Nexenta Blog
Why is Fibre Channel resurging?
07 Mar 2016 by Nexenta
By Michael Letschin, Field CTO
There was a time when Fibre Channel was the only solution for those looking for a high speed transport. But that is not the case anymore. The predominant storage protocol in many virtualization environments is NFS, primarily because virtualization administrators know that administering file-based datastores is much easier than those based on LUNs. In addition, advances in NFS and combining NFS with flash storage make the system’s performance ideal for hosting virtualized workloads.
But Nexenta is seeing a resurgence in customers expressing an interest in using NexentaStor’s Fibre Channel option. This is particularly interesting because, unlike other platforms, NexentaStor does not lock you into a particular protocol. Customers are free to choose NFS, SMB, Fibre Channel, or iSCSI. This means the only reason they would be using Fibre Channel is that it offers something that the other alternatives don’t – performance.
Performance is the main historical reason IT professionals prefer Fibre Channel over Ethernet; however, some may read that statement and disagree. Ethernet offers 40 Gb and Fibre Channel is only 16 Gb. If Ethernet has more bandwidth, how could Fibre Channel have better performance? The answer is bandwidth is not the primary performance consideration for some applications. If an application is looking for low latency, Fibre Channel will win over Ethernet almost every time. A look at the design of the two protocols will explain why.
Fibre Channel design assumes very short connections that are never longer than a Kilometer and usually much shorter. In contrast, Ethernet networks can stretch around the world. Due to this design difference, Fibre Channel can assume that all frames make it to the other side, where Ethernet assumes that many of them will not make it. This means Fibre Channel doesn’t have to do as much error checking and re-transmitting as Ethernet does. This translates into significantly lower latency numbers.
Another low latency device that is quite popular is Flash. Fibre Channel offers a better latency match to Flash than Ethernet does. Perhaps one has to look no further to see the reason behind this resurgence in Fibre Channel. If a customer has a latency-sensitive application, they are going to consider Flash as their storage medium. And if they are going to use Flash, they will want a low-latency protocol to communicate with their storage – and Fibre Channel meets the bill.
Whatever the reason for this particular resurgence in Fibre Channel, Nexenta’s solution allows customers to take advantage of whatever storage protocols they think are appropriate for their environment. And if they change their mind at a later date, they can start using a different protocol without changing their storage product. This is the flexibility of an open storage product like NexentaStor.
For additional information, read up on NexentaStor.
March Madness of Home Brews Community Contest
03 Mar 2015 by Nexenta
They say it takes a village to raise a child and at Nexenta we believe that technology start-ups are similar to children. The community has been a critical part of Nexenta’s success and we want to share the excitement that our community members have with the world. To do this, we are kicking off monthly contests to show the growth, support and amazing intelligence of the Nexenta Community.
The first of these contests begins today with the March Madness of Home Brews! We ask that you submit a brief description of your home storage kit, along with a picture. After all, a picture is worth 1000 words. To coincide with the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, we will create a bracket of the entries for the community to vote on until we narrow it down to the final four and a champion.
The final four will be sent a gift set of Nexenta swag along with being showcased as a featured build on the Nexenta Community website. The winner will receive an even larger kit that includes a custom-branded Nexenta Basketball.
We are excited to see how creative you have all been. Make sure to get your entry submitted no later than midnight PST on March 16th. We will kick off voting on the 17th with the first round, just like the basketball tournament. Good luck!
To register, please click on the following link and fill out the form:
https://community.nexenta.com/community/nexentastor/march-madness-home-brew-contest
*Note: To win, you must be a registered member of the Nexenta Community.
Citrix and Nexenta Deliver Flexible and Cost-efficient Software-Defined Approach to VDI
15 Jan 2015 by Nexenta
By Michael Letschin, Director of Product Management, Solutions
We had a great time at Citrix Summit 2015 and had a chance to talk to partners about our new converged infrastructure validated solution stack for VDI workloads using Citrix XenServer. XenDesktop and NexentaStor.
Available as an industry standard x86 architecture, this economically viable, converged and integrated solution is geared for small and mid-sized businesses that are looking to embrace and benefit from the security and efficiencies of desktop virtualization and Software-Defined Storage. NexentaStor brings dramatic economic benefits through substantially higher performance, lower cost per terabyte and a pre-integrated converged infrastructure stack based on Citrix XenDesktop MCS.
The solution starts at a minimal 4U of physical space and is able to present 355 desktops at full workload. The Citrix XenDesktop and Nexenta converged architecture can easily scale to provide up to a 1000 desktops in only 6U, a 25% density improvement compared to EVO: RAIL. The solution minimizes storage latency with over a 98 percent cache hit ratio, giving the fastest possible end user experience.
Over the past few years, we’ve collaborated with Citrix to produce multiple cost-efficient, flexible and scalable infrastructures for customers to build and scale VDI workloads. NexentaStor has proven to deliver the best performance and value on hybrid or pure storage configurations, as part of the Citrix Ready VDI Capacity Validation Program. This is just another step in the collaboration.
“Citrix sees great value for customers from the integration of Citrix XenDesktop and NexentaStor,” said Calvin Hsu, vice president of product marketing, Desktop and Apps, Citrix. “The end result is that our existing customers and prospects will benefit from the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of this solution.”
Details of this solution can be obtained by downloading the Citrix Validated design reference architecture.
Additional Resources: Nexenta Delivers a Converged Infrastructure Citrix Ready Validated Solution Stack
2015 Predictions: What Goes Around Comes Around
17 Dec 2014 by Nexenta
by Michael Letschin, Director of Product Management, Solutions, Nexenta
Everything in culture has a way of repeating itself, it happens in every arena of our life. In fashion we look at items as vintage, whether it is from the 70s or the roarin’ 20s. In music, artist like Justin Timberlake harken back to the days of early Michael Jackson and we have some artists today that people view like the modern day Rat Pack of Sinatra’s era. Technology is no different, and as we move into 2015, life is in fact repeating itself. I have spent nearly 20 years in technology, starting with working on mainframes and green screen clients, then came the shift to the x86 server. Over the past few years we have seen virtual servers become mainstream, being us back to a centralized server setup and as virtual desktops gain traction we move towards thin clients and back to what I remember from growing up… simplicity and efficiency.
What have we learned from all this? The importance of versatility, simplicity and efficiency… Over the past few years we have heard buzzwords that have driven the technology decisions but now that IT departments have finally shrunk to point where you can’t “do any more with less”, CIOs have the choice of either outsourcing all their products or going with something that makes it easier on the staff they have. The efficiency comes from not only simplicity but also on an economic front, you pay for a service like you would electricity. During 2014 we talked of Software-Defined Data Centers but I have yet to see any single enterprise truly adopt the notion that hardware is not the answer. Deploying hardware in the traditional sense is starting to move to the wayside, with the software controlling the hardware, the “bent metal” is not the treasure. Add in the idea that an enterprise can have freedom to deploy their choice of hardware and remove the proprietary upgrades and process of the past and we move towards the software defined future.
2015 will begin with more and more enterprises adopting the idea that hardware independence means that their staff can be more efficient by concentrating on the software and letting the hardware vendors spend their time competing for their business. The rise of DevOps will continue to make datacenters simpler and more automated. Projects like OpenCompute can finally gain traction in the enterprise as hardware is bought as simply a platform regardless if the need is for servers, storage or networking. Software-Defined Storage will continue to grow in the enterprise as IT staff see that they no longer can support the complexity of forklift migrations just to get some more speed. Software-Defined Networking has been lagging in the past year or so but the efficiency need will surely allow networking teams to built the global enterprise.
We used to say that no one got fired for buying IBM, well now IBM is services and buying from all the cloud based services. What goes around comes around and the giants in the IT industry may just end up being the users and admins in 2015, not the hardware vendors of the last decade.
Epidemics at the Speed of Software
10 Dec 2014 by Nexenta
By Michael Letschin, Director, Product Management, Solutions, Nexenta
In today’s global economy and 24/7 news culture, word of health risks spread faster than ever before. If a child is diagnosed with a rare disease in Asia at 10 AM, it could be sent to the US Center for Disease Control and reported on US news outlets in time for the 11 o’clock news (a 2 hour time lapse). But, that’s even slow compared to how quickly it could spread through social media. This is not to say that health concerns are sensationalized or should not be treated with the utmost urgency and concern.
The scare over Ebola has shed new light on how quickly news and information flows around the globe. It also showcases how quickly NGOs (non-governmental organizations) can be spun up around an issue. A quick search on the USAid web site lists 60 NGOs responding to the Ebola crisis. These organizations range from religious groups to relief groups to groups dedicated to specific continents. Some of which are smaller organizations, scarcely known of, like BRAC (creating ecosystems in 11 countries in which the poor have the chance to seize control of their own lives), while others are some of the largest organizations in the world, like the Red Cross. One thing that ties all of these groups together is their need to keep up-to-date on news and information, which is highly dependent on technology. It’s these same technology networks that spread panic and concern via the news and social media, that also transport critical, life-saving information to these organizations in need.
The worldwide growth of this need-to-know data is exponential. Some Gartner reports have shown that enterprise data is growing at rates of 40-60% year over year. If enterprises are growing this fast, you can only imagine the growth rate of data collection during a health crisis. This explosion of data is also what drives innovation, enabling organizations to move away from legacy systems that slow down data accessibility.
A key innovation in the effort to easily track the spread of disease is the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). The SDDC changes the game by providing software based solutions where any hardware can be repurposed for various purposes. In the time of a crisis, these Software-Defined solutions will ensure your data includes the most up-to-date trends for the next airborne illness.
While server virtualization has made a huge impact by enabling compute power to live in the data center, storage has previously lagged behind. Now, Software-Defined Storage, a robust scalable storage solution, is being deployed on any existing hardware allowing organizations to rapidly analyze complex issues. For instance:
Imagine being a researcher or doctor in a remote location. You have critical information that could show trends of treatment practices, but you have no place to store all the millions of data points that have been collected on paper. You also have no way to get or install traditional legacy limited hardware solutions, nor a place to power and store such solutions. The easy answer is to use the existing industry standard hardware and deploy a software solution. I am in no way saying that the Software-Defined movement is going to save the world in a health crisis, but I only hope that the NGOs and world leaders see that Software-Defined technology can lead to a more cost-effective and faster time to market. And hopefully time to cure.
To hear more about the benefits of Software-Defined Data Centers and Storage easing health crises, please join Forrester, VM Racks and Nexenta on 12/16 at 8am PT. Click here to register for this webinar.