Category: SSD

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57: GreyBeards talk midrange storage with Pierluca Chiodelli, VP of Prod. Mgmt. & Cust. Ops., Dell EMC Midrange Storage

Sponsored by:

Dell EMC Midrange Storage

In this episode we talk with Pierluca Chiodelli  (@chiodp), Vice President of Product, Management and Customer Experience at Dell EMC Midrange storage.  Howard talked with Pierluca at SFD14 and I talked with Pierluca at SFD13. He started working there as a customer engineer and has worked his way up to VP since then.

This is the second time (Dell) EMC has been on our show (see our EMCWorld2015 summary podcast with Chad Sakac) but this is the first sponsored podcast from Dell EMC. Pierluca seems to have been with (Dell) EMC forever.

You may recall that Dell EMC has two product families in their midrange storage portfolio. Pierluca provides a number of reasons why both continue to be invested in, enhanced and sold on the market today.

Dell EMC Unity and SC product lines

Dell EMC Unity storage is the outgrowth of unified block and file storage that was first released in the EMC VNXe series storage systems. Unity continues that tradition of providing both file and block storage in a dense, 2 rack U system configuration, with dual controllers, high availability, AFA and hybrid storage systems. The other characteristic of Unity storage is its tight integration with VMware virtualization environments.

Dell EMC SC series storage continues the long tradition of Dell Compellent storage systems, which support block storage and which invented data progression technology.  Data progression is storage tiering on steroids, with support for multi-tiered rotating disk (across the same drive), flash, and now cloud storage. SC series is also considered a set it and forget it storage system that just takes care of itself without the need for operator/admin tuning or extensive monitoring.

Dell EMC is bringing together both of these storage systems in their CloudIQ, cloud based, storage analytics engine and plan to have both systems supported under the Unisphere management engine.

Also Unity storage can tier files to the cloud and copy LUN snapshots to the public cloud using their Cloud Tiering Appliance software.  With their UnityVSA Software Defined Storage appliance and VMware vSphere running in AWS, the file and snapshot data can then be accessed in the cloud. SC Series storage will have similar capabilities, available soon.

At the end of the podcast, Pierluca talks about Dell EMC’s recently introduced Customer Loyalty Programs, which include: Never Worry Data Migrations, Built-in VirtuSteram Storage Cloud, 4:1 Storage Efficiency Guarantee, All-inclusive Software pricing, 3-year Satisfaction Guarantee, Hardware Investment Protection, and Predictable Support Pricing.

The podcast runs ~27 minutes. Pierluca is a very knowledgeable individual and although he has a beard, it’s not grey (yet). He’s been with EMC storage forever and has a long, extensive history in midrange storage, especially with Dell EMC’s storage product families. It’s been a pleasure for Howard and I to talk with him again.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Pierluca Chiodelli, V.P. of Product Management & Customer Operations, Dell EMC Midrange Storage

Pierluca Chiodelli is currently the Vice President of Product Management for Dell EMC’s suite of Mid-Range solutions including, Unity, VNX, and VNXe from heritage EMC storage and Compellent, EqualLogic, and Windows Storage Server from heritage Dell Storage.

Pierluca’s organization is comprised of four teams: Product Strategy, Performance & Competitive Engineering, Solutions, and Core & Strategic Account engineering. The teams are responsible for ensuring Dell EMC’s mid-range solutions enable end users and service providers to transform their operations and deliver information technology as a service.

Pierluca has been with EMC since 1999, with experience in field support and core engineering across Europe and the Americas. Prior to joining EMC, he worked at Data General and as a consultant for HP Corporation.

Pierluca holds one degree in Chemical Engineering and second one in Information Technology.

 

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55: GreyBeards storage and system yearend review with Ray & Howard

In this episode, the Greybeards discuss the year in systems and storage. This year we kick off the discussion with a long running IT trend which has taken off over the last couple of years. That is, recently the industry has taken to buying pre-built appliances rather than building them from the ground up.

We can see this in all the hyper-converged solutions available  today but it goes even deeper than that. It seems to have started with the trend in organizations to get by with less man-women power.

This led to a desire to purchase pre-buit software applications and now, appliances rather than build from parts. It just takes to long to build and lead architects have better things to do with their time than checking compatibility lists, testing and verifying that hardware works properly with software. The pre-built appliances are good enough and doing it yourself doesn’t really provide that much of an advantage over the pre-built solutions.

Next, we see the coming systems using NVMe over Fabric storage systems as sort of a countertrend to the previous one. Here we see some customers paying well for special purpose hardware with blazing speed that takes time and effort to get working right, but the advantages are significant. Both Howard and I were at the Excelero SFD12 event and it blew us away. Howard also attended the E8 Storage SFD14 event which was another example along a similar vein.

Finally, the last trend we discussed was the rise of 3D TLC and the absence of 3DX and other storage class memory (SCM) technologies to make a dent in the marketplace. 3D TLC NAND is coming out of just about every fab these days and resulting in huge (but costly) SSDs, in the multi-TB range.  Combine these with NVMe interfaces and you have msec access to almost a PB of storage without breaking a sweat.

The missing 3DX SCM tsunami some of us predicted is mainly due to the difficulties in bringing new fab technologies to market. We saw some of this in the stumbling with 3D NAND but the transition to 3DX and other SCM technologies is a much bigger change to new processes and technology. We all believe it will get there someday but for the moment, the industry just needs to wait until the fabs get their yields up.

The podcast runs over 44 minutes. Howard and I could talk for hours on what’s happening in IT today. Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Howard Marks is the Founder and Chief Scientist of howardmarksDeepStorage, a prominent blogger at Deep Storage Blog and can be found on twitter @DeepStorageNet.

 

Ray Lucchesi is the President and Founder of Silverton Consulting, a prominent blogger at RayOnStorage.com, and can be found on twitter @RayLucchesi.

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52: GreyBeards talk software defined storage with Kiran Sreenivasamurthy, VP Product Management, Maxta

This month we talk with an old friend from Storage Field Day 7 (videos), Kiran Sreenivasamurthy, VP of Product Management for Maxta. Maxta has a software defined storage solution which currently works on VMware vSphere, Red Hat Virtualization and KVM to supply shared, scale out storage and HCI solutions for enterprises across the world.

Maxta is similar to VMware’s vSAN software defined storage whose licenses can be transferred from one server to another, as you upgrade your data center over time. As software defined storage, Maxta runs on any standard Intel X86 hardware. Indeed, Maxta has one customer running two Super Micro servers and one Cisco server in the same cluster.

Maxta advantages

One item that makes Maxta unique is all of its storage properties are assignable at a VM granularity. That is,  replication, deduplication, compression and even blocksize can all be enabled/set at the VMDK-VM level.  This could be useful for environments supporting diverse applications, such as having a 64K block size for Microsoft Exchange and 4K block size for web servers.

Another advantage is their multi-hypervisor support. Maxta’s support for RH Virtualization, VMware and KVM offers the unique ability to migrate storage and even powered off VMs, from one hypervisor to another. Maxta’s file system is the same for both VMware and KVM clusters.

Maxta clusters

Their software must be licensed on all servers in a vSphere or KVM cluster with access to Maxta storage. The minimum Maxta cluster size is 3 nodes for 2-way replication and 5 nodes for 3-way replication.  Most Maxta systems run on 8 to 12 server node clusters. But Maxta has installations with 20 to 24 nodes in customer deployments.

Maxta supports SSD only as well as SSD-disk hybrid storage. And SSDs can be NVMe as well as SATA SSD storage. In hybrid configurations, Maxta SSDs are used as read and write back caches for disk storage.

Maxta supports compute only nodes, compute-storage nodes and witness only nodes (node with 1 storage device). In addition, besides heterogeneous server support, Maxta clusters can have nodes with different storage capacities. Maxta will optimize VM data placement to balance IO activity across heterogeneous nodes.

Maxta provides a vCenter plugin so VMware admins can manage and monitor their storage inside vSphere environment. Maxta also offers a Cloud Connect MX which is a cloud based system allowing for management of all your Maxta clusters through out an enterprise, wherever they reside.

Even HCI, through partners

For customers wanting an HCI solution, Maxta partners can supply pre-tested, HCI appliances or can configure Maxta software with servers at customer data centers. Maxta has done well OEMing their solution, and one significant success has been their OEM deal with Lenovo in China and East Asia, where they sell HCI appliances with Maxta software.

Maxta has also found success with managed service providers (that want to deploy the software on their own hardware), and SME & ROBO environments. Also Maxta seems to be doing very well in Latin America as well as previously mentioned China.

The podcast runs ~42 minutes. Kiran is knowledgeable individual and has worked with some of the leading storage companies of the last two decades.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Kiran Sreenivasamurthy, VP Product Management, Maxta

Kiran Sreenivasamurthy is the Vice President of Product Management for Maxta Inc. He has developed and managed storage hardware and software products for more than 20 years with leading storage companies and startups including HP 3PAR, NetApp and Mendocino Software.

Kiran Manages all aspects of Maxta’s hyperconvergence product portfolio from inception through revenue.

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51: GreyBeards talk hyper convergence with Lee Caswell, VP Product, Storage & Availability BU, VMware

Sponsored by:

VMware

In this episode we talk with Lee Caswell (@LeeCaswell), Vice President of Product, Storage and Availability Business Unit, VMware.  This is the second time Lee’s been on our show, the previous one back in April of last year when he was with his prior employer. Lee’s been at VMware for a little over a year now and has helped lead some significant changes in their HCI offering, vSAN.

VMware vSAN/HCI business

Many customers struggle to modernize their data centers with funding being the primary issue. This is very similar to what happened in the early 2000s as customers started virtualizing servers and consolidating storage. But today, there’s a new option, server based/software defined storage like VMware’s vSAN, which can be deployed for little expense and grown incrementally as needed. VMware’s vSAN customer base is currently growing by 150% CAGR, and VMware is adding over 100 new vSAN customers a week.

Many companies say they offer HCI, but few have adopted the software-only business model this entails. The transition from a hardware-software, appliance-based business model to a software-only business model is difficult and means a move from a high revenue-lower margin business to a lower revenue-higher margin business. VMware, from its very beginnings, has built a sustainable software-only business model that extends to vSAN today.

The software business model means that VMware can partner easily with a wide variety of server OEM partners to supply vSAN ReadyNodes that are pre-certified and jointly supported in the field. There are currently 14 server partners for vSAN ReadyNodes. In addition, VMware has co-designed the VxRail HCI Appliance with Dell EMC, which adds integrated life-cycle management as well as Dell EMC data protection software licenses.

As a result, customers can adopt vSAN as a build or a buy option for on-prem use and can also leverage vSAN in the cloud from a variety of cloud providers, including AWS very soon. It’s the software-only business model that sets the stage for this common data management across the hybrid cloud.

VMware vSAN software defined storage (SDS)

The advent of Intel Xeon processors and plentiful, relatively cheap SSD storage has made vSAN an easy storage solution for most virtualized data centers today. SSDs removed any performance concerns that customers had with hybrid HCI configurations. And with Intel’s latest Xeon Scalable processors, there’s more than enough power to handle both application compute and storage compute workloads.

From Lee’s perspective, there’s still a place for traditional SAN storage, but he sees it more for cold storage that is scaled independently from servers or for bare metal/non-virtualized storage environments. But for everyone else using virtualized data centers, they really need to give vSAN a look.

Storage vendors shifting sales

It used to be that major storage vendor sales teams would lead with hardware appliance storage solutions and then move to HCI when pushed. The problem was that a typical SAN storage sale takes 9 months to complete and then 3 years of limited additional sales.

To address this, some vendors have taken the approach where they lead with HCI and only move to legacy storage when it’s a better fit. With VMware vSAN, it’s a quicker sales cycle than legacy storage because HCI costs less up front and there’s no need to buy the final storage configuration with the first purchase. VMware vSAN HCI can grow as the customer applications needs dictate, generating additional incremental sales over time.

VMware vSAN in AWS

Recently, VMware has announced VMware Cloud in AWS.What this means is that you can have vSAN storage operating in an AWS cloud just like you would on-prem. In this case, workloads could migrate from cloud to on-prem and back again with almost no changes. How the data gets from on-prem to cloud is another question.

Also the pricing model for VMware Cloud in AWS moves to a consumption based model, where you pay for just what you use on a monthly basis. This way VMware Cloud in AWS and vSAN is billed monthly, consistent with other AWS offerings.

VMware vs. Microsoft on cloud

There’s a subtle difference in how Microsoft and VMware are adopting cloud. VMware came from an infrastructure platform and is now implementing their infrastructure on cloud. Microsoft started as a development platform and is taking their cloud development platform/stack and bringing it to on-prem.

It’s really two different philosophies in action. We now see VMware doing more for the development community with vSphere Integrated Containers (VIC), Docker Containers, Kubernetes, and Pivotal Cloud foundry. Meanwhile Microsoft is looking to implement the Azure stack for on-prem environments, and they are focusing more on infrastructure. In the end, enterprises will have terrific choices as the software defined data center frees up customers dollars and management time.

The podcast runs ~25 minutes. Lee is a very knowledgeable individual and although he doesn’t qualify as a Greybeard (just yet), he has been in and around the data center and flash storage environments throughout most of his career. From his diverse history, Lee has developed a very business like perspective on data center and storage technologies and it’s always a pleasure talking with him.  Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Lee Caswell, V.P. of Product, Storage & Availability Business Unit, VMware

Lee Caswell leads the VMware storage marketing team driving vSAN products, partnerships, and integrations. Lee joined VMware in 2016 and has extensive experience in executive leadership within the storage, flash and virtualization markets.

Prior to VMware, Lee was vice president of Marketing at NetApp and vice president of Solution Marketing at Fusion-IO (now SanDisk). Lee was a founding member of Pivot3, a company widely considered to be the founder of hyper-converged systems, where he served as the CEO and CMO. Earlier in his career, Lee held marketing leadership positions at Adaptec, and SEEQ Technology, a pioneer in non-volatile memory. He started his career at General Electric in Corporate Consulting.

Lee holds a bachelor of arts degree in economics from Carleton College and a master of business administration degree from Dartmouth College. Lee is a New York native and has lived in northern California for many years. He and his wife live in Palo Alto and have two children. In his spare time Lee enjoys cycling, playing guitar, and hiking the local hills.

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50: Greybeards wrap up Flash Memory Summit with Jim Handy, Director at Objective Analysis

In this episode we talk with Jim Handy (@thessdguy), Director at Objective Analysis,  a semiconductor market research organization. Jim is an old friend and was on last year to discuss Flash Memory Summit (FMS) 2016. Jim, Howard and I all attended FMS 2017 last week  in Santa Clara and Jim and Howard were presenters at the show.

NVMe & NVMeF to the front

Although, unfortunately the show floor was closed due to fire, there were plenty of sessions and talks about NVMe and NVMeF (NVMe over fabric). Howard believes NVMe & NVMeF seems to be being adopted much quicker than anyone had expected. It’s already evident inside storage systems like Pure’s new FlashArray//X, Kamanario and E8 storage, which is already shipping block storage with NVMe and NVMeF.

Last year PCIe expanders and switches seemed like the wave of the future but ever since then, NVMe and NVMeF has taken off. Historically, there’s been a reluctance to add capacity shelves to storage systems because of the complexity of (FC and SAS) cable connections. But with NVMeF, RoCE and RDMA, it’s now just an (40GbE or 100GbE) Ethernet connection away, considerably easier and less error prone.

3D NAND take off

Both Samsung and Micron are talking up their 64 layer 3D NAND and the rest of the industry following. The NAND shortage has led to fewer price reductions, but eventually when process yields turn up, the shortage will collapse and pricing reductions should return en masse.

The reason that vertical, 3D is taking over from planar (2D) NAND is that planar NAND can’t’ be sharing much more and 15nm is going to be the place it stays at for a long time to come. So the only way to increase capacity/chip and reduce $/Gb, is up.

But as with any new process technology, 3D NAND is having yield problems. But whenever the last yield issue is solved, which seems close,  we should see pricing drop precipitously and much more plentiful (3D) NAND storage.

One thing that has made increasing 3D NAND capacity that much easier is string stacking. Jim describes string stacking as creating a unit, of say 32 layers, which you can fabricate as one piece  and then layer ontop of this an insulating layer. Now you can start again, stacking another 32 layer block ontop and just add another insulating layer.

The problem with more than 32-48 layers is that you have to (dig) create  holes (connecting) between all the layers which have to be (atomically) very straight and coated with special materials. Anyone who has dug a hole knows that the deeper you go, the harder it is to make the hole walls straight. With current technology, 32 layers seem just about as far as they can go.

3DX and similar technologies

There’s been quite a lot of talk the last couple of years about 3D XPoint (3DX) and what it  means for the storage and server industry. Intel has released Octane client SSDs but there’s no enterprise class 3DX SSDs as of yet.

The problem is similar to 3D NAND above, current yields suck.  There’s a chicken and egg problem with any new chip technologies. You need volumes to get the yield up and you need yields up to generate the volumes you need. And volumes with good yields generate profits to re-invest in the cycle for next technology.

Intel can afford to subsidize (lose money) 3DX technology until they get the yields up, knowing full well that when they do, it will become highly profitable.

The key is to price the new technology somewhere between levels in the storage hierarchy, for 3DX that means between NAND and DRAM. This does mean that 3DX will be more of between memory and SSD tier than a replacement for for either DRAM or SSDs.

The recent emergence of NVDIMMs have provided the industry a platform (based on NAND and DRAM) where they can create the software and other OS changes needed to support this mid tier as a memory level. So that when 3DX comes along as a new memory tier they will be ready

NAND shortages, industry globalization & game theory

Jim has an interesting take on how and when the NAND shortage will collapse.

It’s a cyclical problem seen before in DRAM and it’s a question of investment. When there’s an oversupply of a chip technology (like NAND), suppliers cut investments or rather don’t grow investments as fast as they were. Ultimately this leads to a shortage and which then leads to  over investment to catch up with demand.  When this starts to produce chips the capacity bottleneck will collapse and prices will come down hard.

Jim believes that as 3D NAND suppliers start driving yields up and $/Gb down, 2D NAND fabs will turn to DRAM or other electronic circuitry whichwill lead to a price drop there as well.

Jim mentioned game theory is the way the Fab industry has globalized over time. As emerging countries build fabs, they must seek partners to provide the technology to produce product. They offer these companies guaranteed supplies of low priced product for years to help get the fabs online. Once, this period is over the fabs never return to home base.

This approach has led to Japan taking over DRAM & other chip production, then Korea, then Taiwan and now China. It will move again. I suppose this is one reason IBM got out of the chip fab business.

The podcast runs ~49 minutes but Jim is a very knowledgeable, chip industry expert and a great friend from multiple  events. Howard and I had fun talking with him again. Listen to the podcast to learn more.

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Jim Handy, Director at Objective Analysis

Jim Handy of Objective Analysis has over 35 years in the electronics industry including 20 years as a leading semiconductor and SSD industry analyst. Early in his career he held marketing and design positions at leading semiconductor suppliers including Intel, National Semiconductor, and Infineon.

A frequent presenter at trade shows, Mr. Handy is known for his technical depth, accurate forecasts, widespread industry presence and volume of publication. He has written hundreds of market reports, articles for trade journals, and white papers, and is frequently interviewed and quoted in the electronics trade press and other media.  He posts blogs at www.TheMemoryGuy.com, and www.TheSSDguy.com