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NetApp’s flash upgrade for its AFF and FAS arrays

By
Chris Mellor
-
NetApp
NetApp CloudJumper

NetApp has bumped up performance for FAS and AFF arrays at the entry level, with end-to-end NVMe flash drive support, to “leave rivals in the dust”.

The refresh provides extra capacity and performance oomph to NetApp’s ONTAP products and enables the data storage veteran to compete more aggressively with new QLC-using suppliers like StorONE and VAST Data, as well as long-term rivals Dell and HPE.

NetApp sells two ONTAP external array product lines – the All-Flash FAS (AFF) and the Fabric Attached Storage (FAS) variants. Both are dual-controller external arrays used by ONTAP to present concurrent block and file access to data.

The FAS arrays are optimised for mix of performance and capacity and, until now, consist of hybrid flash-disk systems while the AFF line is optimised more for performance and uses all-flash media.

FAS500f

There are four FAS model groups: the FAS2600, FAS2700, FAS8200 and FAS9000 Series. NetApp has added the first all-flash product to this quartet with the FAS500f, which uses the slowest and cheapest SSDs – ones using QLC NAND. The existing FAS arrays use TLC SSDs, which are faster to access and have a longer life than QLC NAND.

NetApp suggests the FAS500f is positioned for workloads such as backup consolidation, and database and VM copies for testers and developers. Put another way, NetApp says the FAS500f is for customers with demanding application performance objectives in a cost-effective, high capacity system.

NetApp FAS datasheet model table.

The new array supports end-to-end NVMe access and will run faster than the hybrid FAS models, while remaining slower than the AFF series.

The FAS500f has a 2 rack unit chassis and supports 24 drives or 48 in a high-availability pair. It has a much lower maximum capacity, at 8.8PB, than the other FAS arrays with their 15PB to 176PB range. The FAS2750 and FAS2720 also have a 2RU x 24 slot controller chassis and support 144 drives per HA pair.

AFF refresh

The AFF systems use SAS and NVMe SSDs, and provide an end-to-end NVMe design for maximum in-array and to-array (NVMe-over FC) data access speed and the lowest latency. 

The new low end A250 AFF, which will supersede the A220, delivers “45 per cent more performance and 33 per cent more storage efficiency,” than the A220, according to NetApp product manager Saurabh Modh, “and it leaves our competition in the dust”. There is no price increase for the A250 over the A220.

Modh suggests using the A250 for “virtualization and consolidation of mainstream enterprise applications (such as Oracle, SAP HANA, and Microsoft SQL Server). It also provides an attractive starting price for emerging workloads such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, real-time analytics, and MongoDB.”

The A250 comes in a mini box, just 2RU in size, with 24 x 2.5-inch NVMe drive bays and supports expansion to 576 SSDs 

This A250 is a lower-cost entry-level AFF array. It supports up to 24 x 32Gbit/s Fibre Channel ports, 4 x 100GbitE and 28 x 25GbitE ports plus a pair of 10GbitE management ports. The controllers use a 24-core Xeon processor and this controls access to the 15.3TB or 30.2TB SSDs.

The latest version of ONTAP, v9.8, is required for the A250.

A700 upgrade

With the latest refresh NetApp has added NVMe SSDs to the A700. The array already supports NVMe-oF, and the update givess it end-to-end NVMe capability for low latency and high speed data access.

NetApp senior product manager blogger Mukesh Nigam says: “In tests using a 100 per cent random read Oracle SLOB workload, an end-to-end NVMe AFF A700 system is 85 per cent faster at 500 microsecond latency than AFF A700 system with FCP/SAS storage.” That’s quite the performance jump. 

In 2018 there were five AFF variants, starting with the A220 at the low end in a 2RU x 24 slot chassis, and ranging through the A300 (3RU chassis), A700 (8RU), A700s (4RU) and A800 (4RU).

There are now four AFF model groups listed by NetApp – the new low end A250, the mid-range A400 and A700, and the all-NVMe high-end A800. The A220 and A300 are absent from the current AFF datasheet, which indicates that they will soon move into end-of-life status.

AFF model summary details from NetApp data sheet

The A440 and A800 have 4RU controller enclosures while the A700 employs a larger 8RU chassis. The A800 scales to 2,880 drives and the A400 and A700 scale to 5,760 drives. This results in a huge difference in effective capacity terms; 35PB for the A250 vs 793.7PB for the A400 and A700 and 316.3PB for the A800.

NASicide; CTERA V7 continues on local filer-killing path

By
Chris Mellor
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CTERA has announced v7 of its cloud-based file storage and sharing software, saying it can replace local NAS with fast and secure access to files in the public cloud.

Its Enterprise File Services Platform has faster data transmission to/from the cloud, zoned security, a file migration engine and Apple Mac UI integration.

CTERA CTO Aron Brand set the scene in a supplied quote: “The pandemic has forced enterprises to support a distributed workforce with a heavy reliance on remote IT, whether in smaller branches or home offices. The innovations in CTERA 7.0 empower all organisations to keep data close to users wherever they are, to easily migrate file workloads to the cloud, and to deliver consumer-grade user experiences.” 

Jeff Newman, an IT Architect at American multinational manufacturing company W. L. Gore & Associates, complemented Brand’s pitch with a supportive quote talking about its ROBO (Remote Office/Branch Office) sites: “CTERA 7.0 has been a game-changer for us, offering an automated migration utility that has made it easier and faster for us to migrate data and retire remote servers across our locations in Europe.”   

The four main elements in CTERA 7 are;

  • CTERA Direct, a new edge-to-cloud transfer protocol, described as “ultra-fast”,  synchronises data at a throughput of over 30TB/day per site, with minimal sensitivity to network latency. That means 347MB/sec, assuming 24-hour days.
  • CTERA Zones enable customers to dynamically segment their global file system into any number of geographic locations and keep sensitive data within a zone; good for data sovereignty and compliance requirements. 
  • CTERA Migrate is a built-in migration engine that enables automated data discovery and import from NAS systems such as NetApp, Dell EMC, and Windows Server, with full preservation of folder structure and permissions. This builds on CTERA’s Media Filer capabilities. Migrated files are stored in S3 object access format.
  • CTERA MacAssist provides Mac Finder integration with icon overlays, thumbnail support, and enhanced search experiences. 

CTERA also released new versions of its mobile app for iOS and Android for consistent user experiences across desktop, mobile, and cloud. 

The Direct feature is said to combine zero-trust content distribution with the cost savings of disaggregated architecture routing data to the nearest cloud location. It’s intended both for distributed data-rich environments, such as creative media and healthcare offices, and to boost responsiveness for work-from-home users using CTERA desktop and VDI agents.

Comment

In essence, CTERA is saying ditch your ROBO NAS box and replace it with our Edge appliance. This caches files read from a cloud object store which is cheap, secure and scalable. On this basis CTERA competes with suppliers like Nasuni, and also NetApp and Isilon.

CTERA and Nasuni are evolving from niche cloud storage gateway and collaboration services to full-scale file services, and so taking on the mainstream NAS suppliers.

It seems clear that classic on-premises filer suppliers like NetApp and Isilon are in turn deepening their competition with cloud storage gateway/file collaborators like CTERA and Nasuni. They are extending their file storage services into the public cloud on the one hand, and supporting skinny edge filers/virtual appliances on the other.

For example, NetApp has Global File Cache Edge Instances for branch offices. These instances are NetApp SW in a Hyper-V virtual machine, obviously running in a local server. SSD storage is recommended.

Dell Technologies’ Isilon product range includes an SD Edge Filer for ROBO sites.

This is turning into a general competition to provide ROBO file services and the NetApps and Isilon of this world cannot afford to let CTERA and Nasuni colonise the edge. Because if they do that then their mainstream data centre file services sites will be at risk.

STaaSification; Dell APEX project includes Storage-as-a-Service

By
Chris Mellor
-

Dell is going to offer on-premises managed file and block storage services next year. Customers will rent storage instead of buying it.

This is part of its Project APEX, announced at the virtual Dell Technologies World, and a response to the same forces that drove HPE to provide its GreenLake everything as a service scheme. The idea to make the on-premises IT world similar to the public cloud in terms of IT component delivery, scalability and payment.

Dell’s COO and vice chairman Jeff Clarke said in a statement: “We’re building upon our long history of offering on-demand technology with this initiative. Our goal is to give customers the freedom to scale resources in ways that work best for them, so they can quickly respond to changes and focus less on IT and more on their business needs.” 

Zadara has offered managed block storage services on premises for some time with its virtual private storage array concept. Its arrays are available via public clouds, including AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Azure, managed service providers, data centres, colocation partners, and on-premises in customer data centres.

Its arrays deliver file, block and object services, and customers pay according to usage.

The Dell Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) offerings will offer block and file data services and a broad range of enterprise-class features. Dell says STaaS is designed for OPEX transactions and customers will manage their STaaS resources though a Dell Technologies Cloud Console. 

Details are few but we envisage existing product to service migration developments;

  • STaaS block services<—— Unity-as-a-Service
  • STaaS file services <—— Isilon-as-a-Service

There is no STaaS object service, as yet. 

How will these services be scaled? In the public cloud, if you want more file storage capacity you simply dial it up and the space is there at once. But, on premises, extra capacity requires disk drives or SSDs to be physically present and connected. Either the array or filer is over-provisioned with enough spare capacity waiting to be used, or you have to wait for Dell to deliver the extra kit.

The enterprise services will probably include availability, data reduction, data protection for business continuity and disaster recovery, storage and system analytics, and tiering to lower-cost back-end storage, either on-premises or in the public cloud. We would envisage STaaS data protection being made available fairly quickly.

Mainframe downcycle: IBM’s storage revenues slump in Q3

By
Chris Mellor
-

IBM’s storage revenues dipped 20 per cent in Big Blue’s third 2020 quarter, driven down by adverse mainframe cycle dynamics.

The company reported Q3 revenues of $17.6bn, down 2.6 per cent, with net income of $1.7bn, 9.7 per cent of its revenues and up 2 per cent Y/Y. 

CEO Arvind Krishna’s announcement quote said: “The strong performance of our cloud business, led by Red Hat, underscores the growing client adoption of our open hybrid cloud platform.”

Four years of revenue stagnation are visible in this chart of IBM’s quarterly revenues.

The segment results were:

  • Cloud and Cognitive SW revenues of $5.6bn, up 7 per cent Y/Y, with Red Hat revenues up 17 per cent,
  • Global Business Services revenues of $4.06bn, down 5 per cent,
  • Global Technology Services revenues of $6.5bn, down 4 per cent,
  • Systems revenues of $1.3bn, down 15 per cent as the mainframe cash cow delivered less milk,
  • Global Financing revenues of $273m down 20% as OEM-related revenues fell.

Quick overall summary:

  • Free cash flow of $1.1bn
  • Cash balance of $15.8bn, up $6.7bn since year-end
  • Gross profit margin of 48 per cent, up 1.8 per cent
  • EPS of $1.89

CFO Jim Kavanaugh’s prepared remarks included this: “Turning to Systems, revenue was down 16 percent, driven primarily by product cycle dynamics. … IBM Z revenue was down 20 per cent. … These cycle dynamics impacted our storage revenue as well, with performance driven by declines in high-end storage.”

The pandemic was a factor but mainframe cycle dynamics counted for more. The z15 was launched towards the end of Q3 in 2019. Kavanaugh said: “This pandemic has impacted our historical IBM Z cycle dynamics, which is playing out differently by industry. This platform has proved invaluable to our clients in areas like banking and financial markets … [and] these clients accelerated their adoption of z15 within the cycle.

“That said, in many other industries, clients remain focused on cash preservation during this pandemic. This dichotomy in client buying behaviours impacted our performance in the third quarter.”

Within the Systems business unit, systems hardware revenues declined 19 per cent Y/Y at constant currency, operating systems SW went down less with an 8 per cent fall, and storage declined the most with a 20 per cent drop.

IBM didn’t reveal actual numbers but we calculated from our spreadsheet records that storage revenues were $346.9m. 

That puts an end to three successive quarters of growth (yellow line on chart). The 10-year overall decline in storage revenues raises a question about IBM’s long-term commitment to storage hardware sales, considering that it’s offloaded its networking, disk manufacture, PCs and X86 servers businesses in the past.

IBM wants to be a hybrid cloud platform and AI company and is splitting off its managed infrastructure services into a new company, temporarily called NewCo. Storage revenues represent just 2 per cent of IBM’s quarterly revenues. Their rise or fall don’t account for much in the overall IBM scheme of things, especially not when the $59bn annual revenue IBM is being split off from the $19bn NewCo.

IBM expects to deliver sustainable mid-single digit revenue growth upon completion of the separation of NewCo. Whether that translates to sustainable mid-single digit storage revenue growth remains to be seen.

It’s that time of year again: Gartner flings distributed files systems and objects across the MQ

By
Chris Mellor
-

It’s all change at Gartner’s distributed files systems and objects Magic Quadrant, with three suppliers leaving, one arriving, and major and minor movements across the board.

The leaders have all done well as have niche players Huawei and DDN. Gartner said end users have been reporting unstructured data as growing between 30 per cent and 60 per cent year over year.

Its MQ report states: “The steep growth of unstructured data for emerging and established workloads is now requiring new types of products and cost-efficiencies. Most products in this market are driven by infrastructure software-defined storage (iSDS), capable of delivering tens of petabytes of storage.

“iSDS can also potentially leverage hybrid cloud workflows with public cloud IaaS to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and improve data mobility. New and established storage vendors are continuing to develop scalable storage clustered file systems and object storage products to address cost, agility and scalability limitations in traditional, scale-up storage environments.”

A Gartner MQ is like a doubles tennis court with niche players and visionaries one side of the net, and challengers and leaders the other. The objective, rather than blast balls across the net and out of court, is to move into the leader’s section of the court and as far from the net and to the edge of the court as possible. 

Here is the October 2020 MQ: 

Pretty straightforward with 14 suppliers but there is an oddity. IBM has bought Red Hat so there should really be a single IBM entry with the Red Hat one removed. A look at last year’s MQ will show who’s left the court, who has arrived, and how players have moved:

The leavers include Western Digital, with Quantum acquiring its ActiveScale product and appearing for the first time. SUSE has departed as has SwiftStack, which was bought by Nvidia.

By doing some image magic we can overlay the two charts and see how players have moved:

The 2019 entries are in grey while the 2020 entries are in blue.

In the leaders’ box leading leader Dell has moved a good way to the right, improving its completeness of vision, ditto second placed IBM. Both Scality and Qumulo have also moved significantly to the right.

Huawei has migrated from the niche players’ box to become a challenger. Cloudian and Hitachi Vantara have both moved slightly, while Quantum’s position shows less ability to execute compared to Western Digital, whose position it inherited/acquired.

The niche players box show DDN moving up and to the right, improving on both the vision and execution axes. Caringo has moved in the opposite direction and Inspur has gained some so-called “vision completeness”.

What do the vendors say?

A Qumulo spokesperson positioned the company in David and Goliath terms: “Companies like us … are rocket ships of growth and taking customers from all over the world out of the hands of all kinds of competitors, but most often, they are coming from the dinosaur vendors.”

IBM said it had been in the leader’s box for five years. 

NetApp adds S3 to ONTAP, SW-only SolidFire and pay-as-you-grow pricing

By
Chris Mellor
-

NetApp has added a dose of cloudification to its product lines with a series of announcements covering its core ONTAP software, SolidFire all-flash array software, and Keystone subscription offering.

The company is now describing itself as cloud-led, data-centric and operating in a hybrid on-premises and multi-public cloud environment.

César Cernuda.

NetApp’s new president, César Cernuda, hired in May, emitted this prepared quote: “With its rich data-centric software innovation, NetApp is uniquely positioned to help organisations quickly adapt and sustainably transform in today’s hybrid cloud world. Now, we make it easier for them to develop applications in the cloud, move applications to the cloud, or create cloud-like experiences on premises.”

The latest version of ONTAP, v9.8, adds:

  • FlexCache support for SMB,
  • SnapMirror Business Continuity (SNBC) provides continuous availability with instant failover for workloads like Oracle and SAP,
  • S3 protocol support for small-scale object workloads complementing separate StorageGRID object storage offering,
  • IPsec inflight data encryption,
  • FabricPool cloud tiering gets FAS hard disk drive systems as an added hot tier source,
  • Sending snapshot copies to S3 object storage on-premises or in the public cloud,
  • One-click firmware upgrades,
  • Improved file system analytics.

NetApp said ONTAP storage efficiency had increased by “up to” 33 per cent, without providing details. It claimed (access) temperature-sensitive storage efficiency further optimised cold data to reduce a customer’s storage footprint.

The SolidFire Element all-flash array’s noisy neighbour-killing software is now available in SW-only form to run on commodity server hardware. This new Enterprise SDS (eSDS) offering is packaged in containers and contains selectable components. Qualified server hardware is listed in NetApp’s Interoperability Matrix Tool.

The latest Element SW version adds:

  • Drive lock + software encryption,
  • Software encryption at rest,
  • Multilayer volume security with access group + CHAP + VLANs,
  • Multifactor authentication,
  • Centralised key management through industry-standard protocols.

An updated Keystone Flex subscription provides so-called “pay-as-you-grow” pricing and public cloud integration through the NetApp partner ecosystem. NetApp claimed: “Rapid service adoption with field-proven deployments enables us to bring the cloud to you in as little as 2 weeks.” 

DDN hauls NVMe storage chassis to Tintri products

By
Chris Mellor
-

DDN has injected its all-NVMe flash storage chassis into its Tintri product line to start the cost-cutting process of unifying product hardware across its two divisions.

Tintri was acquired by DDN, along with Western Digital’s IntelliFlash and Nexenta’s software-defined storage, in a series of acquisitions in 2018 and 2019. DDN formed an At-Scale division to produce and sell its original DDN array products, and an Enterprise division to sell the Tintri, IntelliFlash and Nexenta products under an Intelligent Infrastructure theme. It has just announced new Tintri T7000 and IntelliFlash H-series arrays.

IDC Research VP Eric Burgener provided a quote for DDN: “Moving to a common hardware platform for both their At-Scale and Enterprise business units leverages economies of scale in engineering, and will offer reliability, manageability and time-to-market advantages with new releases for customers.”

The Tintri VMstore array line has a T1000 all-flash system for remote and branch offices along with an EC6000 enterprise-class line for data centres. It’s heart is a 2 rack unit (RU) chassis containing SAS SSDs.

These two are joined by a new T7000 which uses DDN hardware, with 10 drive bays for NVMe SSDs and 30 per cent faster performance than the EC6000. The drives can be self-encrypting and Tintri offers non-disruptive drive-by-drive expansion. The OS allows FIPS-compliant software encryption with KMIP. 

Tintri VMstore T7000.

No datasheet has been made available so the speeds and feeds details are not yet known.

Where the Tintri VMstore arrays are targeted at specific virtual server and SQL Server application workloads, the IntelliFlash arrays are general in nature. They offer both all-flash and hybrid flash/disk storage for database, virtualisation and data protection workloads needing both block (FC, iSCSI) and file (NFS, SMb3) data access.

The product range consists of the hybrid T-Series, mixing SSDs and disk drives for fast performance with bulk capacity, the N-Series all-flash NVMe higher performance systems, the HD-Series for all-SAS SSD storage, and the H-Series mixing NVMe SSDS and disk drives for an even higher performance hybrid system than the T-Series.

Tintri has announced new H6100 and H6200 systems and a data sheet says the H6100 has 23 to 92TB  raw NVMe SSD capacity and 96 to 1344TB raw disk capacity. The larger H6200 has 46 to 368TB  raw NVMe SSD capacity and 720 to 6,480TB raw disk capacity.

Tintri IntelliFlash H-Series.

An image of the H-Series shows two cabinets and we understand the upper one is the same basic chassis as is used for the T7000, albeit with a different bezel.

DDN says the H-Series autonomously optimises NVMe SD-to-HDD ratios to meet performance and capacity needs. Hybrid modular expansion shelves provide a route to 25PB of effective capacity in 18RU.

Data services include snapshots, cloning, replication, encryption, deduplication, compression, thin provisioning, and backup integration. Concurrent SAN and NAS access is supported as is concurrent NFS and SMB access.

Tintri supplies IntelliFlash analytics and system monitoring capabilities which apply AI, rules engines, predictive decision making, and data-driven workflows to improve overall system health, reliability, and predictability. 

H-Series general availability is planned for the fourth 2020 quarter while the T7000 should arrive in the first 2021 quarter.

Watch out Samsung: SK hynix confirms buy of Intel’s NAND fab and SSD business

By
Chris Mellor
-

South Korean memory semiconductor supplier  SK hynix will pay $9bn to buy Intel’s NAND foundry and SSD business, it has been confirmed.

SK hynix is paying 208 trillion won (about $9bn) for the bulk of Intel’s Non-Volatile Solutions Group (NSG), meaning the Dalian fab, the NAND wafer and components operations, NAND IP and staff, and the SSD business, leaving the group with its 3D Point operations.

Bob Swan, Intel’s CEO, offered a canned statement: “I am proud of the NAND memory business we have built and believe this combination with SK hynix will grow the memory ecosystem for the benefit of customers, partners and employees. For Intel, this transaction will allow us to further prioritize our investments in differentiated technology where we can play a bigger role in the success of our customers and deliver attractive returns to our stockholders.”

Those attractive returns have been lacking from Intel’s NAND business. Swan may be proud but Intel is walking away from a business that couldn’t deliver the return on investment it wanted.

SK hynix CEO Seok-Hee Lee also issued a statement: “By taking each other’s strengths and technologies, SK hynix will proactively respond to various needs from customers and optimize our business structure, expanding our innovative portfolio in the NAND flash market segment, which will be comparable with what we achieved in DRAM.”

Lee’s company is getting an SSD product line including NVMe interface SSDS using QLC flash. Intel is retaining its Optane 3D Point non-volatile memory business. It sold its interest in 3D XPoint manufacturing to Micron in late 2018, and its Optane business could have entered profitability after a lot of investment since its July 2015 announcement.

Analyst Mark Webb told us: “Intel Optane Persistent memory is the big strategic item and it is managed by DCG (Data Centre Group), not NSG.”

The two companies will seek government approvals and this could be obtained by the second half of 2021. The deal is structured in two stages. In phase one, and consequent on government approval, SK hynix will pay Intel $7bn and get the NAND SSD business (including NAND SSD-associated IP and employees), as well as the Dalian facility.

A second phase will see SK hynix paying Intel $2bn and acquire IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers, R&D employees, and the Dalian fab workforce. This is planned to take place in March 2025. Until then Intel will continue making NAND wafers at Dalian and retain all IP related to the manufacture and design of NAND flash wafers.

SK hynix will use the acquisition to grow its NAND chip and SSD businesses, particularly its enterprise SSD business, with a focus on higher-value SSDs.

It said that, in the six months ended June 27, 2020, Intel’s NSG earned $2.8bn revenues from its NAND business, which provided $600m operating income.

Current NAND market supplier revenue shares.

The deal will see the SK hynix – Intel combination having a 23 per cent NAND market revenue share, second only to Samsung with 31 per cent. As Kioxia (17 per cent) and Western Digital (16 per cent) jointly operate a NAND foundry complex their combined share is 33 per cent. Micron at 13.7 per cent is someway behind.

Industry research outfit TrendForce said that, in terms of product competitiveness: “SK hynix has an advantage in the mobile market, including eMCP and eMMC products, accounting for more than 60 per cent of SK hynix’s total NAND Flash revenue in 2019. On the other hand, Intel has been performing superbly in the enterprise SSD market. Not only is Intel on par with Samsung in enterprise SSD, but it has also captured more than 50 per cent of the Chinese market. Enterprise SSD yields the highest profitability among the entire range of the company’s NAND Flash end-products.”

Webb does not believe that mooted industry consolidation benefits will be very meaningful: “This is not as great for NAND consolidation as one might think. Intel sells very little open market NAND to mobile or card/USB market. Intel sells SSDs and raw memory to enterprises (Google, Amazon, Oracle, etc).

“As such, if this were to move to Hynix, it will not change the pricing competition in the card market and mobile market which along with consumer SSDs are the most competitive. Intel is a small player outside of enterprise SSDs.”

Intel will use the overall $9bn proceeds to build up its artificial intelligence, 5G networking and intelligent, autonomous edge offerings.

Webb said: “I believe Intel is still not allowed to make announcements during its quiet period (30 days before earnings). I expect [an] announcement on Thursday,” when Intel announces its Q3 2020 earnings.

SK hynix could buy Intel NAND business

By
Chris Mellor
-

The WSJ is reporting Korean DRAM, NAND and SSD maker SK hynix could buy some all of Intel’s NAND business operation for around $10bn.

Details are few but a deal could be announced next Monday. 

Intel is the sixth and smallest NAND maker in terms of revenue market share, having 11 per cent of the market, behind leader Samsung with 31 per cent, Kioxia with 17 per cent, Western Digital with 16 per cent. Micron with 13.7 per cent and SK hynix itself with 12 per cent.

A seventh supplier, China’s YMTC, has negligible market share.

In March, Intel CFO George Davis said Intel was unable to sell enough SSDs to make a profit from the 3D NAND chips it made in its Dalian, China, foundry. 

Intel SSD.

Wells Fargo senior analyst Aaron Rakers told subscribers that Intel NAND operating income was -$340m for the trailing 12 months ending 2Q20, according to DRAMeXchange.

Intel was, Davis said, exploring options such as closing its foundry and buying in chips, or selling chips to third parties or buying in SSDs from a third party.

A Chinese media report posted in July last year said: “Hynix plans to acquire Intel’s Fab 68 factory in Dalian, China.” The paper quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying: “According to the current progress, Hynix is ​​negotiating with Intel. Hynix wants to acquire the entire Intel Dalian factory and 3D NAND business. Intel only retains XPoint-related technologies.”

A Reuters report said Intel would sell both its foundry and its NAND SSD business to SK hynix but keep its Optane 3D XPoint business. That would shrink its entire Non-Volatile Solutions group business unit drastically.

It appears likely that SK hynix is negotiating to buy Intel’s Dalian fab. Intel could then buy in chips from SK hynix if it wants to continue selling SSDs. It is conceivable that Intel is considering selling its entire NAND business to SK Hynix but that would be a drastic step.

Rakers suggested a consolidation from seven to six NAND manufacturers would be a good thing in terms of overall industry profitability. He thinks a supplier consolidation move, like SK hynix buying Intel’s fab, would also provide opportunities for competitors to attack Intel’s SSD customer base.

Intel reports its 3Q20 earnings on Thursday and we may hear more then.

Your occasional storage digest with MariaDB, Chief Data Officers and more

By
Chris Mellor
-

The digest this week is cloud-centric with MariaDB updating its SkySQL product and Nutanix refreshing its Era database management offering. But we’re also startled to learn that Chief Data Officers are a thing.

Chief Data Officer

We note that a new BPI Network report, entitled “Bringing Simplicity to Multi-Cloud Complexity: Advancing Data Connectivity, Logistics and Value,” highlights the growing importance of the Chief Data Officer (CDO) in the C-suite and the need to expand the value and accessibility of data and analytics across distributed enterprise organisations. It says CDOs of large and mid-sized companies are gaining competitive advantage through analytics and activation of cloud-based data repositories.

Who knew CDOs existed? It’s yet another example of Chief-something- Officer title creep away from CEO and CEO to lesser corporate responsibility beasts such as CIO, CTO, CSO (Strategy), and CPO (Product or People).

Is there no end to this? Will all EVPS and SVPs end up with a Chief-something-Officer title? Will I someday be called the B&F CWO – Chief Word Officer? Title-creep is fun to watch.

MariaDB updates SkySQL

MariaDB’s SkySQL cloud database has its core software updated to Maria DB Platform X5 to add distributed SQL and more capabilities.

Michael Howard, MariaDB’s CEO, issued a quote about first generation cloud databases: “The current landscape requires a smorgasbord of cloud services to get a single job done – AWS RDS for simple transactions, Aurora for availability and performance, Redshift for cloud data warehousing and Google Spanner for distributed SQL. SkySQL gives you all these capabilities in one elegant cloud database that delivers a consistent MariaDB experience regardless of the way you deploy it.”

SkySQL supports the latest versions of MariaDB Enterprise Server, advanced database proxy MaxScale and smart engines ColumnStore and Xpand and offers:

  • MariaDB Platform for distributed SQL: Xpand is a new smart engine that delivers distributed SQL through MariaDB Enterprise Server. This functionality is now also available in SkySQL with elastic scale and it automatically rebalances data hotspots for optimum performance.
  • MariaDB Platform for analytics: SkySQL includes a distributed cloud data warehouse that provides massively parallel processing (MPP) for scalability and high availability on large datasets. 
  • End-to-end security: SkySQL now enforces secure SSL/TLS connections for any database access, avoiding exposure of data due to insecure defaults or configuration choices.
  • Reduced complexity for application development: SkySQL provides a single connection point for applications rather than exposing individual database instances, primaries or high availability replicas. It manages read/write-splitting, failover and application session migration.
  • Expanded monitoring: SkySQL monitoring shows the status and all vital metrics for database instances and is highly customisable. The monitoring tool is updated to support the new topologies enabled in this new release of SkySQL such as Xpand for distributed SQL.

SkySQL’s pricing is all-inclusive with no up-charges for high availability setup, failover, backups or a database proxy for a single connection point.

Shorts

Cyber-and-data-protector Acronis has released Acronis Cyber Infrastructure 4.0 with more than 350 new capabilities and enhancements. These include erasure coding which improves writing performance and latency for hybrid and all flash tiers up to 50 per cent. Enhancements to storage networking have increased the performance of multi-thread workloads – with random reads improving up to 40 per cent. 

DDN, announced Brookhaven National Laboratory, one of 10 national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has selected its A3I AI400X all-NVME flash appliance storage for its Advanced Computing Lab. The AI400X will be used to provide a collaborative environment for scientists and technologists from government laboratories and academia agencies. 

Long-term retention supplier Falconstor has a support and migration program for IBM ProtecTIER customers. IBM is end-of-lifing its ProtecTIER virtual tape library (VTL) snf yjhr process has been made difficult by the Covid-19 pandemic.  FalconStor’s StorSafe product will send deduped backups previously handled by ProtecTIER directly to IBM on-premises storage systems and IBM COS.

Taiwan’s Gigabyte Technology has announced six new rack and high-density servers with AMD EPYC processors, PCIe Gen 4, boosted flash capacity, and support for tri-mode Broadcom storage adapters. They support PCIe, SAS or SATA devices in bays connected via an adapter in a PCIe slot. 

Memory cached disk drive array supplier Infinidat says it has nearly 400 global channel partners. It has held over 60 virtual events for the channel during the last six pandemic-affected months with a pivot to 100 per cent virtual and launched a new partner portal.

Digi-Key Electronics has added Netlist to its Marketplace. Netlist provides Digi-Key customers with a range of 2.5-inch U.2, half-height, half-length (HHHL) and M.2 NVM Express (NVMe) SSDs.

Nutanix has announced v2 of its Era database management offering which runs cross clouds and clusters and enables database to be delivered as a service. Era supports support for Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, and MariaDB, and now has support for Postgres and SAP HANA.

Object storage supplier Object Matrix announced a reseller agreement with Content Networks in Poland.

The UK’s Storage Made Easy (SME), announced its renewal for the Crown Commercial Service’s G-Cloud 12 scheme. Employees of government affiliated bodies can continue to access existing data sources and in-house servers and exploit public services such as Amazon S3, Azure, Office 365; remotely, safely and securely.

People

MariaDB Corporation announced the appointment of Amir Ameri as Chief Financial Officer, and Paul Jenkinson as Board Member and Audit Committee Chair. This news comes after MariaDB’s $25m cash raise in July to grow its SkySQL database-as-a-service platform.

Hybrid cloud data warehouse company Yellowbrick Data has hired Mark Cusack to be its CTO. He was previously VP for data and analytics at Teradata where he spent 6 years.

ESG validates WekaIO’s file system with benchmark trio: NetApp and Intel have individual wins

By
Chris Mellor
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Analyst and consultancy firm ESG has validated WekaIO’s scale-out, parallel file system performance in three benchmarks – SPEC SFS 2014, IO-500, and STAC-M3 – finding it generally goes a lot faster than competing systems. But Intel has actually trounced Weka on the IO-500 test.

B&F has seen an ESG document: “WekaFS: Storage for Modern Exascale Workloads in the Enterprise,” which describes ESG’s findings.

SPEC SFS 2014

There are five different SPEC SFS 2014 tests reflecting different application environments in which file storage is used: SW Builds, VDA (streaming data), EDA (Electronic Design Automation), VDI and Database (OLTP database consolidation). Not all vendors submit results in all five categories. 

ESG looked at Weka’s performance in four of them, leaving out VDI, and comparing Weka to the next best result:

ESG chart showing four SPEC SFS 2014 category results.

We have a B&F chart showing more suppliers’ scores in the five categories:

B&F chart of composite SPEC SFS 20-14 results.

ESG said that, although NetApp scored higher than Weka in the SW Builds benchmark, 6,200 vs Weka’s 5,700, Weka produced its builds faster, having a 0.63ms average latency at 5,700 builds vs NetApp’s 2.8ms at 6,200 builds.

NetApp’s overall response time was 0.83ms while Weka’s was 0.26ms.

1O-500

The IO-500 benchmark computes a score using file data and metadata access tests for high-performance computing (HPC) systems. ESG said: “IO-500 scoring is derived from the square root of the product of metadata IOPS and throughput” and compared Weka’s result to three other systems: 

ESG chart of Weka IO-500 scores.

It declared: “Weka’s IO-500 results on AWS are significantly higher than other file system solutions whether on-premises or running in the cloud.”

Not so fast ESG. Intel scored higher still with an August 2020 result using its DAOS filesystem, 1,792.98 vs Weka’s 938.95 – nearly twice as fast. Intel’s score was helped by it using Optane SSDS and Optane Persistent Memory (DIMMs). Intel’s previous best IO-500 result was 933.64. 

BF chart of IO-500 scores with added Intel DAOS top line.

Weka is relying on parallelism for its IO-500 result; it used 345 client nodes. The Intel DAOS Optane score needed just 52 nodes. If Weka wants to get past this 1,792.98 IO-500 score it looks as if it will have to use Optane Persistent Memory and SSDs to do it.

STAC-M3

The third benchmark ESG looked at was the STAC-M3 suite, used in the financial services industry. The STAC acronym stands for the Securities Technology Analysis Center. 

ESG STAC-MC chart. Shorter lines are better.

ESG deployed an an eight-node WekaFS cluster on the AWS public cloud using 8, 10, 12 and then 16 i3en.24xlarge all-flash instances. Throughput scaled linearly as nodes were added to the cluster.

The all-flash NAS in the chart was a Dell Isilon F800 with PowerEdge servers. The NVMe-oF San refers to a Vexata VX-100 all flash array with Intel 22-core Xeon E5-2699 servers. The Optane SSD server was a Lenovo ThinkSystem SR950 with 4 x Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs and 6TB of Intel DC P4800X (Optane) SSD capacity bulked out with 56TB of Intel DC P4510 (3D NAND) SSDs.

The ESG document also looks at extending a file system with object storage where Weka gives a good account of itself. Expect Weka to publish the ESG document quite soon.

Optane in the membrane: How Intel’s memory-storage technology faces two ways

By
Chris Mellor
-
Janus
The Roman God Janus

Analysis Like the Roman god Janus, Intel’s Optane technology faces two ways, to memory and to storage, and that has made adoption harder, because it is neither memory fish nor storage fowl, but both.

Why should this matter?

There is a memory/storage hierarchy forming a kind of continuum from high-capacity/slow access/low-cost tape at the bottom to low capacity/ extremely fast access/expensive level 1 processor cache at the top. Jim Handy, a semiconductor analyst at Objective Analysis, has created a log-scale diagram to show this with technologies placed in a space defined by bandwidth and cost axes.

Object Analysis’ Memory/Storage hierarchy diagram by Jim Handy.

The technologies form two types: storage with tape, disk drives and SSDs , and memories, with DRAM, and three levels of CPU cache. The chart shows PM, persistent memory or 3D XPoint, at the point where the storage devices give way to memory devices.

Memory devices are accessed by application and system software at the bit and byte-level using load/store instructions with no recourse to the operating system’s IO stack. DRAM memory devices are built in DIMMs (Dual Inline Memory Modules).

Storage devices are accessed at the block, file or object level, meaning groups of bytes, through an operating system’s IO stack. This takes a lot of time compared to memory access.

Optane Persistent Memory.

Whenever new storage devices come along, such as a new type of disk or a new type of 3D NAND SSD, they are accessed in the same way – through the storage IO stack. Storage device accesses generally use SATA, SAS or NVMe protocols across a cable between them and the host’s PCIe bus or, with NVMe, a direct link to the PCIe bus.

New types of memory, such as DDR5, use memory protocol, the load/store instructions, like their predecessors – DDR4, DDR3 and so on.

3D XPoint can be accessed either as storage, with Optane SSDs, or as memory, with Optane Persistent Memory (PMEM) products built in the DIMM form factor. That makes it two products.

Accessing it as storage is basically simple; it’s just another NVMe drive, albeit faster than flash SSDs.

Accessing it as memory is hard because it can be done in five different ways. It starts with Memory Mode or App Direct Mode (DAX or Direct Access Mode). DAX can be sub-divided into three options; Raw Device Access, access via a File API, or Memory Access. The File API method then has two further sub-options; via a File System or via a Non-volatile Memory-aware File System (NVM-aware).

These multiple PMEM access modes mean that applications using Optane PMEM have to decide which ones to use and then produce code and test it, which takes months of effort.

Let’s make a couple of extra points. As storage, an Optane SSD is neither fast enough, nor cheap enough (cost/GB) to replace NVMe SSDs. The 64-layer and 96-layer SSDs currently shipping are less expensive to make than 2-layer Optane SSDs. The coming 4-layer Optane drives should help to reduce the gap between Optane and NAND SSDs.

Optane SSD.

Optane PMEM is slower than DRAM and its appeal is based on servers having more total memory capacity with Optane (4.5TB vs 1.5TB) and running more applications/VM faster than a maxed-out DRAM-only server. That means Optane PMEM is a high-end application-centric choice and not a generic I-want-my-servers-to-go-faster choice.

The breadth of such application support is expanding all the time and this will broaden Optane PMEM’s market appeal.

In effect, Optane PMEM is not fast enough to be a generic DRAM substitute and various access mode tweaks are needed to use it to best effect.

Note. Janus was the Roman god of beginnings and transitions, dualities and doorways. He is often depicted as having two faces looking in opposite directions.

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