In this, our yearend industry wrap up episode, the GreyBeards discuss trends and technologdies impacting the IT industry in 2019 and what’s ahead for 2020. This year we have Matt and Keith on the podcast along with Ray. Just like last year, we start off with NVMeoF.
NVMeoF unleashed
This year just about every major storage vendor announced new systems that either have support for NVMeoF or currently offer NVMeoF on their storage systems. Most offer FC based NVMeoF but a few offer NVMeoF/Ethernet, fewer still offer both.
All of the NVMeoF/Ethernet seem to be using RoCE or iWARP. Unclear if one is more often used that the other, so for now both continue to be used in the market. Some storage vendors are offering NVMeoF as an internal fabric to access storage while still using iSCSI or FC/SCSI to access the data. This works better than SAS but won’t provide all the performance you can get from end-to-end NVMeoF.
NVMeoF is all about increasing IOPS and reducing response times. That and getting ready for SCM SSDs. In the mean time the SSD industry has introduced some very attractive NVMe (NAND) SSDs that in NVMeoF storage system can increase IOPS and reduce latencies.
We talked last year about NVMeoF standards finally stabilizing and this year the rollout across enterprise storage systems is testament to that.
SCM hits the enterprise
Most of us attended an Intel Data Center Event earlier this past yea,r where Optane DC PM was introduced. Optane DC PM is the memory version of Optane SCM (3DX Crosspoint) technology. Intel offers two distinct modes of accessing Optane DC PM as memory: 1) App Direct mode, where data in Optane DC PM persists across power cycles but requires one to use a special AP; and 2) Memory mode where Optane DC PM is cleared during a power cycle, (see our RayOnStorage post Need memory, Intel’s Optane DC PM…).
Vendors seem to be using Optane both memory and SCM technology differently. Pure is using Optane SSDs plugged into their FlashArray as sort of a read cache for customer IO. They suggest for well behaved applications this can reduce IO response times considerably.
Dell EMC introduced SCM as a storage tier and are using their automated storage tiering to move the hottest data to SCM. Oracle’s latest Exadata appliance uses Optane DC PM as both a read and write caching layer.
It won’t be long before every enterprise vendor offers SCM drives in their storage systems with a few offering Optane DC PM as in memory caching technology.
Of course, the big news for Optane DC PM is its use in memory databases, specifically SAP HANA. HANA can take advantage of the (6) TB of memory to to handle larger databases. Keith mentioned that even Microsoft SQL server can take advantage of the additional memory to provide faster responses to queries.
Keith also mentioned that there are some systems out there that can be configured to share Optane memory (or storage). When SAP or other databases use this solution they are able to amortize the cost of the technology over more use cases.
Of course, Optane DC PM are only available on the lastest generation Intel processors. None of us have heard anything from AMD (or Micron) on providing a second source for support of Optane DC PM (or the memory technology itself). Presumably most customers would want a second source for Optane DC PM processor support (as well as the technology)
Cloud enterprise storage hits mainstream
The other thing we saw more of this year is enterprise vendors offering versions of storage in public cloud environments. NetApp was an early proponent of doing this.
We saw at Pure that they have a new Cloud Block Store witch is a re-architected version of FlashArray//X storage using AWS hardware and networking services. We were very impressed with what they have accomplished and it was the subject of more than one late night discussion. Listen to the Keith & Ray show at Pure//Accelerate2019 podcast to learn more.
Matt mentioned Nimble’s cloud volume storage which is cloud adjacent. Most enterprise vendors offer something similar today. They differentiate on how easy it is to configure, use and where (which regions) it’s available in.
NetApp has arguably been at this the longest and has the deepest offerings available from cloud adjacent file and block storage, to offering native enterprise file services for all public cloud environments, to supplying a suite of dedicated data services to surround all of their storage technology operating in public clouds and on premises.
While Dell EMC may have missed the turn to the cloud, they are quickly trying to catch up. Keith mentioned Faction, a Dell partner that offers cloud storage services using VMware with VMC. With Faction and vSAN customers have access to software defined storage that uses cloud hardware to support data services.
What’s driving data growth
There seems to be no end for the need for storage to store data. The GreyBeards point to three trends driving data growth today.
- IoT seems to have no bounds. A recent RayOnStorage post Internet of Tires discussed how tire companies were tying their tires to the internet. And that’s just the start, pretty soon every artifact, every device, every manufactured item will have a number of sensors attached all of which will be creating massive amounts of data.
- AI ML DL has an insatiable appetite for data. IoT is being used largely to optimize products and services. But it’s DL, with a large dollop of data, that is behind much of that optmization.
- SaaS applications is a relatively new application approach that’s being rolled out to more arenas and as it’s online and user oriented, seems to generate lots of data.
Containers storage debate
We closed the podcast with a heavy debate on whether container applications have need for storage. Keith was adamant that containers by their very nature are stateless and that Kubernetes ability to stop and start container applications at will almost requires stateless operations.
Ray was a bit more theoretical on the topic and believed that most container applications today take advantage of some sort of database or other services to store state and that state is just another word for storage.
Keith mentioned encoding as a typical container app. Encoding containers can be fired up and taken down at will without hurting anything but throughput. Yes, but those encoder container apps must access some database or other state information to find out what work is left to do and as they complete their work they update this data as well as store their newly encoded segments. This all involves the use of state information.
In the end, I think we were talking about the same thing but using different terminology. Keith believes that persistent state information is needed and Ray says that this is just another word for (containers) storage. Matt said we probably need Nigel (@NigelPoulton) on the podcast to straighten us both out.
The podcast ran a bit long and could have run longer. Keith and Matt bring systems level perspective to what’s happening in the storage market. But they come at it from different sides. Ray seems to frame everything from a storage perspective. Diverse perspectives lead to a more fuller and interesting discussion. Listen to the podcast to learn more.
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Ray Lucchesi ( @RayLucchesi) is the host of GreyBeardsOnStorage and is President/Founder of Silverton Consulting, and a prominent blogger at RayOnStorage.com.
Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) is a IT thought leader who has written articles for many industry publications, interviewed many industry heavyweights, worked with Silicon Valley startups, and engineered cloud infrastructure for large government organizations. Keith is the co-founder of The CTO Advisor, blogs at Virtualized Geek
Matt Leib (@MBLeib), one of our co-hosts, has been blogging in the storage space for over 10 years, with work experience both on the engineering and presales/product marketing. His blog is at Virtually Tied to My Desktop.