Author: Tim Lustig

What Does Software Defined Storage Means for Storage Networking?

Tim Lustig

Software defined storage (SDS) is growing in popularity in both cloud and enterprise accounts. But why is it appealing to some customers and what is the impact on storage networking? Find out at our SNIA Networking Storage Forum webcast on October 22, 2019 “What Software Defined Storage Means for Storage Networking” where our experts will discuss:

  • What makes SDS different from traditional storage arrays?
  • Does SDS have different networking requirements than traditional storage appliances?
  • Does SDS really save money?
  • Does SDS support block, file and object storage access?
  • How data availability is managed in SDS vs. traditional storage
  • What are potential issues when deploying SDS?

Register today to save your spot on Oct. 22nd.  This event is live, so as always, our SNIA experts will be on-hand to answer your questions.

Storage Congestion on the Network Q&A

Tim Lustig
As more storage traffic traverses the network, the risk of congestion leading to higher-than-expected latencies and lower-than expected throughput has become common. That’s why the SNIA Networking Storage Forum (NSF) hosted a live webcast earlier this month, Introduction to Incast, Head of Line Blocking, and Congestion Management. In this webcast (which is now available on-demand), our SNIA experts discussed how Ethernet, Fibre Channel and InfiniBand each handles increased traffic. The audience at the live event asked some great questions, as promised, here are answers to them all. Q. How many IP switch vendors today support Data Center TCP (DCTCP)? Read More

Intro to Incast, Head of Line Blocking, and Congestion Management

Tim Lustig
For a long time, the architecture and best practices of storage networks have been relatively well-understood. Recently, however, advanced capabilities have been added to storage that could have broader impacts on networks than we think. The three main storage network transports – Fibre Channel, Ethernet, and InfiniBand – all have mechanisms to handle increased traffic, but they are not all affected or implemented the same way. For instance, utilizing a protocol such as NVMe over Fabrics will offer very different methodologies for handling congestion avoidance, burst handling, and queue management when looking at one networking in comparison to another. Read More

A Q&A from the FCoE vs. iSCSI vs. iSER Debate

Tim Lustig
It’s become quite clear to those of us in the SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum (ESF) that everyone loves a great debate. We’ve proved that with our “Great Storage Debates” webcast series which has had over 3,500 views in just a few months! Last month we had another friendly debate on FCoE vs. iSCSI vs. iSER. If you missed the live event, you can watch it now on-demand. Our live audience asked a lot of interesting questions. As promised, here are answers to them all. Q. How often are iSCSI offload adapters used in customer environments as compared to software initiators?  Can these adapters be used for all IP traffic or do they only run iSCSI? Read More

Benchmarking Workload Storage Performance – An Expert Q&A

Tim Lustig
Nearly 1,000 people have watched our most recent SNIA ESF webcast, Storage Performance Benchmarking: Workloads. We hope you didn’t miss this 5th and final installment of the now famous Storage Performance Benchmarking webcast series where our experts, Mark Rogov and Chris Coniff, explained how to measure and optimize storage performance of workloads. If you haven’t seen it, it’s available on-demand. The live audience had many great questions. Here are answers to them all. Read More

Storage Performance Benchmarking: Workloads

Tim Lustig
The SNIA Ethernet Storage Forum is very pleased to announce that the hugely popular “Storage Performance Benchmarking” webcast series continues with a 5th installment! Join us on February 14th at 10:00 am PT for “Storage Performance Benchmarking: Workloads.” Benchmarking storage performance is both an art and a science. In this 5th installment, our experts, Mark Rogov and Chris Conniff, take on optimizing performance for various workloads. Attendees will gain an understanding of workload profiles and their characteristics for common Independent Software Vendor (ISV) applications and learn how to identify application workloads based on I/O profiles to better understand the implications on storage architectures and design patterns. This webcast will cover:
  • An introduction to benchmarking storage performance of workloads
  • Workload characteristics
  • Common Workloads (OLTP, OLAP, VMware, etc.)
  • Graph fun!
Read More