Storage Nation

Image via Wikipedia I love receiving suprise packages.  Way back in January, I got a briefing on a VERY cool server offering from Dell that was going to be part of their DCS (Dell Cloud Services) offering.  I, of course, requested one understanding it to be an almost perfect density compute node for my EMC Atmos Virtual Edition testing and design work.

Since quite a few folks asked for some more detail on EMC Atmos GeoProtect and the underlying erasure coding, we prepared a YouTube video overview. GeoProtect and Erasure Coding Enjoy! Related articles by Zemanta EMC adds awesome to Atmos (go.theregister.com)

Image via Wikipedia It’s a rather dark and snowy Tuesday in Hopkinton today but, despite the craptastic weather, there’s some good news floating about.  EMC ’s Cloud Infrastructure Group has released Atmos version 1.3 which is a significant overhaul of the Atmos code previously released.  So, what’s new, what’s cool, and why even bother? Out with the Old, in with the New! Several changes are occuring within the Atmos construct: hardware and software .  I’ll start with the hardware as this is the easiest to digest. Hardware changes The biggest change on the Atmos hardware side is the shift away from Intel Harpertown processors (5400 series) and their egregiously hot FB- DIMMs to the new Intel Nehalem (5500 series) processors.  This shift gains better IPC, a more optimized compiling platform, as well as laying the groundwork for even further code optimizations as we integrate further into Intel’s future architecture designs. Another change is the addition of 2Tb “green” harddrives.  These drives spin at 5400rpm and consume less power while offering roughly double the formatted capacity of the 1Tb 7200rpm solution available currently.   In a rack instantiation, this effectively doubles the given capacity of each frame (i.e

Image via Wikipedia I finally received some new servers in the Atmos lab and…well, I thought I’d share with you!!!  These are Cisco C200 M1 servers and they’re loaded out in the following config: Processors :  Intel Xeon 5520 (2.27Ghz quad cores w/Hyperthreading) Memory : 4Gb DDR3 ECC/Registered x 12 for a total of 48Gb memory NICs : Dual ServerEngines Gigabit Ethernet NICS + dedicated IPMI ‘ KVM -over- IP NIC Enjoy the video!!!! UPDATE :  YouTube does SD (standard definition) processing first and HD processing second.  if it looks terrible now, just wait and it’ll look better. Related articles by Zemanta Storage/data convergence: Cisco stands alone (computerworld.com)

Ok, ok….I know I should actually write stuff out from time to time, but, seriously, the Flip UltraHD makes this waaaay too easy… In any case, here’s a quick (11 minutes…sorry…) video with my DataCenter wish list….(some of these items have already been answered, but, I’ll let you discover that in some of my postings in early 2010). Flickerdown.com: Xmas Wishlist from Dave Graham on Vimeo . Of course, my wishlist is full of cool things like Cisco UCS and C-series servers, Nexus and Arista Networks switching, Qlogic CNAs and switches, Mellanox and Qlogic QDR infiniband switches and clusters, and EMC V-Max, CLARiiON , and Celerra (of course Atmos is implicit) storage systems.

Image via Wikipedia I was advised the other day that a certain manufacturer was adopting a rather interesting model for Fibre Channel over Ethernet CNA licensing.  Rather than simply purchasing a FCoE CNA with all the features ( 10GbE , iSCSI , and FCoE) turned on, they were going to adopt some sort of staggered licensing model that put each of those features as an option that you could license (and pay for) at a later date. When I read this, the analogy that sprung to mind was one of, well, cake.  ( I’m not a foodie, I just tend to think abstractly of food .) How many people go to a bakery and buy a plain cake that isn’t frosted and that has a payment plan against it?   You’re going to buy a cake that fits with the mindset of what a cake should be; that is, something that is complete and “ready to eat.”  Additionally, you’re probably not going to be interested in a plain cake where the end cost is greater than a pre-frosted cake!  Why would you buy something that required an order of magnitude more effort to get to a final, workable order?  You’d consider someone who bought into this idea as somewhat of a lunatic. Expanding the analogy into the FCoE space, anyone can cobble together an FCoE solution.  Gen1 CNA products pointed this out.  You mux together a series of ASICs that were designed for specific purposes and pray that the end result justified the means of integration.  This “vanilla cake approach” is serviceable, for sure, but ugly.  Taking it even further, you could technically run the FCoE stack as software -only and get a similar result, albeit probably not what you expected by way of performance.  The point here is that the maturity model on Gen2 CNAs puts the cake and icing together in a rather pleasing and edible package  versus how Gen1 CNAs glommed everything together

This was filmed Wednesday, September 2nd. Enjoy!

Yup, I’m at it again.  This tech minute recording was taken yesterday (September 1) and features the wonderful talents of Chad Sakac and Chris Hoff!  Enjoy!

Just a video from the Cisco Tech Minute filmed on Monday, August 31.  Enjoy!

  Symmetrix V-Max ™ Yamaha Star Vmax ™ Hornady V-Max ™   Storage Capacity Scales to 2 Petabytes You + Significant other Storage?!?! Speeds n’ Feeds 4Gb/s Front-End/Back-End; EFDs for Tier 0 storage Miles per hour Feet per Second Death Quotient Not unless you drop the rack on yourself (or like the tickle of 208v) Wear a helmet. The rest is skill It’s a bullet. What do YOU think