Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Continuing my week in Chicago, I decided to attend some of the presentations from the System x side. This is the advantage of running both conferences in the same hotel, attendees can choose how many of each they want to participate in.

Wayne Wigley, IBM Advanced Technical Support (ATS), presented a series of presentations on different server virtualization offerings available for System x and BladeCenter servers. I am very familiar with virtualization implemented on System z mainframes, as well as IBM's POWER systems, and have working knowledge of Linux KVM and Xen, so I was well prepared to handle hearing the latest about Microsoft's Hyper-V and VMware's Vsphere version 4.

Microsoft Hyper-V 2008

Hyper-V can run as part of Windows 2008, are standalone on its own.Different levels of Windows 2008 include licenses for different number of Windows virtual machines (VMs).Windows Server 2008 Standard includes 1 Windows VM, Enterprise includes 4 Windows VMs, and the Datacenter edition includes unlimited number of Windows VMs. If you want to run more Window VMs than come included, you need to pay extra for each additional one. For example, to run 10 Windows VMs on a 2-socket server would cost about $9000 US dollars on Standard but only $6000 US dollars on Datacenter edition (list prices from Microsoft Web site).

Unlike VMware, which takes a monolithic approach as hypervisor, Hyper-V is more like Xen with a microkernelized approach. This means you need a "parent" guest OS image, and the rest of the Guest OS images are then considered "child" images.These child images can be various levels of Windows, from Windows XP Pro to Windows Server 2008, Xen-enabled Linux, or even a non-hypervisor-aware OS.The "parent" guest OS image provides networking and storage I/O services to these "child" images.For the hypervisor-aware versions of Windows and Linux, Hyper-V allows optimized access to the hypervisor, "synthetic devices", and hypercalls. Synthetic devices present themselves as network devices, but only serve to pass data along the VMBus to other networking resources. This process does not require software emulation, and therefore offers higher performance for virtual machines and lower host system overhead.For non-hypervisor-aware OS images, Hyper-V provides device emulation through the "parent" image, which is slower.

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) can manage both Hyper-V and VMware VI3 images.Wayne showed various screen shots of the GUI available to manage Hyper-V images.In standalone mode, you lose the nice GUI and management console.

Hyper-V supports external, internal and private virtual LANs (VLAN). External means that VMs can communicate with the outside world over standard ethernet connections. Internal means that VMs can communicate with "parent" and "child" guest images on the same server only. Private means that only "child" guests can communicate with other "child" images.

Hyper-V supports disk attached via IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS, FC, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS. One mode is "Virtual Hard Disk" (VHD) similar to VMware VMDK files. The other is "pass through" mode, which are actual disk LUNs accessed natively. VHDs can be dynamic (thin provisioned), fixed (fully allocated), or differencing. The concept of differencing is interesting, as you start with a base read-only VHD volume image, and have a separate "delta" file that contains changes from the base image.

Some of the key features of Hyper-V 2008 are:

• Being able to run concurrently 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Linux and Windows guest images
• Support for 64 GB of memory and 4-way symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) per VM
• Clustering for High Availability and Quick Migration of VM images
• Live backup with integration with Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS)
• Virtual LAN (VLAN) support, and Virtual and Pass-through physical disk support
• A clever VMbus, virtual service parent/client approach to sharing hardware
• Optimized performance options for hypervisor-aware versions of Windows and Linux, and emulated supportfor non-hypervisor-aware OS images.

VMware Vsphere v4.0

This was titled as an "Overview" session, but really was an "Update" session on the newest features of this release. The big change appears to be that VMware added "v" in front of everything.

• Under vCompute, there are some new features on VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) which includes recommended VM migrations. Dynamic Power Management (DPM) will move VMs during periods of low usageto consolidate onto fewer physical servers so as to reduce energy consumption.

• Under vStorage, vSphere introduces an enhanced Plugable Storage Architecture (PSA), with supportfor Storage Array Type Plugins (SATP) and Path Selection Plugins (PSP). This vStorage API allows forthird party plugins for improved fault-tolerance and complex I/O load balancing algorithms. This releasealso has improved support for iSCSI, including Challenge-Handshake Authentication Protocol (CHAP) support.Similar to Hyper-V's dynamic VHD, VMware supports "thin provisioning" for their virtual disk VMDK files.A feature of "Storage Vmotion" allows conversion between "thick" and "thin" provisioning formats.

  The vStorage API for Data Protection provide all the features of VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB). The APIprovides full, incremental and differential file-level backups for Windows and Linux guests, including supportfor snapshots and Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) quiescing.

  VMware introduces direct I/O pass-through for both NIC and HBA devices. While thisallows direct access to SAN-attached LUNs similar to Hyper-V, you lose a lot of features like Vmotion, High Availability and Fault Tolerance. Wayne felt that these restrictions are temporary, that hopefully VMwarewill resolve this over the next 12 months.

• Under vNetwork, VMware has virtual LAN switches called vSwitches. This includes support for IPv6and VLAN offloading.

The vSphere server can now run with up to 1TB of RAM and 64 logical CPUs to support up to 320 VM guest images.Each VM can have up to 255GB RAM and up to 8-way SMP.Vsphere ESX 4 introduces a new virtual hardware platform called VM Hardware v7. While Vsphere 4.0 can run VMs from ESX 2 and ESX 3, the problem is if you have new VMs based on this newer VM Hardware v7, you cannot run them on older ESX versions.

Vsphere comes in four sizes: Standard, Advanced, Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus, ranging in list price from $795 US dollars to $3495 US dollars.

While IBM is the #1 reseller of VMware, we also are proud to support Hyper-V, Xen, KVM and other similar products.Analysts expect most companies will have two or more server virtualization solutions in their data center, and it is good to see that IBM supports them all.

technorati tags: IBM, Wayne Wigley, ATS, Hyper-V, Microsoft, SCVMM, SMP, VLAN, VMware, DRS, DPM, Vsphere, Vmotion, Xen, KVM, Linux, Windows, server virtualization

Continuing my week in Chicago for the IBM Storage and Storage Networking Symposium and System x and BladeCenter Technical Conference, I presented a variety of topics.

Hybrid Storage for a Green Data Center

The cost of power and cooling has risen to be a #1 concern among data centers. I presented the following hybrid storage solutions that combine disk with tape. These provide the best of both worlds, the high performance access time of disk with the lower costs and reduced energy consumption of tape.

• IBM [System Storage DR550] - IBM's Non-erasable, Non-rewriteable (NENR) storage for archive and compliance data retention
• IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution [GMAS] - IBM's multi-site grid storage for PACS applications and electronic medical records[EMR]
• IBM Scale-out File Services [SoFS] - IBM's scalable NAS solution that combines a global name space with a clustered GPFS file system, serving as the ideal basis for IBM's own[Cloud Computing and Storage] offerings

Not only do these help reduce energy costs, they provide an overall lower total cost of ownership (TCO) thantraditional WORM optical or disk-only storage configurations.

The Convergence of Networks - Understanding SAN, NAS and iSCSI in the Data Center Network

This turned out to be my most popular session. Many companies are at a crossroads in choosing data and storage networking solutions in light of recent announcements from IBM and others. In the span of 75 minutes, I covered:

• Block storage concepts, storage virtualization and RAID levels
• File system concepts, how file systems map files to block storage
• Network Attach Storage, the history of the NFS and CIFS protocols, Pros and Cons of using NAS
• Storage Area Networks, the history of SAN protocols including ESCON, FICON and FCP, Pros and Cons of using SAN
• IP SAN technologies, iSCSI and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), Pros and Cons of using this approach
• Network Convergence with Infiniband and Fibre Channel over Convergence Enhanced Ethernet (FCoCEE), why Infiniband was not adopted historically in the marketplace as a storage protocol, and the features and enhancements of Convergence Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) needed to merge NAS, SAN and iSCSI traffic onto a single converged data center network [DCN]

Yes, it was a lot of information to cover, but I managed to get it done on time.

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center version 4.1 Overview and Update

In conferences like these, there are two types of product-level presentations. An "Overview" explains howproducts work today to those who are not familiar with it. An "Update" explains what's new in this version of the product for those who are already familiar with previous releases. I decided to combine these into one sessionfor IBM's new version of [Tivoli Storage Productivity Center].I was one of the original lead architects of this product many years ago, and was able to share many personalexperiences about its evolution in development and in the field at client facilities.Analysts have repeatedly rated IBM Productivity Center as one of the top Storage Resource Management (SRM) tools available in the marketplace.

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) Overview

Can you believe I have been doing ILM since 1986? I was the lead architect for DFSMS which provides ILM support for z/OS mainframes. In 2003-2005, I spent 18 months in the field performingILM assessments for clients, and now there are dozens of IBM practitioners in Global Technology Services andSTG Lab Services that do this full time. This is a topic I cover frequently at the IBM Executive Briefing Center[EBC], because it addressesseveral top business challenges:

1. Reducing costs and simplifying management
2. Improving efficiency of personnel and application workloads
3. Managing risks and regulatory compliance

IBM has a solution based on five "entry points". The advantage of this approach is that it allows our consultants to craft the right solution to meet the specific requirements of each client situation. These entry points are:

• Enterprise Content Management [ECM]
• Tiered Information Infrastructure - we don't limit ourselves to just "Tiered Storage" as storage is only part of a complete[information infrastructure] of servers,networks and storage
• Storage Optimization and Virtualization - including virtual disk, virtual tape and virtual file solutions
• Process Enhancement and Automation - an important part of ILM are the policies and procedures, such as IT Infrastructure Library [ITIL] best practices
• Archive and Retention - space management and data retention solutions for email, database and file systems

I did not get as many attendees as I had hoped for this last one, as I was competing head-to-head in the same time slot as Lee La Frese covering IBM's DS8000 performance with Solid State Disk (SSD) drives, John Sing covering Cloud Computing and Storage with SoFS, and Eric Kern covering IBM Cloudburst.

I am glad that I was able to make all of my presentations at the beginning of the week, so that I can then sit back and enjoy the rest of the sessions as a pure attendee.

technorati tags: IBM, Symp09, storage symposium, hybrid storage, DR550, NENR, WORM, GMAS, SoFS, PACS, EMR, NAS, GPFS, SAN, iSCSI, FCoE, FCoCEE, CEE, DCN, TCO, RAID, ESCON, FICON, Infiniband, Tivoli, Productivity Center, ILM, virtualization, ITIL, DS8000, SSD, Cloudburst, Information Infrastructure

This week I am in Chicago for the IBM Storage and Storage Networking Symposium, which coincides with the System x and BladeCenter Technical Conference. This allows the 800 attendees to attend both storage or server presentations at their convenience. There were hundreds of sessions, over 20 time slots, so for each time slot, you have 15 or so topics to choose from.Mike Kuhn kicked off the series of keynote sessions. Here's my quick recap of each one:

Curtis Tearte, General Manager, IBM System Storage

Curtis replaced Andy Monshaw as General Manager for IBM System Storage. His presentation focused on how storage fits into IBM's Dynamic Infrastructure strategy. Some interesting points:

• a billion camera-enabled cell phones were sold in 2007, compared to 450 million in 2006.
• IBM expects that there will be 2 billion internet users by 2011, as well as trillions of "things".
• In the US, there were 2.2 million medical pharmacy dispensing errors resulting for handwritten prescriptions.
• Time wasted looking for parking spaces in Los Angeles consumed 47,000 gallons of gasoline, and generated 730 tons of carbon dioxide.
• In the US, 4.2 billion hours are lost, and 2.9 billion gallons of gas consumed, due to traffic congestion.
• Over the past decade, servers went from 8 watts to 100 watts per $1000 US dollars.
• Data growth appears immune to the economic recession. The digital footprint per person is expected to grow from 1TB today to over 15TB by 2020.
• 10 hours of YouTube videos are uploaded every minute.
• Bank of China manages 380 million bank accounts, processing over 10,000 transactions per second.

At the end of the session, Curtis transitioned from demonstrating his knowledge and passion of storage to his knowledge and passion in his favorite sport: baseball. Chicago is home to both the Cubs and the White Sox.

Roland Hagan, Vice President Business Line Executive, System x

IBM sets the infrastructure agenda for the entire industry. The Dynamic Infrastructure initiative is not just IT, but a complete end-to-end view across all of the infrastructures in play, including transportation, manufacturing, services and facilities.Companies spent over $60 billion US dollars on servers last year. Of these, 53 percent for x86-based servers, 9 percent for Itanium-based, 26 percent for RISC-based (POWER6, SPARC, etc.), and 11 percent mainframe. Theeconomic downturn has impacted revenues, but the percentages continue about the same.

The dominant deployment model remains one application per server. As a result, power, cooling and management costs have grown tremendously. There are system admins opposed to consolidating server images with VMware, Hyper-V, Xen or other server virtualizaition technologies. Roland referred to these admins as "server huggers".To help clients adopt cloud computing technologies, IBM introduced [Cloudburst] appliances. IBM plans to offer specialized versions for developers, for service providers, and for enterprises.

IBM's Enterprise-X Architecture is what differentiates IBM's x86-based servers from all the competitors, surrounding Intel and AMD processors with technology that provides distinct advantages. For example, to support server virtualization, IBM's eX4 provides support for more memory, which often is more critical than CPU resources when deploying large number of guest OS images. IBM System x servers have an integrated management module (IMM) and was the first to change over from BIOS to the new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface [UEFI] standard.

IBM servers offer double the performance, consume half the power, and cost a third less to manage, than comparably priced servers from competitors. Of the top 20 more energy efficient server deployments, 19 are from IBM. Roland cited customer reference SciNet, a 4000-server supercomputer with 30,000 cores based on IBM [iDataPlex] servers. At 350 TeraFLOPs it is ranked #16 fastest supercomputer in the world, and #1 in Canada. With apower usage effectiveness (PUE) less than 1.2, it also is very energy efficient. This means that for every 12 watts of electricity going in to the data center, 10 watts are used for servers, storage and networking gear, andonly 2 watts used for power and cooling. Traditional data centers have PUE around 2.5, consuming 25 watts total for every 10 watts used by servers, storage and networking gear.

Clod Barrera, Distinguished Engineer, Chief Technical Strategist for IBM System Storage

Clod presented trends and directions for disk and tape technology, disk and tape systems, and the direction towards cloud computing.

Whew! A lot to think about!

technorati tags: IBM, Chicago, Storage Symposium, System x, BladeCenter, Curtis Tearte, Roland Hagan,Andy Monshaw, baseball, Intel, AMD, IMM, UEFI, supercomputer, PUE, Clod Barrera, SciNet, Canada

Ideally, every airline would use the most experienced seasoned professional airline pilots money could buy, but some airlines, in an effort to compete on ticket price, may elect instead to have less experienced pilots.Here's a great excerpt:

Airline history lesson 101: It used to be, up until the mid 1980’s, that a young pilot would be hired on at a major carrier, become a flight engineer (FE), and then spend a few years managing the systems of the older-generation airplanes. But he or she was learning all the while. These new “pilots” sat in the FE seat and did their job, all the while observing the “pilots” doing the flying, day in and day out.

The FE’s learned from the seasoned pilots about the real world of flying into the Chicago O’Hares and New York LaGuardias. They learned decision making, delegation, and the reality of “captain’s final authority” as confirmed in the law. When they got the chance to upgrade, they became a copilot. The copilot’s duty was to assist the captain in flying; but even during their time as the new copilot, they had the luxury of the FE looking over their shoulders — i.e., more learning. This three-man-crew concept, now a fond memory in the domestic markets but used predominately in international flying, was considered one more layer of protection. But it’s gone.

To become the public speaker I am today, IBM put me through a variety of speaking classes. I taught high school and college classes to practice in front of groups. But most importantly, I traveled with seasoned colleagues and watched them in action from the front row.I learned how to handle tough questions, how to react to hecklers causing trouble, and how to deal with the unexpected before, during and after each presentation. In addition to speaking skills, I ended up having to learn travel skills, foreign language skills, and a variety of cultural social skills. All part of the job in my line of work.

Likewise, being a storage administrator is an important job, and for some data centers, not something to give lightly to a fresh college graduate. Unless they have had format IT Infrastructure Library [ITIL] certification coursework, I doubt they would understand the processes and disciplines demanded by the typical data center. I have been to accounts where new hires are not allowed to touch production systems for the first two years. Instead they watch the seasoned professionals do their jobs, and are given only access to "sand box" systems that are used for application testing or Quality Assurance (QA). Sadly, I have also been to other accounts where people with no storage experience whatsoever were tossed into the admin pool and let loose with superuser passwords, all in an effort to save money during times of exponential data growth rates, only to pay the price later with outages or lost data.

The parallels between the airline industry and the IT industry are eerie.

technorati tags: IBM, Captain Sullenberger, storage administrator