparing technology is HP taking control of the spare cells within each solid state disk. Because of how solid state works, each cell of the SSD has a finite number of writes before it degrades and is no longer reliable. To combat this, SSD vendors build in roughly an additional 30% of spare space used when primary cells fail. For a 400GB SSD, there may be approximately 112GB of additional capacity locked on the drive. That additional capacity is used after cells are worn past usability in the primary 400GB area.

The 3PAR OS already included sparing technology across the entire array when it was written for spinning disk. When solid state was added, it effectively double spared that storage – with both the individual drive and the array handling sparing. HP worked with solid state vendors to open up reserved space on the solid state disk and free up an additional 20% of space that was formerly reserved. It instead allocates spares chunklets across this space within the entire pool. When the solid state drive has worn and experiences a drive failure, the array uses the spare chunklets across the other drives in the pool to rebuild and when the drive is replaced and rebuilt it unmaps the space. HP achieves this Adaptive Sparing using custom firmware on standard SSD drives.

That brings us to last month – June 2014 – one year since the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 array was introduced – and HP had several more enhancements to announce. The primary announcement was something HP calls Thin Deduplication. Thin Deduplication uses the zero-detect engine with a hashing capability that was built into the 3PAR fourth generation ASIC. The other major announcement and addition is Express Indexing which allows indexing for up to 460TB of raw capacity. The Express Indexing allows for hash comparison and matching of data. Combining these two capabilities, HP estimates that customers will see a usable capacity of $2 per GB in production use on solid state drives. That estimation includes RAID and metadata in its calculation along with all the savings from the array features.

dedupe

When the fourth generation ASIC was designed, hashing was included and with thin deduplication each incoming chunklet is hashed on a 16K block size. Each block is then looked up in the index, but HP doesn’t’ simply rely on an index match, it goes and looks up the data to compare it to the incoming data. The incoming and read data are then run through an XOR operation bit by bit and if they match, the result of the XOR operation is all zeros. Run that through the zero-detect engine and if it is zero, the index pointer is updated and if not, the new data is written. The deduplication technology is driven by the zero-detect technology that has been a part of 3PAR since the beginning.

As an aside, I’ve been in the room with storage experts who have repeated asked HP’s David Scott and other HP technical staff if the ASIC is really needed and when we might see a 3PAR virtual appliance. As each new generation of 3PAR is designed, HP’s storage managers also asks the team if it is cheaper or faster to design the array around industry standard hardware and handle the advanced capabilities in software without the ASIC. Up to the fourth generation the answer has always been that the ASIC adds considerable value and speed to the array and its operation. This is a perfect example of the value of the ASIC. On the flip side, had ASIC-based hashing not been included with the fourth-gen ASIC, this capability would have inevitably been delayed until a fifth-generation ASIC or software capability was created.

That’s not to say HP is claiming some amazing foresight that led to these incredible outcomes. In some cases, HP’s engineers have been lucky. For instance, the 16K block size which is standard in 3PAR was decided long before deduplication was on the horizon. Most other deduplicating arrays, including the HP StoreOnce backup arrays, use a 4K block size. A 4K block size would increase the overall processing required, but would yield better deduplication rates. When tested on 3PAR, changing the block size from 16K to 4K only yielded about 5% improvement in deduplication but had a performance penalty. So, 16K seemed to be a sweet spot for both performance and deduplication rates and that was already HP’s default.

While HP is talking about $2 per GB on an all-flash array and while its talking about Adaptive Sparing, Thin Deduplication and Express Indexing for the 3PAR StoreServ 7450 arrays, this is all something existing customers will benefit from. I previously explored the power of common architectures on the blog. All existing 3PAR customers with a fourth-generation ASIC will inherit and benefit from these capabilities to some degree if they are using solid state anywhere in their 3PAR arrays. Fourth-gen ASIC arrays are the 7000 and 10000 series 3PAR arrays.

The new 1.92TB SSD drives will be available for all 3PAR customers in September time frame with a list price of $14,000 per drive. That is roughly a native $7 per GB cost. All other savings are driven by the advanced features of the 3PAR arrays.

Thin Deduplication will be delivered in the September timeframe also with a new firmware release that will enable the capability on any SSD tier for 3PAR StoreServ 7000 and 10000 series arrays. Deduplication can be supported cross all levels of disk since its algorithm based, but its yet to be seen if HP will allow it on spinning disk. The deduplication is implemented at a CPG (common provisioning group) level.

Disclaimer: HP invited me to HP Discover as a blogger and covered my expenses to attend the event. I also spoke at a session during the event. As always, the views and opinions stated on this blog are my own. HP was given no editorial control over content or topics for my posts.

July 7, 2014 1 comment