I recently attended Storage Field Day 7 and spent some time talking about the concept of data virtualization.  Data virtualization seeks to add a layer of        abstraction between the storage type and the client. Data virtualization, similar to what server virtualization did for compute resource, seeks to free the data from the underlying physical resources. Primary Data seeks to make data virtualization the cornerstone of software-defined storage. In November of last year Primary Data came out of stealth to address the problem of data mobility using data virtualization.  Today data is locked up in storage arrays, public cloud providers, and local server storage.  Each of these types of data repositories had different data service offerings ranging from rich to extremely limited. The metadata and data are locked away of the silo of the repository. A few solutions exist in the market today for data virtualization, but they rely on the data capabilities of theRead More →

EMC has unveiled its new message of Powerful, Trusted Agile at this redefined event today. Along with that comes the next generation VMAX hardware, the VMAX3. With this newest revision of EMC’s flagship product they look to bring the trust, and control of Centralized IT together with the cost, agility, and scale of modern Self Service IT. This release brings us three new hardware models: 100k, 200k, and 400k. Each of the new models are built on a single new architecture designed for hybrid cloud scale. This includes a new Operating System named Hypermax and a major overhaul of the virtual matrix. The RapidIO Virtual Matrix has been replaced with a 56GB/s Infiniband Dynamic Virtual Matrix.  What do they mean by dynamic? This new design allows for the vertical and horizontal movement of CPU resources inside the array.  CPU resources are divided into three groups or pools: front end host access, back in storage access, and dataRead More →

In my last post I covered some settings to ensure you get the best performance from your XtremIO when running an Oracle workload.  When running any type of workload on XtremIO it’s a given that it will perform well, but what about helping us manage capacity as well? XtremIO offers inline deduplication, which we can leverage to save capacity without sacrificing performance. Any lun created on XtremIO will be thin provisioned at a 4k-granularity level.  That’s all well a good, but we know Oracle and thin provisioning aren’t exactly best friends so this won’t buy us a lot. XtremIO, however, does have an inline global deduplication that we can leverage to our benefit. Like thin provisioning this feature also operates at a 4k-granularity.  What that’s means is only unique 4k blocks consume physical capacity. How can we best use that to our benefit? The short answer is multiple copies of the same data. These copies can beRead More →

XtremIO is EMC’s all-flash scale out storage array designed to delivery the full performance of flash. The array is designed for 4k random I/O, low latency, inline data reduction, and even distribution of data blocks.  This even distribution of data blocks leads to maximum performance and minimal flash wear.  You can find all sorts of information on the architecture of the array, but I haven’t seen much talking about archive maximum performance from an Oracle database on XtremIO. The nature of XtremIO ensures that’s any Oracle workload (OLTP, DSS, or Hybrid) will have high performance and low latency, however we can maximize performance with some configuration options.  Most of what I’ll be talking about is around RAC and ASM on Redhat Linux 6.x in a Fiber Channel Storage Area Network. A single XtremIO X-Brick has two storage controllers. Each storage controller has two fiber channel ports. Best practices are two have two HBAs in your host andRead More →

SMB Change Notification is a concept that allows clients to keep up with file and directory changes.  The idea is to prevent clients from seeing stale content or having to constantly refresh their view. The server looks for changes to files/directories and, when detected, it sends a notification to the client to inform them of the change. Isilon supports three settings related to change notification.  The first of which, and also the default, is “All”.  With this settings Isilon will send unnecessary change notifications to far to many clients. Why?  If we take a look at a scenario where we have 300 users connecting to an Isilon share called “Applications”.  This share has a folder structure with a depth of 6 folders.  Lets say a user goes into the deepest folder, “Folder 6”, and changes a file on the share.  The server will notice the change and attempt to notify the clients.  When “All” is set allRead More →