With this new addition to Fusion IO portfolio it has a clear path into Continue reading
In case if you missed OpenStack Summit 2013 that took place last week all sessions are going to become available soon! How convenient is that?! In the mean time let’s review the sessions that took place last year that are already available online.
I have been following and working in space of Software Defined Networking (SDN), which is getting hotter by the minute 
, for over 2 years now. My interest comes from spending number of years inside the network stacks of different products that I have worked on as well as standards that I either used, contributed to or both.
There are a LOT of information, definitions, etc. of SDN and network virtualization however when I am being approached by the engineers Continue reading
Another title could be “Is there more to replication in the cloud?” and I will explain further.
First, let me start by saying that recently SIOS Technologies Corp. introduced DataKeeper Cloud Edition that enabled Microsoft SQL Failover Clustering in Amazon EC2 cloud environment. Prior to that the clouds were quite gloomy for applications that require MS SQL Failover Clustering and as a results those who wanted to take advantage of the emerging cloud technology and all the corresponding benefits were stuck.
“What is the value proposition?” You would ask me… Continue reading
There is a lot going on in rapidly growing and developing space of SDN that we stay on top of, but one of the major recent news is OpenDaylight that is organized under Linux Foundation umbrella Continue reading
Last week VMWare’s Pat Gelsinger was gathering troops during the partnership conference @ Vegas to attack Amazon.
“if a workload goes to Amazon [Web Services], you lose, and we have lost forever. Continue reading
In my “part 1″ I was going over EMC transformation as it slices its organization, especially in the infrastructure layers, positioning for success. The primary reason for such transformation is inevitable changes that are coming in the next 5 years where software will eat the commodity hardware and overall infrastructure for lunch. This is a great signal for other organization in the infrastructure space to Continue reading
EMC and VMWare finally came to agreement that it is time to unlock their new generation products from the heavy guys like EMC and VMWare and let them go.
Who are they?“Pivotal Initiative for developing cloud and big data technology as a separate organization, and it is open to the possibility of that organization having its own IPO someday.”
What are they consist of? Continue reading
Today FusionIO acquired UK based ID7 provider for Software Defined Storage. ID7 is a driving force behind the Generic SCSI Target Subsystem for Linux. It enables the following functionality: replication, thin provisioning, deduplication, high availability, and automatic backup on any Linux server or appliance (http://scst.sourceforge.net/index.html).
ID7 worked with FIO on ION which now provides more context for the last conversation that we had with FIO on SDK where Stephanie indicated that ION implementation has switched (no more details were given). ID7 joined the ION Acceleration effort where they will continue driving this effort (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fusion-io-acquires-id7-198762381.html).
It is expected that the products developed through this merger will target SAN systems users from mainstream storage suppliers, most of which are high-end. However, “we won’t aim at the highest end users,” says Flynn. ”Facebook, Apple etc use the application database to manage things. But hosting and cloud providers, for example, are often forced to buy proprietary systems. Software-defined systems can offer them high-end systems without the high-end price.”
With the ID7 acquisition, Fusion-io will pick up both general and specific software expertise. While ID7 develops storage software for iSCSI, Fibre Channel and Infiniband, SCST was originally designed for both SCSI and Linux. That represents one of the smaller parts of what IDC calls the Open SAN market, which consists of FC SAN, FCoE, iSCSI, and others. (About $3.2 billion of iSCSI storage arrays were sold in 2012, IDC said, according to private figures cited by EMC marketing CTO Chuck Hollis.)
Since SCST’s initial development, Fibre Channel and iSCSI support have been added, as well as support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet. And SCST supplies quite a bit: replication, thin provisioning, de-duplication, high availability, and automatic backup on any Linux server or appliance. (For more on building an SSD disk array over Fibre Channel using SCST, see Marc A. Smith’s blog post on the subject.)
Fusion-io said it would continue to maintain the open-source version of SCST, as well as contribute to the open-source distribution as it continues development. The ID7 team, including the primary SCST developers, will join Fusion-io but work from their current locations (http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/fusion-io-buys-id7/).
“Across Linux and Oracle subsystems, Fusion-io has embraced the need to support open source contributions to innovation in the storage stack,” said Vlad Bolkhovitin, Founder and Primary Developer of the SCST SCSI Target Subsystem for Linux. “By joining the Fusion-io team, we are pleased to be able to provide SCST with more engineering resources and talent to support the development of the open source and commercial SCST subsystems as we meet the needs of Fusion-io customers around the globe.”
In conclusion this acquisition positions FIO not only as a provider of Flash for homegrown scale out solutions engineered inside the Facebook and Apple datacenter but also play a key role in the datacenter providing high end storage with ION directly against EMC’s XtremIO.
As expected sooner or later that had to start since EMC’s 400M acquisition of Israel XtremIO, and now it begins.
Pulling of VFCache from USD (Unified Storage Division) and creating Flash Business Unit that now includes VFCache renamed to XtremSF (LSI “although EMC is not revealing who they are” 
) and XtremSW (home grown VFCache software) along with XtremIO.
I was always questioning where middle-ware product similar to iON would actually make sense, and sure enough it does not seem it does: “Thunder server networked flash cache product built from VFCache cards has been discontinued”.
EMC is showing very interesting results “Fusion-io being able to run at around 115,000 IOPS with a 70/30 read/right mix of 4K blocks and a queue depth of 256. The XtremSF 2200 delivers around 215,000 IOPS in the same situation.”
“EMC has also tested the XtremSF and Fusion-io cards over a greater than 5 hour run period and found its cards quickly outperformed Fusion-io cards with 4KB random write IOPS and eventually overtook the Fusion-io card with 64KB sequential writes in MB/sec terms.”
They will be leading on the VMWare integration as well.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/05/emc_xtremsf/
Of course the response from FIO is expected. Inheriting EMC’s possession in fast cars FIO creates a video of FIO vs E brand (not hard to figure our what goes after E):
Who is who in “Flash Wars”?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/06/pcie_flash_card_shakeout/
