Lager - the Lumenate Advanced Graphing Engine and Repository

There have been a number of charts on our blog over the years documenting different analyses that we've done.  Each chart was bespoke, meaning that we created it for a specific need and determined what to display on an as-needed basis.

Many of these charts are for HDS arrays with key performance indicators. Over the last year we've developed a tool that allows us to automatically create charts for these metrics, make them available in a central repository, and deliver this information in a usable fashion to our customers.

The tool is called Lager and I give a brief overview of it below.  If it's something that you are interested in, please reach out to your Lumenate representative.

Lager - the Lumenate Advanced Graphing Engine and Repository

Reviewing SPC-1 Performance Results

If you're trying to keep up with developments in Information Technology then we live in a wonderful time.  Twitter, Wikibon, Vendor Blogs, Analyst Blogs - there's a wealth of information available.  The real challenge is separating the signal from the noise and making sure that you don't fall victim to groupthink.

Reviewing SPC-1 Performance Results

A New Definition for Enterprise Storage

A key challenge as Lumenate has grown over the last three years is making sure that the entire organization understands what we sell, where it fits, and our internal technical assessment of each product.  That's a lot of information and requires that we engage in some simplifications.

A New Definition for Enterprise Storage

Software-Defined Datacenter and the Mid-Market

No doubt you have heard this year’s technical buzzword: Software-Defined Datacenter. But if you’re a company that falls within the classic mid-market (or commercial) space as many of Lumenate’s customers do, you’re no doubt wondering  “What does this mean for me, my company and my IT staff?” For the answer to that question, let us first explore what Software-Defined means.

Software-Defined Datacenter and the Mid-Market

Lumenate and XtremIO™ for Extreme VDI

Extreme VDI through Lumenate

Unpredictable workloads and changing demands on storage infrastructures are the greatest challenges to a successful implementation of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). EMC’s XtremIO, the industry’s first and only all-flash array, supports workloads that need predictable and consistent low latency across datasets that frequently change—a textbook solution for the challenges facing VDI implementation.

Lumenate and XtremIO™ for Extreme VDI

The Lumenate Perspective on VMworld 2013

The world of IT that we know has always been in a constant state of change. These changes are driven by customer’s needs, technology innovations and good old fashioned progress. There are some in the industry who think we are changing even faster as IT matures. Others say we have always been changing at the same rate but perception is in the eye of the beholder. Well at VMworld this year we got a glimpse of how the IT industry will be changing over the next few years.

The Lumenate Perspective on VMworld 2013

VMworld 2013 – VSANs

One of the most interesting things to come out at VMworld 2013 is VMware VSANs. At a high level VSANs aggregate the local storage either internal or Direct Attached to ESX servers and creates a VSAN Datastore. The VSAN datastore supports all of the capabilities of traditional external storage attached to ESX Clusters. To be clear this isn’t simply a virtual storage appliance, this is integrated at the Hypervisor level. VMware pointed to the numerous advantages of being able to manage storage that is integrated directly into the solution. It is inherently VM aware and more than that they have the ability to understand workloads in real time and make adjustments based on the SLAs you define.

VMworld 2013 – VSANs

Thoughts on Integrated Stacks

Over the last couple of years there has been a lot of discussion around moving from the traditional methods of building out infrastructure to utilizing converged stacks. At this point nearly every manufacturer has gotten into the game, positioning their own technologies, setting up independent companies or partnering so that they too can have an offering. Engineered Systems, Integrated Stacks, Converged Systems, Reference Architectures or Validated Designs or whatever name or category they fall under are not identical but they strive to accomplish the same goals.

Thoughts on Integrated Stacks

Musings of a NetApp Insight 2012 Attendee

As has come to be expected, NetApp Insight consisted of 3 days packed with all things NetApp. This year the breakout sessions focused on areas such as Cloud, FlexPod, Big Data and of course Cluster-Mode just to name a few.

Musings of a NetApp Insight 2012 Attendee

Array sizing in practice

As I mentioned in the previous post (here) array sizing has become more complex with the advent of tiering and deduplication. It's not just a function of new technology - it's also that storage is handled differently from an architectural standpoint, so even with good performance data there are still inferences that have to be made.

Array sizing in practice

Reflections on VMworld 2012

“The Clone Wars” or “The Battle of Five [Platform] Armies”

Do you remember the Mac vs PC platform wars? Novell vs Microsoft? Token ring vs TCP/IP? iPhone vs Android? Java vs .NET (vs C#)? Betamax vs VHS?

Reflections on VMworld 2012

Learning to love uncertainty

Historically storage administration was a relatively straightforward endeavor. You could empirically measure how much capacity you needed, project anticipated growth, and plan accordingly. Likewise you could measure an application's existing IO requirements, extrapolate based on planned growth, and feel comfortable that you probably got the sizing right. Sure sometimes it felt more like art than science, but at the end of the day you could point to an Excel spreadsheet and some fudge factor you used to do your math.

Learning to love uncertainty

Decoding WWIDs (or how to tell what's what)

The difficulty of determining exactly which storage is presented is a common refrain in organizations where the storage and server teams are separate. At best this is an inconvenience (which LUN are you talking about?) while at worst it can be catastrophic (you put a file system on what!?).

Decoding WWIDs (or how to tell what's what)

Replicating a multipathed Linux boot device

One of our customers currently replicates an Oracle database that runs on top of RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.6 using HDS' TrueCopy product. While the system has been in place for awhile the replication is relatively new.

Replicating a multipathed Linux boot device

Marcel the Constitutional Sales Engineer

Recently a storage vendor boasted that they could provide "1.08PB of raw capacity." Is it really 1PB?! I know most (if not all) of us understand what’s going on; this post is mainly to reinforce the “reality delta” that exists between what a disk vendor sells and what the computer actually uses. I wrote it mainly because this vendor’s claim struck me as so brazen.

Marcel the Constitutional Sales Engineer