SNIA Europe Datacentre Technologies Academy

London 18 May 2010

America Square Conference Centre

With a superbly-preserved section of the Roman wall running through the suite, which was in the basement of a modern office block on Crosswall.

References

snia.org/education/dictionary

also whitepapers on e.g. cloud services

snia.org/cloud Cloud Data Management Interface

Tecdem were cited as good VDI consultants, particularly strong on doing technical demos

Welcome and opening remarks

Jon Tate, Chair SNIA Europe UK Committee

This is the third annual academy.

SNIA Keynote: Cloud Storage Infrastructures Cloud computing solutions deployment

Presented by Val Bercovici, Chair, SNIA Cloud Storage Initiative (NetApp) Bob Plumridge, SNIA Europe Chair (HDS)

IDC thinks cloud storage growing rapidly. It's all about decreasing complexity - making apps simpler - with little manual intervention.

• IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service
• PaaS - Platform as a Service
• SaaS - Software as a Service
• DaaS - Datastorage as a Service

The cloud helps with easy downsizing. If e.g. DaaS storage : can easily redeploy to new uses. Storage systems lifetime normally 3-4 years and migration is an issue.

Guest keynote: Legal issues in the cloud.

Presented by Renzo Marchini, Head of IT Law and Data Protection, Dechert LLP

The Data Controller's responsibility in a cloud-based provision - is a challenge! Liability for data? Contract may say no liability for loss, breach or integrity. One breach affects all a cloud provider's customers. Do cloud provider's backups work - or still do own backups just in case? What if provider goes insolvent? Escrow schemes. How to get data out? Have secondary access to data - e.g specialist data escrow providers - SaaS.

Sponsor session: How Comic Relief's Sport Relief 2010 Achieved Record-Breaking Results with 3cV

Presented by Marcus East, Head of Future Media & Technology, Comic Relief.

Presentation on behalf of 3PAR

Sponsor session: Storage Networking for the Efficient Data Center.

Presented by Paul Sudlow, Dell

Dell is pushing 10Gigabit converged networking hard. Unified Fabric - saves cost, complexity. Half the numbe rof adapters, cables, switches. Simplicity of iSCSI for virtualisation is compelling. IDC predicted virtual servers as the killer app for iSCSI - the simplicity. iSCSI Redirect assists in auto-optimisation of load across a set of ports. iSCSI ideal for scalable virtualised SAN architecture. IEEE 802.1 DCB (Data Centre Bridging) standards replace TCP to give reliable transport and predicable performance. 2->5K jumbo frames. Priority-based flow control. Congestion notification. Multi-pathing. FcoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) requires DCB whereas iSCSI merely benefits from it. 10G iSCSI is here now! With 10G the usual VM need for networks collapses to just 1: vMotion plus VMs plus management plus iSCSI. Use virtual switches and port groups to manage traffic virtually - for separation and security. Dell is not seeing any demand for FCoE for storage arrays on 10G (but will provide if need be).

Sponsor session: Storage Efficiency: Maximizing the Economics of the Data Centre.

Presented by David Dale, NetApp

Sponsor session: Best practices for Back up in a Virtualised environment.

Presented by Dave Jennings, HP

HP P4000 thin provisioning. P4000: storage clustering between networked nodes, with thin provisioning. Network RAID. Can work between sites, within a certain latency limit (millisecs?) Multi-site SANs. Can work with many forms of storage - for instance can make ESX hosts' local disks into a virtual SAN. Yet still have a single point of management. Good for remote sites.

D2D deduplication - backup system aimed at smaller environments. E.g 2->24 server sites. Low-bandwidth site replication - sends delta after dedup.

SNIA presentation: Storage Considerations for Virtual Servers.

Presented by Paul Sudlow, SNIA Europe Member (Dell)

SNIA presentation: Ethernet Storage Benefits & Futures.

Presented by Gareth Flook, SNIA Europe UK Committee (Cisco)

3->6 months until 40Gigabit available from Cisco. Now one typically divides 10G into pipes or lanes, perhaps 1 for FCoE. Cost & complexity reduction means that the TCO for iSCSI is compelling.

SNIA presentation: Contemporary Data Protection.

Presented by Chris Sopp, SNIA Europe (HP)

SNIA presentation: Fibre Channel Benefits and Futures.

Presented by Bill Bolton, SNIA Europe UK Committee (Brocade)

8G now, 16G soon, 20G is just beginning shipping, then 32G. Bandwidth on demand is in development - aiming to save power. He showed a timeline way off into 2020 for 128G or 160G. There are two strands of development : BASE2 (2,4,8...) and BASE10 (10, 20...) plus the FCoE strand. Fabric-based virtualisation (FAIS). LAN+SAN+IPC via converged network, saving power & cabling.

Sponsor session: How to build more efficient Data Centres with Cisco Unified Networking & Computing.

Presented by Gareth Flook, Cisco

Sponsor session: Reducing Costs of both Internal & External Cloud Infrastructure.

Presented by Andy Hardy, Compellent

Single solution does all. Slash 80% of costs. Estimate: sites typically using about 50% of SAN capacity, yet total storage need is growing. Compellent is fastest growing storage vendor but not yet one of the big 5. Can put any types of disks into their enclosures. They source enclosures from the same supplier as NetApp. Storage Centre software manages the enclosures. Dynamic Block Architecture. Data movement engine moves data to optimal position according to one's set policies. Virtual volumes (like virtual LUNs). In a trad LUN most blocks are often unchanging, so that's an inefficient use of expensive store. Also the cache is carved up between the LUNs. All volumes spin all drives. Instead with Compellent, buy less hardware, reduce space and energy, with much less management. Can change RAID levels at any time, as volumes are virtual. Auto restriping when expanding. Thin provisioning ensures there's no wastage from unused space on each volume. Free space is automatically recovered. Automatic tiered storage - data migrates to most efficient type of storage. So inactive data is only on SATA, giving good performance when it is accessed (less contention). Most frequently accessed data is on edge of disk. Instant replay feature. Unlimited snapshots. Instant recovery. Avoids data duplication in the first place. Good for development copies of production data. Replication is easy. Non-disruptive DR testing. Modular hardware. Can scale up and out - multiple systems managed as one (no extra licencing costs). No 'forklift' upgrades needed - just put new disks in.

Sponsor session: Creating a smarter storage strategy.

Presented by Nicholas Coombs, F5 Networks

SNIA presentation: Benefits of Solid State Storage in Enterprise Storage Systems.

Presented by David Dale, SNIA (NetApp)

SNIA presentation: Securing the Cloud - Using storage services without risking corporate data security.

Presented by Roger Bouchard, SNIA member (Brocade)

Issues: understanding infrastructure, legal and Discovery implications; compliance and audits; impact of ILM and data migration; BC & DR impact on operations. Investigate security, including key management; ID management; access control. Lack of security is #1 reason not to trust clouds. Requires more effort tahn security of internal IT. Weakest link?? User-manageed encryption is needed (probably). Denial of service? Application security? Physical security - not relevant. Many services are insecure out of the box. Confidentiality? Integrity? Authorisation? Authentication? Availability? Encryprion is the main guarantee of confidentiality. Need to encrypt any IDs - especially keys to databases. SAMP (Secure Assertion Markup Language). Packet sniffing is still a risk, if using non-secure protocol. Storage encryption is difficult in a multi-tenant cloud. Always manage your keys. Key management standards soon? SNIA CDM1 security standard is for cloud storage: management and data access desired characteristics are stored with the data. E.g. replication, compression, placement, retention, QoS. TLS encrypted sessions. PaaS has issues such as cross-site scripting and SQL injection.