Are You Ready for Extreme Scale?

Just as server virtualization and automation was the key to the IaaS market, software-defined storage on the right hardware is what takes storage to hyper-scale

Storage at cloud scale isn’t just about dealing with the ever-growing amount of data produced; it’s about meeting performance, availability and resiliency needs for a wide range of audiences and workloads at competitive cost, with demanding SLAs. Cloud storage providers, hosters and large enterprises consolidating into mega-scale data centers all need storage systems designed to deliver both performance-focused and capacity-focused storage efficiently and flexibly, with low management overhead and in a way that scales up and down efficiently with demand.

Fast or far away

Traditional storage architectures centralize I/O but monolithic storage arrays can’t match the performance of directly-attached disks; the disk controllers and storage network interfaces throttle I/O throughput. A transactional database can run out of CPU capacity on a server with a large number of cores long before it hits the I/O limits of SSD, but a storage array could be a bottleneck that means the application slows down before it saturates the CPU.

But putting SSDs and, especially, expensive PCIe flash in servers can lead to poor resource utilization because that performance and capacity is only available to applications on the specific server. Juggling demanding applications onto specific hardware for storage performance loses all the benefits of virtualization.

Not only do SANs and virtual storage appliances not scale IOPS as well, they can also be less flexible to scale and reconfigure, especially with a separate storage network (and the data center infrastructure required for that). For extreme storage scale, you need to be able to grow storage in a modular, cost-effective way that offers storage elasticity and fast configuration. It’s far easier to scale capacity and performance with a distributed storage system.

In converged and hyper-converged storage systems, every node in the cluster serves I/O, which means that IOPS scales well as you add nodes to a cluster. Using a combination of SSDs, PCIe flash and low-cost, commodity hard disk drives and industry standard servers to create a SAN from local application server storage with software-defined block storage tools like ScaleIO that can provision and remove storage on the fly gives you massive scale, but also the flexibility to handle the changing priorities of different customers and workloads.

ScaleIO converts the direct-attached storage in servers into shared block storage that applications can treat like a SAN (via the ScaleIO Data Client device driver on each node) even though it’s abstracted, pooled and automated. Each node also runs the ScaleIO Data Server which makes the local storage part of the distributed virtual SAN.

Data volumes look unified to applications, but they’re split into chunks of data distributed across all the nodes in a cluster, and mirrored across all the disks in that cluster, making the storage both highly available and very high performance.

Scaling performance and reliability

Because every server and local storage device in a cluster is used in parallel to both protect data and process IO, the read and write bandwidth both scale close to linearly as new servers and storage are added.

Clusters don’t have to be made up of uniform nodes; they can have different compute and storage resources, and you don’t have to scale compute and storage together. You can upgrade capacity or add faster storage to existing servers or add more servers independently. ScaleIO starts at 3 modes but can go up to 1,000.

There’s no downtime as components are added or removed – or if they fail; data is automatically rebuilt and redistributed across storage devices and nodes. Distributing and mirroring the chunks of the volume across the nodes also speeds up rebuilding and rebalancing data because small pieces of data are coming from multiple nodes in parallel.

Extreme scale means running a wide variety of workloads that can come and go at any time, at competitive costs and meeting SLAs without overprovisioning. Scaling down can matter as much as scaling up. ScaleIO lets you set different performance tiers giving individual applications as much performance or capacity as they need- very much like allocating compute and memory resources to a virtual machine. Quality of Service guarantees storage performance, throttling back ‘noisy neighbors’ to support large-scale multi-tenant environments. Protection domains, storage pools and data encryption at rest keep data in multi-tenant environments segregated.

You can also set QoS for each volume, limiting the IOPS or bandwidth for each application or use volume migration to move lower priority data to lower cost data.

Hardware on demand

One big advantage of ScaleIO is that you can quickly deploy it alongside existing data center infrastructure. There are multiple configurations; a storage-only setup that creates an external storage system with server nodes or a hyperconverged option that runs on the same servers that host applications and storage. It works with a wide range of hypervisors and server operating systems, including vSphere, Windows Server, Hyper-V, Linux and OpenStack.

Hardware choices are also flexible − you can maximize your infrastructure investment by running it on existing server hardware, or you can buy pre-configured ScaleIO Ready Nodesfrom Dell EMC. These come set up in known good configurations to maximize uptime, while saving you time. That means as you grow your infrastructure for extreme scale, you can automate the physical scale out of storage and compute resources by ordering hardware that’s ready to plug in, tested and validated for reliability, and with a single vendor for support.

@ScaleIO Ready Nodes are based on @Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers with the latest @Intel Xeon processors. The higher core count, increased memory channels and faster memory speed up applications and data and better drive cooling improves reliability. The PowerEdge R640 is a 1U, two-socket platform but for maximum storage performance and sensity the 2U, two-socket R740XD supports up to 24 NVMe cards for an all-flash system. If you want to take advantage of the flexibility to mix and match node configurations, you can fit both 2.5” and 3.5” drives in the same chassis. Hard drives, fans and the redundant PSU are all hot-swappable to minimize downtime.

Extreme scale needs a combination of software and hardware, plus automation to get the maximum value out of your infrastructure, so you can deliver the low cost and high performance and service that businesses expect from cloud-scale storage. You need agility and flexibility, as well as scale to adapt to fast-moving business needs. Hyperconverged software-defined storage can give you performance, reliability and elastic scaling, but it’s also less demanding to manage with the skills you bring to managing the rest of the data centers, making storage just another service rather than a special and demanding snowflake

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/industry-perspectives/are-you-ready-extreme-scale

Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd Server Review

In the spring of 2017, @DellEMC launched the much-anticipated refresh of the #PowerEdge lineup, refreshing the PowerEdge line up to Xeon SP from #Broadwell. The refresh included the new R740 server family, which encompasses the mainstream R740 as well as the "extreme disk" version dubbed the R740xd, which we will be looking at in this review. This powerhouse server supports a wide range of storage options, stretching up to eighteen 3.5" or thirty-two 2.5" disks for incredible capacity, or up to twenty-four 2.5" NVMe SSDs if breakneck storage I/O is more of your forte. Compute and DRAM aren't left in the backseat either, with the R740xd supporting up to dual Intel Xeon Scalable processors with 28 cores each and a peak memory footprint of 3TB max. There are few applications this new server wouldn't excel in, which is exactly the direction Dell EMC took when designing this ever-modular platform.  The PowerEdge R740 servers represent a great middle ground of performance and storage in a 2U box. The server can be configured with up to two Intel Scalable CPUs and 24 DDR4 DIMMs (or 12 NVDIMMs), but where they really shine is in the way they approach storage. While the R740 offers up to 16 storage bays, the xd offers up to 32 2.5” bays, 24 of which can be NVMe. The R740xd also offers some unique storage layouts versus the typical front-loading bays, including mid- and rear-loading bays to fit all the extra storage in the same 2U footprint. The layout also enables users to tailor their storage needs to their application by being able to mix NVMe, SSD and HDD in the same chassis creating storage tiering within the chassis. The R740xd also supports up to 192GB of NVDIMM. The R740xd also has the ability to boot from RAIDed internal M.2 SSDs through an add-on card, freeing up the more front-accessible space for workload storage. Both versions are good for SDS, service providers, and VDI, with total storage and NVMe being the key difference. Also new to the R740/R740xd is the increased support for GPU’s or FPGA’s. Both are capable of support up to 3 300W or 6 150W cards. In this generation Dell EMC engineered the BIOS to automatically register the airflow required by each card and provide individually tailored air flow through a feature called multi-vector cooling. With every refresh of any server line, there are new CPUs, more RAM, and better storage and networking options. What sets many companies apart, though, is the full lifecycle management of the product. Within reason, any server with the same hardware specs will score roughly the same. The difference, though, quickly becomes apparent with the quality of the hardware, the breadth of support software, and how easy the system is to rapidly deploy in a given environment. This is a key area in which Dell EMC sets itself apart from others in the marketplace. Dell EMC gives users key tools such as LifeCycle Controller, iDRAC, OpenManage Mobile and others. We've leveraged many of these tools in our own environment, and time and time again, have walked away impressed with how simple and mature the platform has become over time. The new PowerEdge servers have support for software-defined storage (SDS) built in from the start, lending them to use cases such as hyperconverged infrastructure. In their own enterprise product lineup, Dell EMC leverages the R740 with pre-built and validated solutions such as Ready Nodes for ScaleIO or VSAN, as well as the PowerEdge XC line. The R740xd enables configurations leveraging all external drive bays for the SDS product itself, keeping the boot segment on an internal m.2 SSD. The new Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd is available now and is highly customizable. For this review we leveraged an individual R740xd with a near top-end configuration, as well as a cluster of 12 R740xds with a more modest configuration. The single R740xd we are using is built with the following: Dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8180 CPUs 384GB of DDR4 2667MHz RAM (32GB x 12) 4 x 400GB SAS SSDs 2 x 1.6TB NVMe SSDs Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx Dual Port 25GbE DA/SFP rNDC LCD bezel with Quick Sync 2 and OpenManage capabilities iDRAC 9 Enterprise Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd Server specifications: Form factor: 2U Rackmount Processors: up to 2 Intel Scalable CPUs or up to 28 cores Memory: 24x DDR4 RDIMM, LR-DIMM (3TB max) NVDIMM support: up to 12 or 192GB Drive Bays Front bays: Up to 24 x 2.5” SAS/SSD/NVMe, max 153TB Up to 12 x 3.5” SAS, max 120TB Mid bay: Up to 4 x 3.5” drives, max 40TB Up to 4 x 2.5” SAS/SSD/NVMe, max 25TB Rear bays: Up to 4 x 2.5” max 25TB Up to 2 x 3.5” max 20TB Storage Controllers Internal controllers: PERC H730p, H740p, HBA330, Software RAID (SWRAID) S140 Boot Optimized Storage Subsystem: HWRAID 2 x M.2 SSDs 120GB, 240 GB External PERC (RAID): H840 External HBAs (non-RAID): 12 Gbps SAS HBA Ports Network daughter card options: 4 x 1GE or 2 x 10GE + 2 x 1GE or 4 x 10GE or 2 x 25GE Front ports: VGA, 2 x USB 2.0, dedicated IDRAC Direct Micro-USB Rear ports: VGA, Serial, 2 x USB 3.0, dedicated iDRAC network port Video card: VGA Up to 8 x Gen3 slots, Up to 4 x16 GPU Options: Nvidia Tesla P100, K80, K40, Grid M60, M10, P4, Quadro P4000. AMD S7150, S7150X2 Supported OS Canonical Ubuntu LTS Citrix XenServer Microsoft Windows Server with Hyper-V Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise Server VMware ESXi Power Titanium 750W, Platinum 495W, 750W, 1100W, 1600W, and 2000W 48VDC 1100W, 380HVDC 1100W, 240HVDC 750W Hot plug power supplies with full redundancy Up to 6 hot plug fans with full-redundancy, high-performance fans available Design and Build The new PowerEdge Servers have been redesigned not only to look slick (which they really do), but to reflect how users and applications interact with them. Across the front is the new bezel that has the Quick Sync support with its wireless OpenManage capabilities. The same design on the new servers is also matched across new Dell EMC storage offerings, including systems such as the Unity 450F all-flash array. Beneath the bezel, there are 24 2.5” bays that support SATA, SAS, Nearline SAS, and NVMe (if configured to do so).  The front can be configured to support 12 3.5” drives as well, if maximum capacity is of higher concern than performance. On the left-hand side are indicator lights for health and ID and the iDRAC Quick Sync 2 wireless activation button. On the right-hand side are the power button, VGA port, iDRAC Direct micro USB port and two USB 2.0 ports. Where others in the market are finding ways to cut costs and remove components in favor of reducing costs, one item Dell EMC has kept as an option for the R740xd and R740 is its front bezel. Some might be saying "Who cares?!" But the little LCD and its three buttons are incredibly useful in a datacenter environment. For instance, in a scenario where you can't access iDRAC remotely, management network settings have changed and you don't want to power cycle the server to go in manually with a crash cart and keyboard, the front bezel comes in very handy. On a Dell EMC server, you can go through the little interface for iDRAC settings, and you are able to switch the management IP back to DHCP from static all through the front panel. Without that functionality still in place, on many systems you'd need to reboot it to change it manually. On the R740xd, this is completely out of band through different controls.  Taking the top cover off shows the inner workings and the massive attention to detail that Dell EMC has put into the new PowerEdge servers. Many of the server components can be swapped out easily if the need arises, and clutter is kept to a minimum to improve airflow. In the system we reviewed, you are able to see the dual-slot m.2 boot SSD card, two RAID cards, as well as two PCIe pass-through adapters for the NVMe slots in front.  Our build also includes the internal dual-slot microSD boot device for hypervisor storage. Not as apparent (but very important) is all of the cooling fan duct work that keeps airflow moving through the system across all hardware, keeping hotspots down to a minimum and allowing the server to minimize excess fan noise. Throughout the course of our testing, we noted (or didn't note) any excess fan noise. Under extreme load with CPUs saturated, fan noise stayed far below other whitebox systems in our lab. Another interesting item we found was how the systems handled airflow at higher ambient air temperatures. In our lab we enjoy using fresh air for cooling servers, so systems in our lab can see a huge range of air temperatures. In situations where the R740xd performed in an environment with high ambient air temperatures, it gracefully increased fan speeds, but still kept noise to a minimum. This is in stark contrast to other servers and hardware in our lab that can be heard through closed doors or which drown out conversations held around them.  In both of our configurations, mid-bay storage options were not configured into the build. We pulled out an example shot from the PowerEdge R740xd technical manual which shows the internal 3.5" bays, as well as the 2.5" drive mounts. Few, if any, other mainstream servers offer this high level of density in a system configuration. While there are unique server builds floating on the market, many are custom built for the application. This makes a world of difference in terms of how unique systems are managed and deployed, as well as who is administering them in the datacenter.  Flipping around to the rear of the R740xd, customers looking for maximum expansion potential should take note. Starting in the upper left-hand corner, there are 3 full-height PCIe expansion slots, and beneath them are a system identification button, an iDRAC dedicated networking port, a serial port, VGA port, and 2 USB 3.0 ports. In the middle are two more full-height PCIe slots, in addition to a half-height slot used for the RAID card on this build. Below those is an rNDC slot which is populated with a dual-port 25Gb Mellanox NIC. On the upper right-hand side are two more full-height PCIe slots above the dual-power supplies. With two full-height PCIe slots to spare, Dell EMC loaded in support for 4 2.5" NVMe SSDs, dual-RAID cards, dual m2. boot SSDs, as well as a dual-port 25Gb Ethernet NIC. The rNDC slot is leveraged for the onboard primary network interface. This can be pre-populated with a number of offerings, ranging from a quad-port 1GbE NIC up to dual-port 25Gb offerings from both Mellanox and Broadcom. None of the options take away from one of the server's available PCIe slots, keeping them completely open for other uses. As we've shown in our rNDC upgrade guide, this bay is easy to upgrade and quite helpful at keeping networking devices out of the main PCIe slots. Management The PowerEdge R740xd offers a wide range of management options, including some traditional, as well as others that fit in the palm of your hand. The R740xd can be deployed by leveraging Dell EMC’s OpenManage Mobile app or locally like previous generation servers. The abilities of OpenManage Mobile can really make a difference, especially when you are setting up several servers in one data center, or you just want to get it finished on the floor without going back and forth to our desk or bringing a crash cart. Leveraging pre-built profiles to rapidly deploy a server with nothing more than a cell phone dramatically speeds up a process that frequently requires a crash cart in a datacenter.  An onboard WiFi radio connects users to the R740xd server, which is clamped down and very secure. You need local and physical access to the server, first to switch on the wireless radio from the front panel of the server, as well as to be able to scan the information tag on the front of the server. Once the network is turned on, you are given access to a private LAN, accessible from your phone or mobile workstation to interface with iDRAC over a mobile app or through a web browser.  This blends in a mix of handheld access for quick status checks or system polling, or more advanced functionality and iKVM work without worrying about connecting any wires or crash carts. The very short range (5 to 10 feet from the server in a datacenter environment) also helps to minimize the chance of anyone hopping onto the system without noticing. When your work is completed, turning off the wireless radio disables any further access.  A welcome addition also built into iDRAC is Group Manager, which allows IT admins to manage a group of R740 servers from within iDRAC itself. In our environment, we have the first R740xd acting as the group leader, requiring just one login to remotely manage multiple servers. From a central point you can get server status, as well as power toggle each server and quickly jump into its local iDRAC interface without having to type in additional login information.  iDRAC has been the heart of Dell management for some time now. Just recently the company announced a slew of enhancements to further improve user experience, as well as the overall functionality of iDRAC. iDRAC9 has added a more powerful processer to quadruple its performance. It now comes with more automation, saving time for IT admins while reducing errors. All BIOS settings can now be adjusted through iDRAC instead of booting to BIOS. The new iDRAC has enhanced storage configurations such as online capacity expansion, RAID level migration, cryptographic physical drive erase, rebuild/cancel rebuild of physical drives, enable revertible hot-spare, and virtual disk renaming.  When we mention that performance within iDRAC has dramatically improved, it's not overstated in the slightest. The new HTML5 interface is much faster in all areas, including initial login and full interaction through the iDRAC WebGUI. Compared to the R730 (which wasn't a slouch when it came out), it's night and day. As far as some of the new features used directly when logging into iDRAC, the management now has a remote view called Connection View. This can give IT admins a look at various aspects of the server right away. Along with this is a new dashboard for remote managing with iDRAC Group manager. For further direct-connected accessibility, there is now a port for iDRAC direct on the front of the server.  Additional features have been brought into iDRAC that allow users to better customize each server for its given application. BIOS level customizations can now be set through iDRAC itself, without requiring a console login. This makes it easier to change a few key settings before the initial deployment, all through a simple web browser or an app on your mobile phone. For deploying a number of servers at a time, users can also build up a server profile file to quickly deploy across multiple servers.  Management of installed hardware also took an interesting path with this latest generation server. Dell made it easier for users to manage PCIe add-on cards, where the server detects the type of card and will automatically adjust the fan speed for proper cooling. Airflow can be further tweaked with a custom LFM fan speed setting per installed device, as well as a master offset adjustment at the server level. Many of the cooling tweaks aren't done to cool installed hardware better than previous generation servers; instead, this is more about *perfectly* cooling hardware with the least amount of airflow required. In many servers, you can set the fans to full speed and not worry about over-heating equipment, but this is at the cost of excess power and noise.  Minimized airflow goes a long way towards reducing power consumption through wasted energy spinning fans needlessly high. At the end of the day, this makes the datacenter more enjoyable without fans buzzing at deafening levels. Performance When comparing the R740xd to the prior generation systems, compute and storage potential have skyrocketed. With Intel Broadwell updates, the top-spec CPU offered in the R730 series (E5-2699v4) offers 96.8GHz in a dual processor configuration. With the Intel Scalable line inside the PowerEdge R740xd, though, the top-end CPU (Platinum 8180) pushes that number to 139.66GHz. At face value, that's a 44% jump, but it doesn't even start to look at improvements in clockspeed at those higher core-counts or DRAM clockspeed improvements. On the storage side, NVMe SSDs have also taken on a bigger role inside the R740xd configurations, with offerings now topping out at 24 NVMe SSDs, where four used to be the peak on the R730xd. As we look at the improvements made on the latest generation Dell EMC PowerEdge server, we will touch on both local performance as well as clustered performance across a group of eight servers leveraging storage from a Dell EMC Unity 450F All-Flash array in a later review. This review layout is geared to help interested buyers see how these servers perform well equipped in single instances, as well as how they interact in a highly virtualized environment within a Dell EMC ecosystem. Bringing together all these systems are Mellanox ConnectX-4 25Gb rNDC NICs as well as Dell EMC Networking Z9100 100G switches. In our section looking at local system performance, we have a well-equipped R740xd which we are testing with two different NVMe combos. One is with two Samsung 1.6TB PM1725a NVMe SSDs, while the second is using four Toshiba 1.6TB PX04P NVMe SSDs. With the Intel Platinum 8180 CPUs inside, we had plenty of CPU cycles to throw at our storage workloads, giving us a chance to show the difference moving from 2 to 4 NVMe SSDs within the same application workload. Additionally, we also push storage to the brink inside an ESXi 6.5 environment with a multiple-worker vdbench test, with multiple workloads geared at simulating basic four corners testing up to VDI traces. Sysbench MySQL Performance Our first local-storage application benchmark consists of a Percona MySQL OLTP database measured via SysBench. This test measures average TPS (Transactions Per Second), average latency, and average 99th percentile latency as well. Each Sysbench VM is configured with three vDisks: one for boot (~92GB), one with the pre-built database (~447GB), and the third for the database under test (270GB). From a system resource perspective, we configured each VM with 16 vCPUs, 60GB of DRAM and leveraged the LSI Logic SAS SCSI controller. Sysbench Testing Configuration (per VM) CentOS 6.3 64-bit Percona XtraDB 5.5.30-rel30.1 Database Tables: 100 Database Size: 10,000,000 Database Threads: 32 RAM Buffer: 24GB Test Length: 3 hours 2 hours preconditioning 32 threads 1 hour 32 threads We compared the performance of two Sysbench runs on the PowerEdge R740xd, one with 4VMs hosted on two NVMe SSDs and another with 4VMs with a dedicated NVMe SSD for each VM. In both of these tests the CPU load wasn't brought to the breaking point of 100%. We saw a split of about 60% and 80% CPU utilization for the two benchmarks, meaning there was still room to grow with additional VMs and more DRAM. The first with 2 NVMe SSDs hosting the Sysbench VMs, aggregate TPS came to 11,027, and the second test with 4 NVMe SSDs the aggregate TPS increased to 13,224. This contrasts to a measurement of 10,683TPS from the PowerEdge R630 we benchmarked about a year ago with E5-2699v4 CPUs and 4 NVMe SSDs as well.  Looking at average latency in our Sysbench workload, the 2 NVMe SSD result came in at 11.61ms, whereas the 4 NVMe SSD result came in at 9.69ms.  In our worst-case 99th percentile latency measurement, 2 NVMe SSDs measured 24.5ms, while 4 NVMe SSDs came in at a very stable 20.7ms.  SQL Server Performance StorageReview’s Microsoft SQL Server OLTP testing protocol employs the current draft of the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Benchmark C (TPC-C), an online transaction processing benchmark that simulates the activities found in complex application environments. The TPC-C benchmark comes closer than synthetic performance benchmarks to gauging the performance strengths and bottlenecks of storage infrastructure in database environments. Each SQL Server VM is configured with two vDisks: 100GB volume for boot and a 500GB volume for the database and log files. From a system resource perspective, we configured each VM with 16 vCPUs, 64GB of DRAM and leveraged the LSI Logic SAS SCSI controller. While our Sysbench workloads tested previously saturated the platform in both storage I/O and capacity, the SQL test is looking for latency performance. This test uses SQL Server 2014 running on Windows Server 2012 R2 guest VMs, being stressed by Dell's Benchmark Factory for Databases. While our traditional usage of this benchmark has been to test large 3,000-scale databases on local or shared storage, in this iteration we focus on spreading out four 1,500-scale databases evenly across our servers. SQL Server Testing Configuration (per VM) Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Footprint: 600GB allocated, 500GB used SQL Server 2014 Database Size: 1,500 scale Virtual Client Load: 15,000 RAM Buffer: 48GB Test Length: 3 hours 2.5 hours preconditioning 30 minutes sample period Similar to how we ran our Sysbench benchmark, we tested configurations with 2 NVMe SSDs as well as 4 NVMe SSDs. With 4VMs spread out over 2 drives, we saw aggregate TPS in Benchmark Factory measure 12,631, whereas with 4 NVMe SSDs this measured 12,625. While this is a bit counter intuitive, with our particular configuration of the benchmark, latency measured below shows the real story.  With 2 NVMe SSDs, we saw average latency measure 6.5ms across our four SQL Server workloads, while with 4 NVMe SSDs that number dropped to just 4ms. In both tests performance, using just 20 and 22% of the CPU in the process. The PowerEdge R740xd with dual Intel 8180 CPUs has an immense amount of compute and storage potential to through at these types of database workloads without breaking a sweat.  VDBench Workload Analysis Our last section of local performance testing focuses in on synthetic workload performance. In this area we leveraged four NVMe SSDs in VMware ESXi 6.5, and evenly spread out 16 worker VMs, each with two 125GB vmdks mounted to measure a storage footprint of 4TB. This type of test is useful to show what real-world storage metrics look like with the overhead associated with a virtualized environment. When it comes to benchmarking storage arrays, application testing is best, and synthetic testing comes in second place. While not a perfect representation of actual workloads, synthetic tests do help to baseline storage devices with a repeatability factor that makes it easy to do apples-to-apples comparison between competing solutions. These workloads offer a range of different testing profiles ranging from "four corners" tests, common database transfer size tests, as well as trace captures from different VDI environments. All of these tests leverage the common vdBench workload generator, with a scripting engine to automate and capture results over a large compute testing cluster. This allows us to repeat the same workloads across a wide range of storage devices, including flash arrays and individual storage devices. On the array side, we use our cluster of Dell PowerEdge R730 servers: Profiles: 4K Random Read: 100% Read, 128 threads, 0-120% iorate 4K Random Write: 100% Write, 64 threads, 0-120% iorate 64K Sequential Read: 100% Read, 16 threads, 0-120% iorate 64K Sequential Write: 100% Write, 8 threads, 0-120% iorate Synthetic Database: SQL and Oracle VDI Full Clone and Linked Clone Traces Looking at peak read performance, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd offered sub-millisecond latency 4k read performance up to just over of 800K IOPS, starting at 0.21ms. At its peak, the R740xd measured 978k IOPS at a latency of 3.8ms.  Looking at 4k peak write performance, the R740xd started off with a latency of 0.12ms and stayed below 1ms until it hit around 730K IOPS. At its peak, the R740xd hit over 834K IOPS at 2.4ms  Switching to 64k peak read, the R740xd started off at 0.27ms latency and stayed below 1ms until it hit around 150K IOPS. It peaked just over 170K IOPS with 3ms of latency. The R740xd finished with a bandwidth of 10.644GB/s.  For 64k sequential peak write, the R740xd started off at 0.14ms and stayed under 1ms until it hit just over 65K IOPS. The R740xd hit its peak at 93K IOPS with a latency of 2.7ms. The R740xd also had a bandwidth of 5.83GB/s at its peak.  In our SQL workload, the R740xd started its latency at 0.21ms and stayed under 1ms until it hit between 700K and 750K IOPS. It peaked at 760K IOPS and only 1.29ms.  In the SQL 90-10 benchmark, the R740xd started with a latency of 0.2ms and stayed under 1ms until just under 600K IOPS. The R740xd peaked over 634K IOPS with 1.57ms latency.  The SQL 80-20 saw the R740xd start with a latency of 0.2ms and stay under 1ms until it moved over 481K IOPS. The R740xd peaked nearly at 538K IOPS with 1.7ms latency.  With the Oracle Workload, the R740xd started with a latency of 0.2ms and stayed under 1ms until just over 400K IOPS. The R740xd peaked at 470K IOPS with a latency of 2.5ms.  With the Oracle 90-10, the R740xd started off at a latency of 0.2ms and stayed under 1ms the entire benchmark. It peaked at 636K IOPS with a latency of 0.98ms.  With the Oracle 80-20, the R740xd started off at a latency of 0.2ms and stayed under 1ms until it was just under 529K IOPS. It peaked at 533K IOPS with a latency of 1.14ms.  Switching over to VDI Full Clone, the boot test showed the R740xd starting with a latency of 0.21ms and staying under 1ms until around 490K IOPS. The R740xd peaked at 539K IOPS with a latency of 1.9ms.  The VDI Full Clone initial login started off at 0.17ms latency and stayed under 1ms until around 175K IOPS. The R740xd peaked at 218K IOPS with a latency of 4.1ms.  The VDI Full Clone Monday login started off at 0.2ms latency, staying under 1ms until over 180K IOPS. It peaked at 215K IOPS with 2.36ms.  Moving over to VDI Linked Clone, the boot test showed performance staying under 1ms up to roughly 350k IOPS, and later topping out at a peak of 376k IOPS with an average latency of 1.36ms.  In the Linked Clone VDI profile measuring Initial Login performance, we saw sub-ms latency up till around 130k IOPS, where it further increased to 154k IOPS at 1.64ms at its peak.  In our last profile looking at VDI Linked Clone Monday Login performance, we see the 1ms barrier transition happening at around 109k IOPS, where the workload continued to increase to its peak at 151k IOPS and 3.36ms average latency.  Conclusion The new Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd is the “extreme disk” version of the R740. Within its 2U footprint it can house up to 32 2.5” drives including up to 24 NVMe drives. This server can help bring out the potential of all that high performance storage by leveraging up to two Intel Scalable processors and up to 3TB of memory. Dell EMC didn’t just stop with hardware improvements. The new server comes with support for SDS built in, making it ideal for use cases that need to leverage HCI. The server is modular and highly configurable to meet nearly all customers’ needs. In our application performance benchmarks, the Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd was tested with one with 4VMs hosted on two NVMe SSDs and another with 4VMs with a dedicated NVMe SSD for each VM. For Sysbench the 4 NVMe test had a score of 13,224 TPS, 10ms average latency, and 21ms of worst-case scenario latency while the 2 NVMe benchmark had 11,028 TPS, 12ms average latency, and 24ms worst-case scenario latency. For our SQL Server test the 4 NVMe test hit an aggregate TPS score of 12,625 and an aggregate latency of 4ms. The 2 NVMe test produced an aggregate TPS score of 12,631.8 and an aggregate latency of 6.5ms. In our VDBench workload analysis, the R740xd really shined in a virtualized ESXi 6.5 environment. In our 4k random we saw sub millisecond performance in read up to 800,000 IOPS and in write up to 730,000 IOPS. In 64k sequential read the R740xd had sub millisecond latency up to 150,000 IOPS and finished with a bandwidth of 10.644GB/s. For 64k write, the server had sub millisecond performance up to 65,000 IOPS and a bandwidth of 5.83GB/s. In our SQL workload we again saw strong sub millisecond performance (until 700,000 IOPS, 600,000 IOPS, and 481,000 IOPS for workload, 90-10, 80-20 respectively) but what was most impressive was that performance topped out with latency between 1.29ms and 1.7ms with performance well over 500,000 IOPS in each. The Oracle workload also showed strong sub millisecond performance with the 90-10 running the entire benchmark in under 1ms, peaking at 636,000 IOPS. The R740xd peaked at 539,000 IOPS, 218,000 IOPS, and 215,000 IOPS in full clone (with peak latency of 1.9ms, 4.1ms, and 2.36ms). And in our linked clone benchmarks, the server peaked at 376,000 IOPS, 154,000 IOPS, and 151,000 IOPS (with peak latency of 1.36ms, 1.64ms, and 3.36ms). Dell EMC is clearly excited about the launch of the new server line and specifically the R740xd, the centerpiece of the PowerEdge line. We've logged many weeks with the new systems, thirteen of the R740xd's make up the core backbone of our test lab. From the work we've done, the servers have impressed everywhere, from manageability via iDrac and OpenManaage Mobile to performance with the NVMe bays. With all of the additional flexibility the xd flavor of the #R740 offers, it's no surprise that @DellEMC is using is as the lynchpin in several of their SDS offerings including #vSAN #ReadyNodes, #ScaleIO Ready Nodes, #StorageSpacesDirect Ready Nodes, #VxRail and the #XC740xd ( @Nutanix ) for instance. In total, the #PowerEdge R740xd is the most complete server offering we've seen to date in terms of build quality, system design, storage flexibility, performance and ease of management making it a clear leader in the space and our first ever Editor's Choice in the server category.

http://www.storagereview.com/dell_emc_poweredge_r740xd_server_review

ScaleIO tries to answer vSAN and HCI snafus with one stretchy solution

Hyperconverged infrastructure, or HCI — with its commodity hardware packaged with software-defined storage — departs radically from traditional siloed data center architectures. Vendors banging on about how revolutionary and disruptive HCI is may not realize that that is precisely the problem for some holdouts. “When you introduce HCI to a large enterprise, you’re changing the architecture of the data center [and] also the IT operating environment. That’s scary for a lot of people who have spent millions of dollars having a server team, a network team and a storage team,” said Jason Brown (pictured), consultant, product marketing, ScaleIO, at Dell EMC. Brown spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Lisa Martin (@LisaDaliMartin), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the recent VMworld conference in Las Vegas. (* Disclosure below.) One step forward, two steps back The obstacles to immediate HCI adoption do not mean that large enterprises must remain forever stuck with their data centers of five to ten years ago. There are inroads to HCI and software-defined data centers they can tread at their own careful pace, according to Brown. In order to choose wisely, customers need to understand the differences among these products and how they help or hinder their business objectives. For instance, two such solutions in the #DellTechnologies portfolio are #VMware Inc.’s #vSAN and Dell EMC’s #ScaleIO — both #softwaredefinedstorage solutions. While vSAN is quite popular, its scalability is rather limited compared to that of ScaleIO, Brown explained. ScaleIO allows customers to start small with, say, three or four storage nodes and pay as they scale. It also allows them to preserve their current IT model. “On the flip side, you can also do a more modern architecture with hyperconverged as well,” Brown said. ScaleIO is suited to service providers ready to go all in with hyperconverged out-of-the-gate. “But enterprises usually start more traditional and then move to hyperconverged. And Scale IO provides that pathway to get there,” Brown concluded.

https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/18/scaleio-tries-to-answer-vsan-hci-snafus-with-one-stretchy-solution-vmworld/

VxRail 'billion-dollar business' soon, says Dell EMC's Sakac

LAS VEGAS -- As president of Dell EMC's converged platforms division, Chad Sakac leads a group that performs a lot of balancing acts. Dell EMC's converged platforms include products in the fast-growing hyper-converged market as well as the converged infrastructure (CI) systems that hyper-convergence often replaces. It also sells converged infrastructure built around Cisco servers and switching, as well as those with Dell's own hardware that competes with Cisco. And its #hyperconverged products include #XC appliances powered by #Nutanix software through a #DellOEM deal before its merger with #EMC. XC systems compete with #VMware #vSAN-powered #VxRail, an EMC product before the merger.  Customers may need a scorecard to keep track of Dell EMC's hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) lineup. Besides VxRail and XC, there is #VxRack rackscale #HCI and #VxRackFlex with EMC's ScaleIO #softwaredefined #blockstorage. And Dell-owned #VMware sells its #vSAN software standalone and through other hardware partners. On the CI side, Dell EMC recently pared its product line by eliminating VBlock -- the original CI product -- in favor of #VxBlocks with VMware software-based switching instead of #Cisco 's.
We caught up with Sakac at VMWorld 2017 to discuss all things converged and hyper-converged. He said while hyper-converged is "hot, hot, hot," it still has a long way to go to catch traditional SANs, and admitted the decision to scrap the Vblock CI brand caused "sleepless nights." Where's the storage news at VMworld? Sakac: One of the big storage news pieces is the ongoing market shift toward software-defined. I wrote in my blog that the official Dell Technologies point of view is the majority of workloads today can be well-served by software defined storage/HCI. And coming from the storage market leader, that's a pretty strong statement. If you're not an incumbent, you have nothing to lose. If you are an incumbent with hundreds of thousands of customers, people who've built their careers on SANs, to say we think today the majority of workloads would work fine on ScaleIO, on vSAN and on VxRail, VxRack -- that's a big piece of storage news.

http://searchconvergedinfrastructure.techtarget.com/news/450425314/VxRail-billion-dollar-business-soon-says-Dell-EMCs-Sakac

The 7 Most Important Things To Know About Dell EMC's New 14G PowerEdge Servers

Down To The Bedrock The latest generation of the PowerEdge server portfolio that Dell EMC unveiled at the Dell EMC World conference in May has finally hit the market. Most of it, at least. Five of the seven models in the new line become available this week while customers will have to wait until later in the year for two. Dubbed 14G, the fourteenth generation of the venerable PowerEdge line launches in lockstep with the release of Intel's new Xeon Scalable processors. Of course, that means PowerEdge 14G has plenty of competition, including Lenovo's rebranded ThinkSystem server line, which was introduced last month and also relies on Intel's latest processors Dell EMC intends 14G to be "the bedrock of the modern data center," and the portfolio will underpin a wide variety of Dell EMC systems, including the popular VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure offering, which hits the market with a starting price of about $25,000. Clearly, Dell EMC is intent on pushing growth in the server market as it consolidates. Dell EMC was the only major server vendor to show server revenue growth in the first quarter as the worldwide market declined nearly 5 percent, according to research firm IDC. Click through to see the most important aspects of the new PowerEdge 14G line.

The Foundation

#DellEMC shipped more than 465,000 servers in the first quarter, and part of its strategy for growing that number is making PowerEdge the basis for a broad selection of Dell EMC solutions. The new #14G servers will be the foundation of offerings that used the previous generation of #PowerEdge servers, including #VxRail appliances, #VxRack systems, the #Nutanix-based XC hyper-convergence offering, #vSAN ReadyNodes, #ScaleIO ReadyNodes, #IsilionSD Edge and #ElasticCloudStorage. PowerEdge servers will also be available in several new #DellEMC offerings, including the #DataDomain Appliance, #CloudArray, Ready Bundles, Ready Systems Dell EMC Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, Dell EMC Native Hybrid Cloud and Dell EMC Cloud For #MicrosoftAzure Stack.

Traditional To Software-Defined

The new PowerEdge is part of what Dell EMC calls scalable business architecture, a system that allows customers to move from traditional to virtualized to cloud-native workloads in software-defined data centers more easily. The 14G portfolio is optimized for NVMe to help speed the deployment of software-defined data center and hyper-converged infrastructure with faster database and storage performance and faster migration of VMs. The company also says life-cycle management is easier and problems will be resolved nearly twice as fast as in the past through Dell EMC's ProSupport and Support Assist programs.

On Lockdown

Dell EMC counts security as one of the major selling points of its servers, and 14G continues that with cryptographically trusted booting, which includes Intel Boot Guard protection, signed firmware and automatic BIOS recovery, among other features. The PowerEdge portfolio also includes System Lockdown, which helps secure any system configuration from malicious or unintended changes and alerts users to any attempt to make system changes. The new servers also come with System Erase, which allows users to retire or repurpose 14G servers by quickly wiping data from storage devices and embedded memory.

http://m.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/300088771/the-7-most-important-things-to-know-about-dell-emcs-new-14g-poweredge-servers.htm

Venture capital biz hires former EMC CEO

Former #EMC grand fromage #JoeTucci has walked into a special advisor role at venture cap outfit #83North . Tucci left his old employer once #MichaelDell had taken EMC private in a $60bn plus deal in September, and is co-CEO at special purpose acquisition firm #GTYTechnology Holdings and chairman of private equity house Bridge Growth Partners. The industry old timer is not new to 83North; the VC previously invested in Israeli storage startup #ScaleIO before EMC took it over in 2013. “I am keeping a close eye on areas they invest in globally, many of which are going through massive inflection points of innovation. I am looking forward to sharing my experience and advising their portfolio companies,” said Tucci. 83North general partner Gil Goren spent more than 14 years at EMC, starting as director of engineering and latterly running #EMCVentures International, so he in turn knows Big Joe too. “Scaling companies is a tough task and very few leaders have done it to the extent Joe has achieved at EMC,” he said in a canned remark. Tucci landed the CEO job at EMC in 2001 when it was a $1bn business and left last year when the firm was on course to turn over well in excess of $20bn, his time at the top was not without mistakes. Current investments by 83North’s portfolio include online takeaway portal Just Eat, Wonga and Precise Software. Prior to his stint EMC, big Joe was at Unisys and Wang Global. ®

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/19/venture_cap_biz_hires_former_emc_ceo/

Compatibility for ScaleIO versions greater than 2.x

The next major version of #ScaleIO is in development. There are some changes necessary to be compatible with that version and this blueprint will track the collection of work #Openstack

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/cinder/+spec/scaleio-greater-than-2

Dell EMC Software-Defined Storage Paves Way for Data Center Modernization

New, enhanced products enable flexibility, lower IT costs, and speed return on investment with Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers

#Dell EMC announced new and enhanced software-defined storage (SDS) products that help customers modernize their data centers to lower IT costs, get quicker returns on their investments, and deliver new digital capabilities. The comprehensive software-defined storage portfolio will be further enhanced through support for Dell EMC PowerEdge 14thgeneration servers, providing increased levels of performance and scalability across a wide spectrum of applications and workloads.

Updates to #ScaleIO, #ECS and #IsilonSD Edge, along with the introduction of #ProjectNautilus and expansion of the Ready Node portfolio, allow customers to harness the power of #DellEMC as they move from traditional to modern data centers. These new software-defined storage capabilities provide a choice of deployment models—what every business needs to be able to grow and change. #Softwaredefinedstorage makes the enterprise infrastructure programmable and, therefore, more automated and easier to scale and manage than traditional infrastructure.

Dell EMC offers a broad portfolio of SDS solutions to provide the best fit for organizations based on business requirements, future plans, skill levels and geolocation challenges. Portfolio enhancements include:

Dell EMC ScaleIO.Next – The leading enterprise-grade software-defined block storage solution, ScaleIO will introduce new .Next features and enhancements.

Improved efficiencies by delivering inline compression, enhanced snapshots capabilities, granular thin provisioning and seamless volume migration.Greater performance and reduced latency using the latest Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers with NVMe flash drives.Simplified management for VMware with support for VMware Virtual Volumes.

Dell EMC ECS Updates – Multiple announcements related to Dell EMC's scale-out object storage platform, which is designed to provide cloud-scale, global data access to traditional and next-gen apps.

ECS.Next, features enhanced enterprise data protection and management capabilities, as well as advanced analytics support. Additionally, ECS software is certified to run on Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers.The ECS Dedicated Cloud Service, enables customers to use ECS through a hybrid cloud model. As a dedicated, single tenant offering hosted in Virtustream datacenters, the ECS Dedicated Cloud Service combines private cloud control with the hands-off operations and agility of the public cloud.

Preview of Project Nautilus: Dell EMC previews a new software-defined solution for storing and analyzing high volumes of streaming IoT data. Project Nautilus enables businesses to make real-time decisions based on streaming device data from across the globe.  Designed to work seamlessly with ECS or Isilon as its resilient storage tier, Project Nautilus brings real-time data processing capabilities to Dell EMC's unstructured storage platforms.

Dell EMC Ready Nodes portfolio enhancements   

Dell EMC VMware vSAN Ready Nodes – Now validated for PowerEdge 14th generation servers, these vSAN building blocks are quick and easy to scale and are pre-configured with the required amount of CPU, memory, network, input/output (I/O) controllers and storage to help customers reduce deployment risks and lower costs of their vSAN environments.Dell EMC ScaleIO Ready Nodes – Combines all the power of Dell EMC ScaleIO software with pre-configured Dell EMC PowerEdge servers to deliver performance, scale and flexibility. These easy-to-deploy building blocks will utilize the latest Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers, including NVMe Drives and NVDIMM options. Software feature updates include simplified management with auto-discovery, streamlined provisioning and storage node-only deployment mode.New Dell EMC Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Ready Nodes – Pre-configured Dell EMC PowerEdge servers provide the storage density and compute power to maximize the benefits of Storage Spaces Direct and the advanced feature sets in Windows Server 2016. Windows Server Software Defined (WSSD) solutions use Microsoft-validated designs and follow engineering best practices for seamless deployment and a steady-state operational experience. Dell EMC gets customers up and running without lengthy design and build time and offers a single point of contact for implementation and support services.

Dell EMC IsilonSD Edge enhancements - IsilonSD Edge can now be deployed on a single Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation server, bringing increased efficiency and a lower-cost entry point for smaller remote offices. The updates to the IsilonSD Edge platform also include support for VMware vSphere version 6.5, as well as deployment using virtual storage platforms like Dell EMC ScaleIO and VMware vSAN.

Dell EMC Executive Quote:

Jeff Boudreau, President, Storage, Dell EMC

"While software-defined everything is a critical piece of IT transformation, the reality is that we're still early with regard to the ability of enterprises to consume software-only offerings. Offering software-defined storage offerings for on-premises and the cloud, in a variety of deployment models including ready nodes, allows us to meet customers where they are today and take them where they need to be as they transform their IT and their businesses."

Availability:

ECS.Next and ScaleIO.Next have planned global availability in the second half of 2017.ECS Dedicated Cloud Service and IsilonSD Edge have planned global available in the second quarter of 2017.Dell EMC ScaleIO Ready Nodes and Dell EMC VMware vSAN Ready Nodes are available globally today and have planned availability on new Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers in mid-2017.Dell EMC Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct Ready Nodes have planned global availability in June 2017 and planned global availability on new Dell EMC PowerEdge 14th generation servers in mid-2017.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/dell-emc-software-defined-storage-paves-way-for-data-center-modernization-300453257.html

Dell EMC ScaleIO.Next Announced

#DellEMC has announced the next version of their data center #SDS / #HCI solution dubbed #ScaleIONext. Of course we're already big fans of #ScaleIO , after spending months running it through our testing both in HCI and two-layer modes. And for anyone who follows the podcast, this news isn't a huge surprise as we talked with Boaz Palgi about ScaleIO roadmap in early March. ScaleIO.Next will include several new features, highlighted by space efficiency, which will further drive value for ScaleIO deployments.

Space efficiency in this case includes inline compression, thin provisioning and flash-based snapshots. The new snapshot tools include the creation of more snapshot copies, automating snap management and the addition of unrestricted refresh/restore capabilities. For VMware environments, ScaleIO.Next also will fully support vVols. The platform also provides volume migration for deployments that want to take advantage of lower cost media (hybrid configs or HDD only) for aging or lower priority data. Data services like these are a natural progression as a software stack matures. ScaleIO had already done a great job of being simple to deploy with a fantastic performance profile; now ScaleIO.Next brings more enterprise ready features to the table making it more in tune with what traditional storage buyers expect.

While ScaleIO can run on any hardware, there are certain benefits to having access to a server team in-house. To that end Dell EMC will be introducing ScaleIO Ready Nodes that run on PowerEdge 14G hardware. While it's still a bit early, all indications are that ScaleIO.Next customers can expect an even more impressive performance profile on these servers as ScaleIO is ready to take full advantage of NVMe SSDs for storage and NVDIMMs to accelerate metadata. 

Availability

ScaleIO.Next has planned global availability in the second half of 2017.

http://www.storagereview.com/dell_emc_scaleionext_announced

Dell EMC ScaleIO Awarded StorageReview’s Inaugural Editor’s Choice Award

#DellEMC today announced that #ScaleIO —the company’s hyper-converged software-defined storage offering—has been awarded StorageReview’s first-ever Editor’s Choice award. Intended for the most leading-edge products, the Editor’s Choice award is a rare honor, and one that ScaleIO earned over several months of intensive testing in the StorageReview lab. “We were blown away with the Dell EMC ScaleIO solution throughout the review process,” said Brian Beeler, editor-in-chief of StorageReview . “Dell EMC ScaleIO is far and away the most impressive storage solution that we’ve not only seen this year, but probably ever. The performance, flexibility and reliability of ScaleIO is nothing short of astounding. Over the course of several months, it also made us rethink the way we acknowledge such superior performance. At the conclusion of this phase of the review, we decided to launch a StorageReview Editor’s Choice award that will be judiciously granted for only the best-of-the best products we see.” “ScaleIO is leading the market in data center-grade software-defined storage,” said Josh Goldstein, VP of Marketing and Product Management for ScaleIO. “The product was architected for scale and performance, and this recognition from StorageReview is great validation. Beyond this, and perhaps more importantly, ScaleIO is delivering a far lower total cost of ownership and simplifying how storage is managed over its lifecycle.”

http://www.military-technologies.net/2017/03/12/dell-emc-scaleio-awarded-storagereviews-inaugural-editors-choice-award/

StorageReview Podcast #18: Boaz Palgi, Dell EMC

#ScaleIO was one of the most exciting reviews we completed in 2016. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that we instituted an Editor's Choice program on the site specifically because ScaleIO was such a standout. The blend of flexibility and performance was the highlight as tested in our lab, but ScaleIO has the ability to scale past 1,000 nodes without increasing complexity. In this podcast I talk with Boaz Palgi who was a founder of ScaleIO and runs the group today, nearly four years after #EMC acquired them. Boaz discusses all the ways ScaleIO can be consumed, his vision for how data centers will look in the future, the impact of new hardware technologies on software defined solutions and we top it off with a little bit of a look forward at what to expect for ScaleIO later this year.

http://www.storagereview.com/storagereview_podcast_18_boaz_palgi_dell_emc_0

Dell EMC ScaleIO Awarded StorageReview’s Inaugural Editor’s Choice Award

#DellEMC today announced that #ScaleIO—the company’s #hyperconverged #softwaredefinedstorage offering—has been awarded StorageReview’s first-ever Editor’s Choice award. Intended for the most leading-edge products, the Editor’s Choice award is a rare honor, and one that ScaleIO earned over several months of intensive testing in the StorageReview lab.

“We were blown away with the Dell EMC ScaleIO solution throughout the review process,” said Brian Beeler, editor-in-chief of StorageReview . “Dell EMC ScaleIO is far and away the most impressive storage solution that we’ve not only seen this year, but probably ever. The performance, flexibility and reliability of ScaleIO is nothing short of astounding. Over the course of several months, it also made us rethink the way we acknowledge such superior performance. At the conclusion of this phase of the review, we decided to launch a StorageReview  Editor’s Choice award that will be judiciously granted for only the best-of-the best products we see.”

“ScaleIO is leading the market in data center-grade software-defined storage,” said Josh Goldstein, VP of Marketing and Product Management for ScaleIO. “The product was architected for scale and performance, and this recognition from StorageReview is great validation. Beyond this, and perhaps more importantly, ScaleIO is delivering a far lower total cost of ownership and simplifying how storage is managed over its lifecycle.”

Notable StorageReview results for ScaleIO:

On Sysbench OLTP testing with MySQL:
Scales beyond traditional storage arrays, with throughput and latency significantly better plus the ability to use near 100% of capacity
“ The performance was excellent, easily proving once again that ScaleIO is the leading software-defined solution on the market in terms of performance and flexibility.”
On SQL Server testing:
Provides superior resource efficiency while performing much faster than other hyper-converged platforms and slightly edging out FC-connected all-flash storage
“ For customers demanding the highest performing hyper-converged storage solution for SQL Server, ScaleIO just upped the bar again by being the most efficient HCI solution we’ve ever tested.”
On virtualized workload testing with VMmark:
Delivers record-smashing performance with sub-millisecond latency, with only 14% CPU utilization at max scale
“The most impressive feat though was how well ScaleIO in HCI did, demonstrating how little impact the storage overhead has on the platform.”
On HCI testing with HCIbench:
Triples the performance of other hyper-converged platforms, while testing with a significantly larger footprint
“…[ScaleIO is] able to offer incredible bandwidth – supporting even the most demanding workloads.”
Availability:

ScaleIO is available in three consumption choices – ScaleIO Software, ScaleIO Ready Node (Software + Dell PowerEdge Server) and VxRack System Flex (turnkey, fully-integrated rack-scale system).

ScaleIO is deployed at datacenter-scale by large enterprises and service providers including top banks, telcos, and healthcare companies. Click to see how Verizon uses ScaleIO to solve business challenges and achieve storage lifecycle savings.

Click to read more about ScaleIO, ScaleIO Ready Node and VxRack System Flex

http://www.satprnews.com/2017/02/15/dell-emc-scaleio-awarded-storagereviews-inaugural-editors-choice-award/

Dell EMC ScaleIO Awarded StorageReview’s Inaugural Editor’s Choice Award

News Summary: #DellEMC #ScaleIO has been awarded the first-ever Editor’s Choice award by StorageReview, a leading independent authority on enterprise and midmarket storage The Editor’s Choice award is judiciously awarded to the “best-of-the-best” storage infrastructure products Award was prompted based on ScaleIO’s outstanding results over several months of rigorous testing In-depth hyper-converged and two-layer testing shows ScaleIO flexible architecture and high performance on all-flash storage configurations for a variety of workloads Full Story: #Dell #EMC today announced that ScaleIO—the company’s hyper-converged software-defined storage offering—has been awarded StorageReview’s first-ever Editor’s Choice award. Intended for the most leading-edge products, the Editor’s Choice award is a rare honor, and one that ScaleIO earned over several months of intensive testing in the StorageReview lab. “We were blown away with the Dell EMC ScaleIO solution throughout the review process,” said Brian Beeler, editor-in-chief of StorageReview. “Dell EMC ScaleIO is far and away the most impressive storage solution that we've not only seen this year, but probably ever. The performance, flexibility and reliability of ScaleIO is nothing short of astounding. Over the course of several months, it also made us rethink the way we acknowledge such superior performance. At the conclusion of this phase of the review, we decided to launch a StorageReview Editor's Choice award that will be judiciously granted for only the best-of-the-best products we see.” “ScaleIO comes down to two words: flexibility and performance,” said Josh Goldstein, VP of product management and marketing for ScaleIO. “The product is architected to be outstanding for block storage at web scale, combining the best of software-defined storage with hyper-convergence to create a lightning-fast solution with a multitude of configurations. We’re delivering simplicity and never-before-seen results while enabling customers to minimize costs—the brass ring for enterprise IT organizations today.” Notable StorageReview results for ScaleIO: On Sysbench OLTP testing with MySQL: Scales beyond traditional storage arrays, with throughput and latency significantly better plus the ability to use near 100% of capacity “The performance was excellent, easily proving once again that ScaleIO is the leading software-defined solution on the market in terms of performance and flexibility.” On SQL Server testing: Provides superior resource efficiency while performing much faster than other hyper-converged platforms and slightly edging out FC-connected all-flash storage “For customers demanding the highest performing hyper-converged storage solution for SQL Server, ScaleIO just upped the bar again by being the most efficient HCI solution we've ever tested.” On virtualized workload testing with VMmark: Delivers record-smashing performance with sub-millisecond latency, with only 14% CPU utilization at max scale “The most impressive feat though was how well ScaleIO in HCI did, demonstrating how little impact the storage overhead has on the platform.” On HCI testing with HCIbench: Triples the performance of other hyper-converged platforms, while testing with a significantly larger footprint “…[ScaleIO is] able to offer incredible bandwidth – supporting even the most demanding workloads.” Availability: ScaleIO is available in three consumption choices – ScaleIO Software, ScaleIO Ready Node (Software + Dell PowerEdge Server) and VxRack System Flex (turnkey, fully-integrated rack-scale system). ScaleIO is deployed at datacenter-scale by large enterprises and service providers including top banks, telcos, and healthcare companies. Click to see how Verizon uses ScaleIO to solve business challenges and achieve storage lifecycle savings.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161208005911/en/Dell-EMC-ScaleIO-Awarded-StorageReview’s-Inaugural-Editor’s

EMC VxRack Node Powered By ScaleIO: VMmark Performance Review (HCI)

When deployed in hyperconverged mode, the #EMC #VxRack Nodes running #ScaleIO are often found running #VMware. While not always the case, the nodes support just about everything, VMware is the easiest to understand from a performance perspective thanks to VMmark. When we reviewed ScaleIO running VMmark in two-layer, the all-flash VxRack Node handled 26 tiles. The system could have probably handled a few more as it had capacity to spare, but the four loadgen servers were at their max. This time we run the same benchmark in #HCI, combining the storage and compute into one 2U box versus the 10U total in the two-layer test. In this test the efficiency of the management software will be obvious as the box will be at saturation points everywhere; storage capacity, CPU utilization and RAM footprint will all be under duress.

http://www.storagereview.com/emc_vxrack_node_powered_by_scaleio_vmmark_performance_review_hci

EMC VxRack Node powered by ScaleIO Review: Synthetic Performance Review (HCI)

We've spent a good deal of time talking about #EMC #ScaleIO 's capabilities in a two-layer, or storage online configuration. In this next series of the review, we break out results with ScaleIO set up as a hyper-converged system. It should be noted that ScaleIO can actually work in a third mode where it combines both of these options. Fundamental to the HC setup, though, is the fact that both the SDS (ScaleIO Data Server) and the SDC (ScaleIO Data Client) run in the same environment. In this configuration the applications and storage share the same compute resources. In our case, that means the #VxRack Node's high-performance 2U 4-node PF100 chassis that resides in our lab.

http://www.storagereview.com/emc_vxrack_node_powered_by_scaleio_review_synthetic_performance_review_hci