Tony Bourke really stirred up a hornets’ nest with this one! Who would have thought that “storage NAT” would be so controversial?

NPIV and NPV are among the two most ill-named of acronyms I’ve come across in IT, especially since they sound very similar, yet do two fairly different things. NPIV is an industry-wide term and is short for N_Port ID Virtualization, and NPV is a Cisco-specific term, and is short for N_Port Virtualization. Huh? Yeah, not only do they sound similar, but the names give very little indication as to what they do.

He followed up with a second post on analogies for NPV/NPIV…

When comparing Fibre Channel to Ethernet/IP, it’s important to remember that they are different. In fact, significantly different. The only purpose for relating Fibre Channel to Ethernet/IP is for the purpose of relating those who are familiar with Ethernet/IP to the world of Fibre Channel.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | NPV and NPIV
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An interesting thought about converged infrastructure. As Dwayne says:

The issue that I have with converged infrastructure is that it’s solving a problem that these companies helped to create

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | So Your Boss Thinks You’re Stupid – Converged Infrastructure
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Martin “Storagebod” Glassborow suggests two reasons EMC reversed course on virtualizing behind the VMAX: Maintaining margin on controllers and adapting to a flash-filled world. Both are reasonable ideas…

The speed of change in the spinning rust market appears to be slowing, certainly the incessant increase in the size of hard disks is slowing and there means that there might be less pressure to technically refresh the spindles and a decoupling of the disk from the controller makes sense. EMC can protect their regular upgrade revenues at the controller level and forgo some of the spinning rust revenues. They can more than make up for this out of maintenance revenues on the software.

But I wonder if there is a more pressing technological reason and trend that means that it is a good time to do this; that is the rapid progress of flash into the data-centre and how EMC can work to increase the acceleration of adoption. It is conceivable that EMC could be looking shipping all-flash arrays which allow a customer to continue to enjoy their existing array infrastructure and realise the investment that they have made. It is also conceivable that EMC could use a VMAX like appliance to integrate their flash-in-server more simply with a third party infrastructure.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Virtually Pragmatic?
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I’m not sure that everyone would agree that Storage DRS is the most exciting new feature in vSphere 5, but it’s certainly in the top 10. Here’s Duncan Epping’s overview of Storage DRS and datastore clusters. Nice video too!

vSphere 5.0 introduces many great new features, but everyone will probably agree with us that vSphere Storage DRS is most the exciting new feature.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | An introduction to Storage DRS
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We have long wondered if Cisco would move into storage. As Brad points out here, there’s no easy way for them to do it without a major rift forming, as happened with UCS, HP, and Dell. Buying NetApp would work, as would buying a smaller storage company and trying to compete in the open market. But either way, Cisco doesn’t have an easy road into storage.

Brad Casemore takes on the question from his perspective in networking and comes away unconvinced.

Recent commentary from Barclays Capital analyst Jeff Kvaal has me wondering whether  Cisco might push into the storage market. In turn, I’ve begun to think about a strategic drift at Cisco that has been apparent for the last few years.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Cisco’s Storage Trap by Brad Casemore
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Every refresh, the VMAX just gets bigger and bigger, more spindles and more capacity. Of course EMC are not the only company guilty of the bigger is better hubris.

VMAX and the like are the ‘Big Iron’ of the storage world; they are the choice of the lazy architect, the infrastructure patterns that they support are incredibly well understood and text-book but do they really support Cloud-like infrastructures going forward?

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | The Last of the Dinosaurs? – Storagebod
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Chris Evans takes up this point in context of today’s EMC World announcement of the Symmetrix VMAX 40K, a “monster of a storage array”.

For the last 10 years, the advent of Storage Area Networks (SANs) has created a storage-centric view of the world with storage at the centre and the “planets” – networking and servers – wrapped around it like some pre-Copernican view of the universe.  Over time, SANs have evolved to be ever bigger, with some organisations deploying huge fibre channel fabrics. As we’ve seen today, EMC continues to perpetuate that view with the release of the VMAX 40K, a 4PB monster of a storage array in the best traditions of the central SAN-based model.

However the world has changed.  Storage is no longer the centre of the IT universe, but merely a player within it, and just as it came as a shock to those in power in the 1500′s when Copernicus proposed the sun was at the centre of the universe, so it will happen with IT and storage – especially so for cloud environments.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Storage in Cloud is Not the Centre of The Universe
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Here’s my own piece from the IBM Storage Community blog comparing the three.

When I talk about the various state-of-the-art capacity optimization solutions that are now appearing in the market, the same comment usually arises: “Isn’t this the same as zip?” Or a long-tenured storage pro will remind me that, “Stacker died out a long time ago, so why is this any different?”

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | What’s the Difference Between Compression, Deduplication, and Single-Instance Storage?
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I spent a lot of time this week with various storage vendors, including Dell, Coraid, Pure Storage, Brocade, Tintri and more.  While the presentations tended to be very technical, some practitioner tidbits managed to make their way to the surface as well and, in reviewing the various sessions, there are some clear commonalities that I saw across the board and they spell good things for businesses that want to refocus their Information Technology efforts more toward bottom line-driven business objectives.

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | Simplicity and transparency are becoming standard features in storage
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A Spectrum of Compatibility

VMware vSphere will run on a wide variety of hardware, so it’s no surprise that vendors feel emboldened to claim compatibility when they shouldn’t. To me, the minimum acceptable level of compatibility is a listing on the official VMware hardware compatibility list (HCL). I would never recommend production use of a product and configuration that is not listed there. “Because I said it works” is not a valid assurance of compatibility.

For more, read I Don’t Care If You Claim It Works (The Support Matrix Blues)

Whenever a vendor claims VMware compatibility, you can bet I am looking it up in the HCL. Time and again, I’ll interrupt a vendor briefing questioning their claims of compatibility. It’s not enough to have product X in the list when you’re pitching product Y! I will accept “we’re working on it” as an answer, but you can bet I’ll check later to see if it ever made the list!

For products that are listed in the VMware HCL, my next question concerns availability of a vCenter plug-in. Although many devices don’t actually need a plug-in, this is typically the next step companies will take when it comes to VMware vSphere. I might actually look upon a product favorably if it doesn’t need a plug-in to function correctly, but it’s definitely best for administrators to be able to configure infrastructure products from within vCenter.

When it comes to block storage products, support for the three main VAAI primitives is a major positive factor. Now that vSphere 5 is here, basic VAAI support is becoming more common. This is because it supports the simpler T10 interfaces for block zeroing, atomic test and set, and extended copy. Once again, any vendor claiming VAAI compatibility gets a quick check in the VMware HCL to find out just what that means. Bonus points for supporting both vSphere 4 and 5.

Check out A Complete List of VMware VAAI Primitives for more info!

I’m really impressed when I come across a storage device that supports advanced VMware integration, NFS such NFS VAAI primitives or VASA. This is really cutting edge stuff at this point, but it won’t be so impressive 6 months from now. By then, I expect more and more companies will support all of VAAI and offer VASA providers. And maybe by then we’ll have more information about what comes next for VMware integration!

True, VMware VASA is Not Much (Yet)

Stephen’s Stance

I’m a storage guy, so my line of questioning revolves around storage integration features. But I encourage everyone to question vendors who claim compatibility with VMware or any other complicated technology. “Because I said so” is not an acceptable answer: We have the right to demand HCL listings, vCenter plug-ins, and advanced API support.

Note: This is the sort of stuff I’ll get into in my “Building Virtual Infrastructure” Seminar Series - Why not sign up and join us? It’s free!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2012. | “Our Storage Array Is Compatible with VMware…” Says Who?
Read more posts categorized as Server Virtualization, Storage