Opinion: File virtualization may resuscitate HSM
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Brocade Communications Systems, Cisco, EMC, Network Appliance and, most recently, F5 Networks have all acquired file virtualization start-ups, suggesting that file virtualization is another technology getting close to prime time.
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Blog: I recently had the opportunity to meet with two Microsoft officials to discuss Widows Home Server.  According to Microsoft officials, this new solution could solve all of your backup problems and help you immediately restore your entire system to an earli
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(InfoWorld) - While many IT shops see virtualization as a question of adopting EMC's VMware on servers running Windows or Linux, Nationwide Insurance has adopted the technology for both x86-based and mainframe-hosted servers. After all, notes Buzz Woeckener, the company's zLinux/Unix server manager, virtualization was invented for mainframes. On the x86 server side, Nationwide reached 5,000 servers two years ago, running all sorts of departmental applications, notes Scott Miggo, vice president of technology solutions. "We were growing at a steady pace, so we wanted to control the server space and the costs for new development," he says. "A lot of our servers had only a 10 percent utilization rate," he notes, wasting much of the server capacity. Roughly half are production application servers and half are test-and-development servers. Today, there are 3,500 physical servers in operation but still 5,000 instances under management. The VMware servers typically host a dozen instances per physical server. "We assume every new server or application can be virtualized," Miggo says. He expects to have more than 1,000 virtual servers running on 89 physical servers by 2009. His team works to tweak I/O requirements or settings for virtual servers that may have trouble supporting I/O needs in their default state, and it works with vendors to support VMs where possible, before falling back to dedicated servers. Lotus Notes and database applications are examples of where the I/O requirements make virtualization not an option. Although it's easier to deploy servers in a virtual environment by using predefined images, "our staffing has stayed pretty much the same," Miggo says, because the same number of servers must still be monitored. The slight reduction in management overhead is offset by the need for VMware experts to manage the VMware environment, in addition to the server instances. And Nationwide learned the hard way that it needs to monitor both its virtual and physical servers, then correlate the two to identify potential trouble spots, Miggo says. Not doing so can make diagnosis hard, since a VM issue may be caused by a physical issue that a server monitor application running in only the VM won't detect. There's also more overhead needed for Miggo's shared-services group to coordinate all users (such as developers and application managers) of a physical server, as changes to the physical server could affect them all -- and because adjustments to one VM's application mix could affect I/O and other physical server performance characteristics. "We now have to coordinate with 12 users," Miggo says. "People were used to having their own boxes and doing their own thing. Now they're more tightly controlled, which they don't like. But they have to follow control processes like code management and release management since what they do could affect others," he notes. The use of EMC's VMotion software to load-balance and failover VMs across physical servers might reduce management, but the insurer is still exploring that technology. One barrier: Its requirement that all server instances run on physical servers with the same CPU family, requiring a consistent server pool to be in place. Nationwide runs its Web servers in a zLinux environment on IBM zSeries mainframes, supporting 650 guest operating systems (VMs) today, with space for another 650 before additional hardware frames would be needed. Often, using z/VM to support the virtualized Web servers requires a different strategy than using VMware to support virtualized Windows servers, Woeckener notes. For example, you might add memory, CPUs, or network cards to increase I/O on a VMware server. On a zSeries, the CPUs just handle executables, offloading physical I/O (such as network bandwidth and resource scheduling) to dedicated processors, so you don't need to worry about performance-sapping overhead incurred by server resource management. Another difference: Increasing heap size can improve performance in a Windows application but also degrade it in a zLinux application, Woeckener says. That's because Linux steals resources wherever it can find them, so any extra heap space is used by Linux for its own purposes, degrading application performance. When the heap size is reduced, Linux seeks resources elsewhere, giving the full heap to the application and improving performance. In both the VMware and z/VM environments, the ease of deploying new virtual servers has led Nationwide to align demand with real needs, as well as to encourage the use of VMs rather than physical servers. Virtual Windows servers cost a requestor $750 per month versus $2,000 per month for a physical server. And zLinux VMs add a per-MIP rate for weekday usage exceeding 15 MIPs. This overage charge steers batch processing to overnight and weekend periods, when overall demand is less, and forces developers of applications in use during the business day to optimize for performance, saving datacenter resources at the same time. Virtualization special report Case study: Credit Suisse Case study: Purdue University Case study: Stonebridge Bank Case study: Transplace
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Business thinks IT is slow and unresponsive. IT knows that the business is totally unappreciative of the fact that while they want to support the business as much as possible, they are effectively doing so wearing handcuffs and chains. Every year for 15 years the gap between the two has widened. Now it is about to fracture forever potentially. But by creating a virtual infrastructure -- creating a connection between the application and data -- we can solve most of today's primary IT problems and re-establish a tighter bond between IT and the business.
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(Source: Computerworld)  When it comes to storage systems, small and medium-sized businesses have had their share of challenges. Even when some storage vendors have tried to address the unique needs of the SMBs, it has been with underpowered versions of their enterprise-class products. The advent of unified network storage, exemplified by the DellTM PowerVaultTM NX1950, has dramatically altered the SMB landscape by combining iSCSI and NAS capabilities in a single, highly functional package that delivers simplified management and enhanced scalability at a cost-efficient price point.
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Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2 Service Pack 1 handles the new server chips optimized for virtualization, takes regular backups snapshots, is easier to use and costs less, says reviewer Jonathan Hassell.
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Host based virtualization gives users the most flexibility; virtualization on the storage array is trickier; and network-based virtualization, while offering the most benefits, is difficult to implement and the stickiest once installed.
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Learn how a Virtual Tape Library Solution can provide increased speed, reliability, and automation of disk over tape for significant savings in time usually needed for backups and restores and significantly improve the quality of backup procedures.
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Despite the removal of an advanced file system, Longhorn will not be short on features, Jim Allchin tells CNET News.com.
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Microsoft&#39;s long-planned new file system is likely still many years away from being a part of the company&#39;s server operating system.
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Nielsen Media Research's vice president of technology discusses key issues storage managers are facing: the lack of robust storage resource management tools, and the lack of in-depth interoperability created by SMI-S.
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(InfoWorld) - Apple may have a jones for secrecy, but that doesn't mean it can keep its partners quiet. On stage Wednesday in Washington D.C., Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO Jonathan Schwartz revealed that his company's open-source ZFS file system will replace Apple's long-used HFS+ in Mac OS X 10.5, a.k.a. "Leopard," when the new operating system ships this fall. "This week, you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developers Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS X," said Schwartz. ZFS (Zettabyte File System), designed by Sun for its Solaris OS but licensed as open-source, is a 128-bit file storage system that features, among other things, "pooled storage," which means that users simply plug in additional drives to add space, without worrying about such traditional storage parameters as volumes or partitions. "[ZFS] eliminates volume management, it has extremely high performance.... It permits the failure of disk drives," crowed Schwartz during a presentation focused on Sun's new blade servers. Apple's operating system currently relies on HFS+ (Hierarchical File System Plus), a 1998 extension of 1985's HFS. ZFS was touted by many as a possible successor to HFS+ last summer, immediately after Apple's CEO Steve Jobs first showed off Time Machine, the new backup feature planned to debut in Leopard. In the intervening months, however, the ZFS-Time Machine connections were downplayed or dismissed by most observers. Even today, after Schwartz talked up ZFS, bloggers seemed skeptical about the file system's place in Leopard. "I'll stick to my prediction that Apple, as with HFS+, will put ZFS on OS X Server first before bringing it out later for the great unwashed," said Robin Harris on his StorageMojo blog. Most objections centered around the short time between now and Leopard's October release, and the implications of such a major makeover. Others at Sun, however, seemed to confirm that ZFS would be the default file system. "Jonathan noted that Apple will announce this week that the ZFS file system from OpenSolaris will become Apple's new default file system," said Marc Hamilton, Sun's director of technology for global education and research, on his company blog. "So how does that help Sun? It is pretty simple, now every Apple developer will know ZFS and how to use it on our SunFire x4500 storage server and other Sun products." A Sun spokeswoman would not confirm or deny that ZFS would be Mac OS X 10.5's default file system. "I can't tell you anything more than what Jonathan [Schwartz] said today," she said. Apple does not comment on unannounced products or product features. Schwartz may have unwittingly stolen some of Jobs' thunder for next week, since Apple watchers expect the Apple CEO to tout Leopard -- especially features previously not made public -- during his WWDC keynote next Monday.
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(Source: Storix)  The need for rapid system recovery is more important than ever in this day and age when an entire business model can hinge on a company's properly functioning servers. In the event of hardware failure, a bare metal recovery can take days or weeks, especially if the new systems are not identical to the ones that went down. This white paper discusses advances in bare metal recovery that use file-level backup, known as ASR (adaptable system recovery), that enable quick restore, even from bare metal and onto hardware that is dissimilar from the original system. The paper will also discuss how file-level backup and recovery has the ability to improve a wide variety of IT tasks, including bare metal system recovery, restoration to virtual environments; and hardware migration. Read this white paper to learn how only file-level backup and recovery (or ASR) enables organizations to meet ambitious recovery time objectives with greater flexibility.
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(Source: Brocade)  Download this free eBook and learn new ways to regain control over the growing amount of file data in your enterprise. See how you can optimize file management projects without disrupting users&or your weekends. And learn how File Area Networks (FANs) can help you centralize file consolidation, migration, replication, and failover. Key topics include how to configure a virtualized, location-independent view of your file data-as well as the basics of creating a reliable FAN that maximizes your IT resources while improving file access. Download this eBook and start streamlining your file management projects today!
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Some attendees at Computerworlds Storage Networking World conference are combining their use of backup software and deduplication tehnology with virtual systems in an effort to manage ever-increasing data stores.
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This organization fell victim to what can be described as the Achilles' heel of storage infrastructure - the intersection of technology bugs and human error. This is a highly unpredictable type of risk, and unfortunately the opportunities for prevention and avoidance are few.
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It&#39;s a market that could use a shake-up. Backup and recovery still can be too expensive and complex for many small and midsize companies that rely on Windows, but the software is vital to their businesses.