Showing posts with label StorageTek. Show all posts
Showing posts with label StorageTek. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Sun/Oracle - Leading in Tape Storage


Sun/Oracle - Leading in Tape Storage

Oracle just released the best tape drive unit on the market today, for Government, Managed Services, and Enterprises.

Tape Systems

The old portable cassette players, with tapes, were very reliable when driving, jogging, or even playing at home. Older had disk based iPods would experience skips when one goes out jogging, but quickly started to put portable cassettes out of business. Of course, flash media is now replacing spinning fixed disk systems, but the capacity is not quite there to replace rotating fixed media for larger capacity systems.

Tape was the media of choice over the years for many reasons:
  • extremely high capacity
  • extreme long term media durability
  • extreme shock resistance
  • wide environmental operating factors
  • excellent portability
  • low cost
There is a reason why tape has been so widely used in the Space Program - the reliability of long term use on satellites and craft like the Space Shuttle.

Transferring data from a hard disk during a jog will cause a skip. Transferring data from a spinning disk under massive G-Force of a space craft launch, you are likely to get a crash.

Disks were getting more portable with the ability to auto-park heads to better absorb shock, disks could spin down to avoid shock issues, and the storage was surpassing tapes. Tape storage solution seemed to show little benefit in modern era.

StorageTek T10000C

With native storage on had disks topping out at 2 Terbytes, there seemed like little hope for tape.

The StorageTek T10000C was released from Oracle, who purchased Sun, who purchased StorageTek - the premier vendor of Tape Archive systems in data centers. This latest product turned back the clock on data center history:
  • 5 Terbyte performance
    (over doubling the maximum capacity of spinning rust on a fixed disk)
  • Built in Encryption
    (for securing of data on the cartridges)
  • Sustained 240 Megabytes / Second transfer rate
    (2x faster than copeting tape systems, 360MB/sec compressed transfer rate, out-performs inexpensive fixed-disk solutions)
  • Exabyte Storage Capacity in a Library
    (worlds largest tape library storage capacity)
  • WORM Capability
    (to provide auditing of systems in government compliance)
  • Extremely Energy Efficient
    (200x more energy efficient than low end disk arrays since tapes do not have to draw power to store data or remain spinning.)
  • Inexpensive Large Capacity Backups
    (up to15x less expensive than low-end disk arrays)
  • Long Life Expectancy
    (30+ years media archive life)
Network Management Connection

In an era where Network Management Centers are centralized and managing customers world-wide, governments require the interactions of system analysts to be archived and stored for long periods of time. Often, these interactions require video streaming from a desktop screen in a Windowing environment.

Writing this archive data to disk does not pass an audit, since someone can come along and delete a file. Encrypting the data becomes important, for long term storage. Massive media requirements are driven by screen video capture.

The StorageTek T10000C will meet the requirements of the strictest audit, the streaming throughput of the largest managed services center, the capacity for the highest definition monitors, and the lowest cost requirements of those large centers.

Don't miss your opportunity to simplify life in your managed services data center.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Future of Storage: Flash

Future of Storage: Flash

Abstract

With ever increasing storage size increases, cost decreases, and performance increases - it seems like Flash storage will soon be a winner in the Managed Services arena. Others are writing about this technology, such as StorageMojo and The Register. Understanding where the technology is going is a good start, but understanding your technological bottlenecks is required for application.

What's New?

The flash DIMM format is an opportunity to significantly change the computing industry for the long term. Pictured below is a Sun Flash DIMM, in the form factor of common laptop memory.


Since hard disk drives are normally always spinning and generating massive quantities of heat - failure rates were high. High failure rates necessitated easy access in arrays through front and rear chassis access. Removal of the heat generation and mechanical movement increases reliability - so why would one need to suck up space in the front or rear of a rack with the center of the rack mount unit being mostly empty?

DIMM is the way to go.

What's Up and Coming?

Sun Systems designer, Andy von Bechtolsheim discussed the use of flash a quarter ago, both in the regular market, as well as in the future of the Sun marketing products.

One example of a core building block was a 4 Terabyte 1U high storage unit.


While 4 Terabytes in a 1U high rack space may not make people jump for joy, the news is really around the benefits for a dramatic increase in performance. When one can increase performance 100x, use 1/100th the rack space, and use orders of magnitude less power - this can drive change in any business.

Sun briefly posted a PDF of the F5100 storage platform, but this document was pulled. Google still has the HTML version of the "Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array Getting Started Guide" document, although it is fairly stripped of visual content and structure. You can see from the HTML that it was published in July of 2009.

What's Here Today

What is very comforting is that this up & coming technology is already supported by standard storage management tools - Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager (CAM).


The F5100 Flash Array is steadily appearing in more standard Sun documentation, for example the "Sun StorageTek Common Array Manager User Guide for Open Systems". There is also a PDF of this guide (as well as others) available, for common consumption.

Application in Network Management

For Open Source polling & graphing software, the I/O becomes inhibitive in large installations. The need for many spindles in order to keep up with the data read & write rates had created the architectural need to split the database from the polling software. With massive quantities of data coming into a database on very rapid & regular polling rates - the need for archiving this data becomes increasingly important, but secondary to the performance since massive numbers of spindles will leave high capacity drives mostly empty.


What would happen if the artificial need for breaking storage away from the pollers disappeared?

The architecture could simplify and re-consolidate onto a single server with multiple [virtual] pollers. The result would be a reduced level of system complexity (fewer servers, switch ports, physical ports, drive interconnects, etc.), increase performance (eliminate the need for massive external storage), increase reliability (fewer moving mechanical parts), and overall decrease costs.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

SUN and Oracle Synergies

SUN and Oracle Synergies

SUN has been producing computing systems for over 2 decades - and they have merged with a large software business.

A SUN Perspective

Sun made an announcement on April 20, 2009
Sun and Oracle today announced a definitive agreement for Oracle to acquire Sun for $9.50 per share in cash. The Sun Board of Directors has unanimously approved the transaction. It is anticipated to close this summer.
An Oracle Perspective

Oracle made an announcement on April 20, 2009
“The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. “Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system – applications to disk – where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up.”
An Outside Perspective

What does all this mean to Oracle and SUN Customers?

In some ways, things will not change much.
  • More Oracle databases are deployed under Solaris than any other single operating system, according to Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. It seems like Solaris is here to stay.
  • The largest number of Oracle databases are deployed under SPARC Solaris, it seems like SPARC is there to stay.
  • Oracle has embedded Java Runtime into the Oracle Database, so it seems Java is there to stay.
  • Oracle has acquired other databases in the past and continues to develop them, so it seems MySQL is there to stay.
  • Oracle is very dependent upon external storage vendors for their database, so it seems Open Storage is here to stay.
  • Oracle is very dependent upon tape backup for data retention, so it seems StorageTek is here to stay.
  • Oracle was heavily driving the thin-client idea with SUN for years, so it seems SunRay is here to stay.
In other ways, one would hope for some things to change
This seems like a match made in heaven - things can only get better!