NetApp - Standards Watch

iSCSI and FCoE – Which Will Win?

Part 1 of 2

When new technologies are in development we often see articles by analysts and media pundits predicting wholesale change, as the emerging new technology enters the market.

This is often portrayed as a head-to-head battle with an existing technology – a fight to the death. 

Unfortunately, this impression is usually the result of briefings by vendors with a big stake in the new technology, without much consideration of the IT realities.  It shouldn’t be surprising then that in the real world, technology uptake rarely happens that way.  In most cases, the new technology coexists with other technologies for an extended period of time, as each finds its place in the market.

A case in point is the forthcoming emergence of Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), which has already been written about as an iSCSI killer, which prompted an interesting response.

iSCSI deployments to date have typically been in support of Windows or Virtual Server environments:  in tier 2 and tier 3 data centers in large organizations; in the core data center of small/medium enterprises;  and in remote offices.  In other words, iSCSI is usually chosen for environments that Fibre Channel has had difficulty penetrating due to cost, complexity, functionality and support issues.

The availability of FCoE -- which, remember, is being specifically designed to maintain backward compatibility with existing Fibre Channel endpoint infrastructure (which means World Wide Names, Fibre Channel fabric management, “converged” host bus adapters, and Fibre Channel support matrix complexities) -- seems very unlikely to replace or displace continued iSCSI growth in these sweet spot environments.

All of this leaves the question of why and where FCoE will be deployed. The “why” part of the question is fairly simple – the fundamental decision criterion for FCoE is a desire to move to a single network fabric in the data center for storage and data communications. 

I’ll give you my view on the “where” in my next post.  Stay tuned.

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blade.org’s New Network Convergence White Paper

A new white paper entitled Blade Platforms and Network Convergence just showed up on the blage.org website. If you are interested in “Enhanced Ethernet” (usually referred to as Data Center Bridging in IEEE 802.1 circles), “one-wire” network convergence around 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and blade server architectures, you should find this technical marketing piece quite informative.

Blade.org is an industry association focused on accelerating the development and adoption of open blade server platforms. A number of member companies collaborated to create this white paper, including Astute Networks, BLADE Network Technologies, Brocade Communications, Emulex, Fulcrum Microsystems, IBM, Mellanox Technologies, NetApp and NetXen. I think the result is a reasonably balanced vendor-neutral description of a complex set of topics.

As I’ve been talking to vendors and customers over the past few months, I’ve found a lot of interest in the whole topic of network convergence in the data center. In particular there are tons of questions about how, where and when the different upper level protocols (NFS, iSCSI, FCoE) will be deployed in this new environment. This paper is a reasonable attempt to address these questions. Check it out.

Exciting Agenda for the Ethernet Alliance

I spent a really interesting day at the Ethernet Alliance members’ meeting last week in Santa Clara CA.

The Ethernet Alliance is an industry group focused the incubation, development, launch and sustained support of Ethernet technologies. It has an informal relationship with the IEEE 802.1 and 802.3 standards committees providing what in a high-tech vendor environment would be product management and product marketing functions for their new technology efforts.

Organizationally, the EA technology agenda is mostly structured around supporting specific IEEE 802 technical activities … for example there are EA subcommittees that map directly to

• IEEE P802.3az (Energy-efficient Ethernet Task Force)
• IEEE P802.3ba (40Gb/s and 100Gb/s Ethernet Task Force),
• etc
• etc

However, there are also horizontally market-focused groups. For example, the Data Center Subcommittee is taking a more holistic view of the multiple Ethernet technologies that apply to data center environments

A few things in particular struck me in the course of the day:

• First is the broad and growing interest in existing and emerging Ethernet technologies that exists in the industry today. One measure of this is the fact that membership in the Ethernet Alliance has grown by 25% over the past year, and it shows no signs of abating (despite the economic climate).
• Second is the number and schedule of new Ethernet standards that are expected to emerge from the IEEE over the next couple of years. An Ethernet Alliance update last month captured some of this. Notable here were the progress on 40 and 100Gb Ethernet (standard expected mid-2010), and Energy Efficient Ethernet (standard expected early-2010).
• Third is the range of vendors who are coming together to focus on Ethernet in the Data Center. This is good news, since the requirements here will need to reflect the perspective of component, networking, switching, server, and storage vendors

I expect this is something I’ll be blogging on again real soon…

Latest SNIA Tutorials Now Available

I have had a bunch of requests for my presentation from last week’s Storage Networking World, as well as questions from people asking where to find other SNIA Tutorials. Well, good news … these presentations are all now available at http://www.snia.org/education/tutorials.  Check them out.  

This repository is probably the industry’s best source for peer-reviewed, vendor-neutral educational materials for a broad range of storage-related topics. It’s definitely worth your time to browse and dig in to the topics you want to learn about.

Technology Evangelism on a Shoestring

Well, I just had to share this with you …

… I was poking around on YouTube and came across a series of videos from Dr Dedupe (yes, the Dr Dedupe). They’re a great example of viral marketing, and they're just plain funny (on all sorts of levels). You really have to check them out ... just go to YouTube, search on DrDedupe, and start watching with #1.

Before you start wondering what this has to do with “What's going on in the industry, ... standards ... and multi-vendor collaboration activities” (my blog charter), it’s worth pointing out that Dr Dedupe is Larry Freeman - co-chair of the Data Deduplication and Space Reduction SIG in the SNIA Data Management Forum. So he's an active industry player.

I think that most of us who contribute in industry associations are constantly trying to push our favorite technologies, and often feel compelled to go the extra mile, just like Dr DeDupe  –- that kind of passion is a prerequisite for success.

So, all you industry participants out there, if you’re frustrated about getting your message out, take the Doctor’s advice: post it on YouTube and spread the word. It might even work!!

Industry Standards Participants at SNW

Storage Networking World in Dallas offers a great opportunity to see presentations from a number of NetApp’s Industry Association representatives in the coming week.

In the SNW Tutorials tracks, then following NetAppers will be presenting peer-reviewed vendor neutral education materials:

• Jason Iehl will be presenting “Trends in Data Protection”. Jason is a Data Protection Solutions Architect at NetApp, and co-chair of the Data Management Initiative within the SNIA Data Management Forum.

• Alan Yoder will be presenting “Software Technologies for Green Storage”. Alan is a Senior Member of Technical Staff at NetApp, and Vice Chair of the SNIA Technical Council.
• Blair Semple will be appearing as an industry expert on the “Storage Security Panel”. Blair is a Storage Security Evangelist at NetApp, and Vice Chair of the SNIA Storage Security Industry Forum.
• I’ll be presenting “Storage Consolidation with IP Storage”. I’m director of Industry Standards at NetApp, on the SNIA governing board, and chair of the SNIA IP Storage Forum.

See the SNW Agenda for more information.

In addition, a number of our industry reps will be delivering NetApp presentations in the NetApp booth:

• Blair Semple will be presenting “Enterprise-Class Storage Security and Key Management Solutions”
• Larry Freeman will be presenting “Demystifying Data Deduplication”. Larry, a.k.a. Dr DeDupe, is Senior Marketing Manager at NetApp, and co-chair of the Data Deduplication and Space Reduction SIG in the SNIA Data Management Forum.
• John Tyrrell will be presenting “Extending Data Center Automation to Storage with SANscreen” . John is a Storage Management Solutions Architect at NetApp, and represents NetApp on the Eclipse Aperi SRM project
• Adam Mendoza will be presenting “NetApp’s Extreme Advantage for Virtualization”. Adam is Senior Manager, Virtualization & Grid Infrastructures at NetApp, and on the governing Board of Blade.org.
• Jason Blosil will be presenting “Move from DAS to SAN with iSCSI” . Jason is Product Marketing Manager at NetApp, and an active participant in the SNIA IP Storage Forum.
• Mike McNamara will be presenting “Ethernet Storage for Today and Tomorrow”. Mike is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at NetApp, and Marketing Chair of the Fibre Channel Industry Association.
• Fred Knight will be presenting “FCoE – Why It’s More Than Just Another Protocol”. Fred is a Standards Technologist at NetApp, and represents NetApp in INCITS T10, T11 and T13.

A lot of good content, and indicative of NetApp’s breadth of engagement in driving industry standards and industry agendas.

NetApp at Storage Developer Conference

The SNIA Storage Developer Conference takes place this week at the Hyatt regency in Santa Clara, California.  This is one of the few storage industry conferences targeted directly at the developer community, and this year sees the broadest agenda to date, including a reinvigorated CIFS plugfest.

NetApp is a Platinum sponsor of the event, reflecting our commitment to and support of this kind of interchange of technical information.  In addition, eight members of NetApp’s development community are involved in presentations, demonstrating technical leadership across a range of topics from Solid State Storage, to Fibre Channel over Ethernet, to NFSv4 and NFSv4.1, to CIFS, to disk reliability and data corruption – as follows:

•    Session: Don’t Fight the Trends - Val Bercovici, CTO-at-large (Vice Chair SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative)

•    Session: FCoE – Why It’s More than Just Another Protocol - Fred Knight, office of the CTO (Fred is very active in the INCITS T11, T10 and T13 committees)

•    Session: NFSv4.1 and Beyond - Mike Eisler, senior technical director, Dave Noveck, senior engineer, with Spencer Shepler, Storspeed (Mike and Dave are both very active in the IETF NFSv4 committees)

•    Session: Leveraging NFSv4 to Build a Federated File System Protocol - James Lentini, member of technical staff (James is active in the IETF NFSv4 committee)

•    Session: Measuring Database performance with 2.6.18 clients over NFSv4 - Bikash Choudhury, solutions architect

•    Session: Regulatory Impact on Windows Protocols - Ankit Mathur, member of technical staff

•    Session: An Analysis of Data Corruption in the Storage Stack - Garth Goodson, member of technical staff

If you’re in the Santa Clara area, on-site registrations are still being accepted.  Check it out – it’s a really interesting agenda.

SNIA’s Excellent IT Educational Seminars

The latest round of SNIA-Europe Storage Academy seminars rolls into Milan and Warsaw next week. 

This is probably the best series of vendor-neutral storage networking education events available to IT professionals today – and, best of all, it’s free to IT end-users, systems integrators and VARS.  NetApp has been a strong supporter of these seminars since their inception in 2005, participating throughout Europe, Asia and Canada and both as a sponsor and as an industry presenter.

At the Milan event on September 16, where NetApp is a sponsor, Stefano Ricci, a senior Systems Engineer from our Milan office, will be presenting on “Benefits of Data Deduplication.”

At the Warsaw event on September 17, I’ll be doing two presentations.  The first is a discussion of “Recent Developments in Storage Networking Standards" and the second covers “Server & Storage Virtualization with IP Storage.”  The titles of these presentations in Polish, incidentally are “Standardy sieci pamięci masowych: najnowsze wydarzenia” and “Wirtualizacja serwerów i pamięci masowych z wykorzystaniem protokołu IP w sieci pamięci masowych,” but for obvious reasons I’ll be presenting in English.

If you happen to be in Milan or Warsaw – check them out.

Solid State Storage

If you’ve been following the capacity and pricing curves of non-volatile solid state storage devices over the past couple of years, an unavoidable conclusion is that a huge price/performance discontinuity is on the horizon for the storage industry, as solid state components make their way into enterprise storage architectures, either complementing spinning disks, or even displacing them.

In recognition of this fact, the Storage Networking Industry Association has just created a new special-interest group – the Solid State Storage Initiative (SSSI) – to focus on the technology and promote the growth and success of the market.

The goals of the SSSI really fall into two categories.  In the first category a primary goal is to be source of expertise on: the characteristics of storage made from solid state devices; the impact of solid state storage made from solid state devices (SSDs) on system architectures; and how advances in solid state memory will impact storage made from solid state memory.  Then to provide vendor and IT end user education about storage made from solid state devices; and to market and promote the technology to the industry.

The other category of goals is centered on the technical work that might be required to further the acceptance and success of the technology.  This includes collaborating with other standards organizations that are involved in work that touches on SSDs (examples include IDEMA, which has a workgroup focused on HDD/SDD reliability standards, and JEDEC, which has the JC64.8 SSD Committee and the Universal Flash Storage Technical Group). It also includes determining what standards work SNIA could uniquely contribute, and how solid state storage considerations might impact other SNIA technical work group activity.

The SNIA Solid State Storage Initiative was formed extremely quickly (in less than a month between concept and charter!) and it seems to have broad vendor support, momentum and enthusiasm – perhaps underscoring the scale of the coming discontinuity. I believe it could have a very positive impact on the acceptance and success of the technology in enterprise storage environments. 

My only concern is that it doesn’t bombard IT professional with truckloads of information and concerns that in reality don’t really matter to IT success.  As an industry we have a track record of inundating our customers with much more information and technology “differentiation” than they can possibly absorb – including component-level detail that is really much more relevant to the vendor community itself.

SNIA Summer Symposium: a packed agenda plus important new initiatives

The SNIA Summer Symposium kicks off today in downtown San Jose. Besides an agenda packed with working meetings of the various SNIA Technical Groups, Forums and Initiatives, the Symposium features education sessions, guest speakers and a number of BoFs focused on areas new to SNIA. See the SNIA Insider blog for details and highlights throughout the week.

For anyone in the San Jose area this week, I’d encourage you to check out the agenda and try to attend some sessions. You won’t be disappointed. The energy level and enthusiasm at the last Symposium was remarked on by everyone.

NetApp will be well represented throughout the week across o broad spectrum of activities: Green Storage; Storage Security; Data Protection; Data Deduplication; Long Tern Archiving; SMI; IP Storage; etc. In addition, we’ll be participating in the BoFs – the sessions on Solid State Devices, and Storage API’s for Virtual Server Environments look particularly interesting. Here’s the abstract for the latter.

“Server virtualization is one of the hottest new trends to emerge in the computer industry over the past few of years, at both ends of the server spectrum - from mainframes to Intel-architecture volume servers. Some are calling it the most important change to affect the industry for years. Although it could be seen as a predominantly host-side issue, server virtualization has important storage implications.

Many storage platforms today offer innovative storage virtualization features (snapshots, data set cloning, remote copy, data deduplication, etc) that marry very well with virtualized server environments.  Hypervisor and grid management applications need access to the APIs that manage these storage virtualization features. In turn, hypervisor and grid management tools can provide standard interfaces that allow storage devices to better manage data.

As with any fast-moving new trend there is always the danger that proprietary interfaces will predominate, eventually causing interoperability issues and stalling deployment growth. This BOF will explore the possibility of developing a standard set of APIs within SNIA to address this issue.”

If your company intends to be a player in virtual server environments, either on the host OS side or the storage side, don’t miss this Wednesday evening session.