http://www.storageio.com/ The StorageIO Group Data Infrastructure Industry Trends and Perspective Reports en-us August 2, 2008 15:21:12 GMT 1440 August 2, 2008 15:21:12 GMT http://storageio.com/ReportRSS webmaster@storageio.com webmaster@storageio.com Copyright 2006-2008 All rights reserved. The StorageIO Group (www.storageio.com) http://www.storageio.com/interestinglinks.htm Various new links have been added to the StorageIO website. Site News August 2, 2008 15:21:12 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.storageio.com/xreports.htm Various new white papers and solution briefs have been added to the StorageIO website under technology trends and perspectives. These include a look at issues, challenges and options for protecting data in virtualized server environments, afordable business continuance solutions and data footprint reduciton using real-time data compression for on-line and primary NAS storage. Site News August 2, 2008 15:21:12 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.storageioblog.com Greg's StorageIO Blog has been updated with additional posts on timely topics, trends and industry perspectives on technology and related items. Site News August 2, 2008 15:21:12 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.storageio.com/interestinglinks.htm Various new links have been added to the StorageIO website. Site News July 12, 2008 17:24:11 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.storageio.com/Reports/Opinion_April20_2008_FCoE.pdf A link to the Industry Trends and Perspective on FCoE has been added to the StorageIO website. Analyst reports April 21, 2008 20:05:08 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.storageio.com A link to the StorageIO blog www.storageioblog.com has been added to the StorageIO website. Analyst reports April 6, 2008 16:41:01 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.storageio.com Links to several new articles and commentary have been added to the portfolio page along with updates and additions on the events page. Upcoming events include Greg Schulz of StorageIO speaking at SNW in April about industry trends, issues and what you can do today to address power, cooling, floorspace and environmental (PCFE) or green realted issues in your data center for storage, servers and networks today. Greg will also be speaking at Storage Decisions in Chicago in May as well as at several other events. See the StorageIO events page for additional details and informaiton. Analyst reports April 6, 2008 16:41:01 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.storageio.com Several articles, reports, white papers and tips have been added to the StorageIO website including content pertaining to I/O Virtualizaiton (IOV), Virtual I/O (VIO), Converged networks and data center ethernet, Solid State Disk (SSD) solutoins based on RAM and/or FLASH, Grid and Cluster storage for structured and unstructured data among others. In addition, several events that StorageIO will be participating in during 2008 have been added to the events page. Analyst reports Feb, 16 Feb 2008 18:41:00 GMT http://storageio.com http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=813331 STILLWATER, MN--(Marketwire - January 23, 2008) - The StorageIO Group, a leading data storage industry research analyst firm, today outlined Intelligent Power Management (IPM) and MAID 2.0, new next-generation storage techniques that provide high energy efficiency along with the highest levels of performance in storing and rapidly accessing enterprise data. The characteristics of IPM and MAID 2.0 mark a significant evolution beyond traditional MAID (Massive/Monolithic Array of Idle Disks), the data storage technology that provides energy savings by putting unused disks into standby mode, keeping them ready for use but not requiring full power usage when they are not being accessed. IPM aligns variable performance and energy savings to different applications and data on a granular basis across different types of storage media and systems. These include general purpose on-line or primary as well as near-line storage systems. MAID 2.0, or second generation MAID, is an example of variable power and energy savings that can be used to avoid application performance bottlenecks, aligning the right level of performance and energy savings when and where needed. First-generation MAID technology delivered marked savings in energy consumption by avoiding energy usage, but in some cases has been accompanied by a significant drop in performance. MAID 2.0 implementing IPM addresses those concerns, according to Greg Schulz, founder and chief analyst of StorageIO. "As an industry, we are seeing storage technologies shift from energy avoidance to more intelligent and effective use of energy combined with best practices ultimately leading to more energy efficient data canters," Schulz said. "IPM approaches including MAID 2.0 technology provide great solutions for today's increasingly energy conscious customers without any compromises in performance. We've reached the point where it's imperative that we aggressively adopt storage technologies that address both sides of this equation, that is, balancing performance, availability, capacity and energy consumption in a more flexible and scalable manner to meet different application service level requirements." American data centers alone consumed 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2006 at a cost of about $4.5 billion. Without changes in electricity consumption and improved efficiency, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that data centers will consume more than 100 billion kilowatt hours by 2011, further stressing an already strained national electric grid and driving energy costs even higher. Spinning hard disk drives (HDDs) and their enclosures account for up to 75 percent of the power usage in commonly deployed storage solutions, according to StorageIO's research. First-generation MAID solutions have been rather binary, either the HDDs are on or they are off, not leaving a lot of flexibility to address different application service requirements. Schulz mentioned that some MAID vendors have distanced themselves from using the term MAID to avoid negative performance implications associated with first generation MAID. MAID technology is evolving and maturating similar to how early generation RAID systems did 10-15 years ago. There is a shift from purpose-built limited MAID level functionality to more flexible and adaptable multiple MAID level storage solutions taking place. These next-generation solutions offer variable energy savings based on specific application and data needs over different types of HDDs on a more granular basis. This approach will help close the gap between a solution's energy efficiency capabilities and the diverse and variable performance needs of a customer's applications. MAID 2.0 leverages IPM technology to align storage performance and variable energy consumption to match the applicable level of service being supported. For example, a storage system can implement MAID Level-0 (no real energy savings, no impact on performance) for active data. For less active data, an administrator can choose a user-selectable setting to transition the storage system or some smaller subset to MAID Level-1, which reduces power consumption by retracting HDD read/write heads. For even better power savings, HDDs, RAID groups or other units of storage granularity can be put into MAID Level-2 mode, which reduces the speed of the drive platters. The best energy savings are achieved by MAID Level-3, which puts the storage system or some smaller granularity of the storage into a suspended standby mode or powers it down completely. Schulz sees an industry shift from dedicated MAID platforms to primary and secondary storage systems implementing intelligent power management and second generation MAID 2.0. A clear industry trend is a shift from electrical power energy avoidance to intelligent and more effective power management combined with best practices, data footprint reduction including archiving, compression and de-duplication among other technologies and best practices to lead to more energy efficient IT data canters. The StorageIO Group explores these issues in detail in two new Industry Trends and Perspectives white papers entitled, "MAID 2.0: Energy Savings without Performance Compromises" and "The Many Faces of MAID Storage Technology." These and other Industry Trends and Perspectives white papers addressing power, cooling, floor space and green storage related topics including "Business Benefits of Data Footprint Reduction" and "Achieving Energy Efficiency using FLASH SSD" are available for download at www.storageio.com/xreports.htm and www.greendatastorage.com Analyst reports Jan, 23 Jan 2008 17:14:00 GMT http://storageio.com/xreports.htm http://storageio.com/xreports.htm In addition to several new tips and commentary in the portfolio section of the StorageIO Group website pertaining to server and storage virtualization, performance, power, cooling, floor space and green storage related topics, The StorageIO Group added two new industry analyst trends and perspectives reports their publicly available reference library of industry trends and perspectives white papers, solution briefs along with e-learning enabled material including pod casts, videos, webcasts and various tips and related articles. The new items include "Achieving Energy Efficiency using FLASH SSD" and "The Many Faces of MAID Storage Technology". "Achieving Energy Efficiency using FLASH SSD" takes a look at how leveraging Solid State Disk (SSD) using FLASH/NAND and RAM/DDR memories as part of a tiered storage building block to support server and storage consolidation to achieve energy efficiency also refferred to as being green storage. Another dimension of energy efficient and tiered storage to meet green storage issues is near-line, secondary and off-line storage. In "The Many Faces of MAID Storage Technology" StorageIO takes a brief look how Massive or Monolithic Array of Idle Disks (MAID) based storage technology is evolving, implemented and can be deployed to meet various tiered and green storage or application service level objective requirements. Learn more at www.storageio.com/xreports.htm and www.greendatastorage.com Analyst reports Sat, 15 Dec 2007 16:24:00 GMT http://storageio.com/xreports.htm http://www.greendatastorage.com The StorageIO Group (www.storageio.com) has launched a companion web site (www.greendatastorage.com) with a focus around IT data center power, cooling and associated environmental or green topics pertaining to IT data centers including servers, storage, networks and associated management items. The site contains various primer and background information pertaining to green storage, storage management and related topics as well as links to various websites, blogs, tools, articles and webcasts among other informaiton. Green Storage Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:00:00 GMT http://greendatastorage.com http://storageio.com/xreports.htm Greg Schulz looks at clustered storage as a technique to scale both I/Os to meet transaction processing and bandwidth along with other cluster storage scaling benefits for both SAN and NAS environments in this TechTarget produced video cast. Analyst reports Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:10:00 GMT http://storageio.com/xreports.htm http://storageio.com/xreports.htm In addition to several new tips and commentary in the portfolio section of the StorageIO Group website pertaining to server and storage virtualization, the StorageIO Group has published a new industry trends and perspective report "Enabling comprehensive data protection for VMware environments" looking at issues and solutions to enable complete data protection and application availability for virtual server and storage environments. This paper looks at the issues and requirements for comprehensive data protection beyond simple server crash consistent restart in a VMware environment and addresses the importance of application aware enabling data protection technologies. Analyst reports Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:10:00 GMT http://storageio.com/xreports.htm http://storageio.com/xreports.htm The StorageIO Group (www.storageio.com) has published a new industry trends and perspective report "Analysis of EPA Report to Congress (Public Law 109-431)" that provides a perspective on the EPA Report to Congress addressing public law 109-431 pertaining to IT datacenter electrical power consumption. On August 1, 2007 the United States environmental protection agency (EPA) responding to public law 109-431 presented a 130 page report (plus 14 pages of executive summary and 67 pages of appendices and other supporting documents) to the U.S. congress addressing IT datacenter electrical energy consumption and associated issue. The EPA conducted a series of webcasts on August 9th 2007 covering the report, its findings, recommendations and plans for moving forward. This is a synopsis of the EPA report to congress with comments by the StorageIO group as to what the EPA report means. Analyst reports Wed, 15 Aug 2007 21:30:00 GMT http://storageio.com/xreports.htm http://storageio.com/xreports.htm The StorageIO Group (www.storageio.com) has published a new industry trends and perspective report "The Business Benefits of Reducing Your Data Footprint" that looks at why and how reducing your data footprint provides a positive benefit to your business and application service objectives. In this free report you will read about how the information necessary to support your business in timely and effective decision making and in maintaining a competitive advantage has an impact on your data footprint. This paper looks at various techniques, and, in particular, how data compaction compression technologies can be applied to various types of data and IT functions to help reduce your data foot print to improve energy consumption and, enhance existing storage resource utilization while addressing other IT Infrastructure Resource Management (IRM) inefficiencies as well as enhancing overall application service levels. Analyst reports Wed, 15 Jul 2007 20:00:00 GMT http://storageio.com/xreports.htm