Posted in Hardware, Opinion, Storage

Isilon one million, the fastest Scale Out NAS

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Nicholas O'Neil

-140 Isilon S200 Nodes.
-One Volume.
-One File System.
-One Million+ IOPS for the SPECsfs 2008 CIFS and SPECsfs 2008 NFS Benchmarks.
But first a proof point. Unlike many of it’s competitors Isilon aggregates system resources in every node to provide linear scalability. To show this the team tested 7, 14, 28, 56 and 140 nodes by powering them on as required.

Over the course of the testing for NFS each node averaged about 8,100 IOPS/Node and 11,500 IOPS/Node for CIFS. Note, the NFS and CIFS benchmarks aren’t the same (While the platform configuration was.) so the numbers aren’t comparable to one another.

They are however comparable to everyone else who has run the same benchmark. But not everyone who’s submitted for one has submitted for the other and those who do can submit results from two different configurations.

In Isilon’s case it’s the same configuration with the same number of nodes for each benchmark. Lets net out the published CIFS numbers to see how they stack up.


126% higher than it’s nearest competitor and significantly higher than all Isilon’s published competitors.

Plotting the NFS results we have Isilon 75% higher than their nearest competitor and significantly higher than all their published competitors.

But when we look at the numbers on a per file system basis we end with with something really interesting. Isilon is using a single file system in both benchmarks while many of it’s competitors are using multiple file systems due to ghastly volume size limitations or architectures which cannot aggregate system resources and as a result require the use of multiple file systems to prevent a single controller from becoming a massive bottleneck.

With some quick mathematics run on the published numbers Isilon is shown to be more than 1700% faster on a per file system basis than it’s closest competitor and close to 5000% faster than a volume size challenged competitor on the CIFS benchmark.

So, through this repeatable benchmark what have we learned?

1: Isilon requires only One file system regardless of the workload type.

PROVEN.
2: Isilon OneFS aggregates systems resources and provides linear scalability.

PROVEN.
3: This linear scalability allows Isilon to deliver IOPS to CIFS & NFS workloads at a massive rate.

PROVEN.
Isilon, with a file system spanning all nodes in a cluster, the ability to move tasks between all system resources in the cluster and the ability to control redundancy down to the level of an individual file, is far and away the leader in Scale Out NAS.

And with the growth of File storage projected to far outstrip the growth of Block storage over the next ten years this is The Decade Of Isilon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1OT06ooGhc&feature=player_embedded

This article and its expressed opinions are sourced by Storagezilla which can be found here.

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Posted in Linux, Microsoft, Open Source, Software

How to run multiple Adobe Air apps Tweetdeck

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Nicholas O'Neil
Twitter columns can get pretty busy if your tweeting from multiple accounts.
I wanted to find the benefits of utilizing 2 display monitors for separate accounts or in some cases the same accounts with unique columns per screen for tweets based on topics, followers or lists.
An application has been written by Chris Deely named AirAppDuplicator
download it here. Get started by clicking download and then on AirAppDuplicator.AIR package.

Proceed past the warnings to install and trust this product (at your own risk). When the application has finished installing right click to run as Administrator if your in Windows to get the Air Apps to clone, you will only have to do this once.

Last step, navigate to the directory path of the application you want to duplicate, in my case it was Tweetdeck located in c:\program files (x86)\tweetdeck on my windows 7 machine and click to clone.

What actually happens is AirAppDuplicator will copy the directory to a similar directory appending 2 at the end of the name.  I haven’t run into any issues yet with multiple instances and i’m not the author of the application. Use at your own risk! ;)

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Posted in Datacenters, Industry

The hunger for data center space

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Nicholas O'Neil

Is there too much new data space in the New Jersey Market?
This question is asked over at datacenterknowledge.com where a recent article talks about industry related news and how New Jersey has become a key player region for infrastructure.

The bottom line, There is a large supply of space, more the what is particularly usual and the major providers in this space are competing for customers.

Prices remain firm even during this competitive race and even with vacancy signs and rates the prices remain while offer mixing the space with other product types and offerings such as management for your servers in their space.  NJ is one of the most active data center markets in the country and it is boosted by its proximity to Wall Street as well as a strong supply of healthcare and financial organizations.

Analysts at DCK say that the amount of available data center space in New Jersey has been inflated  by the announcement of projects that don’t offer finished, usable space.

Who are the key players in NJ and why?

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Posted in Datacenters, Industry, Opinion

Google and residents of 111 8th ave NYC

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Nicholas O'Neil

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Google has no plans on getting rid of its existing data center and network tenants at its newly acquired 111 8th Ave. carrier hotel any time soon. In May, Google took the building’s remaining space off the market, leading some to speculate that the company was holding onto the space for itself. A new Google job listing indicates that the company is looking to fill a New York-based position dubbed “Strategic Negotiator, Network.”

According to the listing, the Stategic Negotiator must “spearhead the acquisition and allocation of Google’s global networking infrastructure… must interact closely with outside vendors to design, develop, and deliver highly innovative contracts for dark fiber, colocation, peering, voice, and data services across the world.”

The responsiblities include developing and executing “on a vision for continuously improving the distinction of 111 8th Avenue as a premier location for telecommunications carriers, data center and colocation facility operators, and their customers.”

Mandel says that while Google has not yet specified the “extent to which data center tenants will have a place in 111 8th Ave… it certainly appears that these tenants are part of the vision for the building’s future.”

Source: Datacenterpractice.com & TheWhir.com

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Posted in Events, Hardware, Industry, Servers, Virtualization

Logicworks Launches infiniCloud™ 2.0, Expanding Capabilities for Managed Security and Private Cloud Solutions

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Nicholas O'Neil

New York, NY – June 7th, 2011 – With thousands of IT professionals, technology enthusiasts, and cloud computing vendors converging on New York City’s Javits Convention Center this week for the annual Cloud Expo, Logicworks will announce a new release of infiniCloud™ – its on-demand cloud computing service.  New features include the capability for multiple dedicated VLANs per client, native Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections directly to infiniCloud, and management of dedicated Private Cloud resources, including enterprise storage, through the infiniCloud interface.

“Users of Infrastructure-as-a-Service solutions are becoming more knowledgeable and sophisticated as the market evolves, and require better visibility and interoperability between public and private infrastructures” said Kenneth Ziegler, COO of Logicworks.  “With infiniCloud we’ve created a dynamic compute service with the speed, security and flexibility needed for today’s feature-rich web applications, along with the versatility to connect seamlessly to private client environments in order to meet the performance and compliance standards of today’s enterprise applications.”

infiniCloud is Logicworks’ public cloud service, offering on-demand computing resources that can be purchased online using a credit card at cloud.logicworks.net.  For clients that wish to take a step beyond “do-it-yourself” public cloud, Logicworks offers the full range of managed services it currently provides its managed hosting clients.  These include Application Uptime service level agreements, a dedicated account manager, in-depth monitoring and reporting, and access to top-level engineering support for configuration management, security, and managed database services for leading database platforms.
infiniCloud provides the ideal foundation for no-compromises hybrid cloud solutions. Clients are able to seamlessly integrate ‘bare metal’ managed hosting environments, dedicated private cloud servers and storage, and infiniCloud for on-demand elasticity and disaster recovery.

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Posted in Open Source, Opinion, RDBMS, Software

Open Source, Developers and the Database

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Nicholas O'Neil

I will discuss the database layer and at some point in the topic what open source tools are currently in use on some of the biggest media sites today.  I myself have been a systems engineer and Microsoft Certified SQL DBA for some time however the emerging changes have shown that traditional relational database systems are losing their traction in the media market.

Media pushes the technology, trend setting as if it were a fashion.

Content is king and it produces the wealth of your business, with that said success of content driven site increasing traffic.  Once traffic starts to rise and continues to spike the success has a liability of its content always being available. P. Diddy said it… “More Money, More Problems”
The battle begins, tackling performance, questions about security and reliability, how will things scale and most important always being online up and running.

Your infrastructure is as important as the content you’re driving, providing the foundation of what will be resilient and sustainable today and tomorrow helps peace of mind so that you can focus on your business.

Now getting into things, open source has taken the lead in the media industry and every web developer knows open source, commonly referred to as the LAMP stack for this discussion and with many reiterations since the initial launch what was then LAMP may now be called PLAM or perhaps you have heard CMS, or NOSQL in the mix.

Databases
Heart and soul of your content, the first of which come to mind are referred to as RDBMS. Relational Database Management Systems, most commonly used MSSQL, MySQL & Oracle.
They are noted as the mainframe dinosaurs of the business they get the job done, they are committed, highly supported and most commonly used having earned their ‘Street Cred’ as being trusted.  That trust is best noted through financial transactions with the key point in mind “No Transactions Lost”. A strong argument can be made from this YouTube link.

Have you heard of 10gen? Take a look at Wikipedia listing of Open Source Database Management Systems.

MongoDB – Currently leading the “NoSQL” database revolution, scalability and high performance.  Don’t believe it? Take a look at some of their clients here. Foursquare, SourceForge, The New York Times, Gilt Groupe & Thrillist just to name a few, the list grows every day.

Apache Casandra – Similar to MongoDB it’s scalable, High Performance and Proven.  Facebook, Twitter, Reddit just to name a few of CassandraDB’s customers.
What are your thoughts on NoSQL have you recently made a shift in the migration?
Since the 70s relational databases is that still the right thing for you?

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Posted in Datacenters, Opinion, Software, Virtualization

Cloud Computing mission critical apps

Posted on April 21, 2011 by admin

Sites including Quora, Reddit, Hootsuite and location tracker FourSquare have been affected by outages at Amazon’s cloud computing centers in which they rely on to provide their service.  In a recent status update on Amazon it appears these services are still being affected and nearly 12 hours after the malfunction which was initially reported as of 1:40am. http://status.aws.amazon.com.

The popularity of Amazon’s cheap, easily scalable hosting is showing its downside right now with a number of these sites either being completely down or having numerous errors, data loss has not been reported as of yet but could be a possibility.

Many web-based companies, especially startups, use cloud computing services from companies like Amazon which provides a recognized brand with an automated easy to start up and scalable delivery service of cloud, they are charged for only the computing power that they use which is the core business of Amazon’s cloud service.

What can be done different? Well for starters an introduction of having an SLA policy and utilizing the benefits of a managed public or private cloud companies can work with hosts such as Logicworks to gain the benefits of scalability with the added assurance of reliability.

The success of operating a technology businesses and maintaining it’s infrastructure must not only meet your own stringent requirements for quality but also the expectations of those who rely on you for their success.

As our mission we know that with success comes growth and additionaly the responsibility of growth as well as turmoil usually in the form of scalability occurs.  Your best time is spent on improving your application and growing your business Logicworks will handle all the rest.

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Posted in Datacenters, Hardware, Opinion, Storage, Virtualization

High Performing for Big Data

Posted on April 11, 2011 by Nicholas O'Neil

The newly acquired Isilon products from EMC have revved up their ranges by adding new systems offering as much as twice the file throughout for top-end S200 systems.  The new said systems are capable of delivering over 1.4 million NFS ops and over 85 gigabytes per second of throughput.   Inside of these S200 high performing systems customers have the ability to add up to 24 drives consisting of 2.5” SSD or comparable 2.5” SAS units and share them together.

How it works is Isilon software uses a proprietary sixth-generation operating system called OneFS http://www.isilon.com/onefs-operating-system which provides the intelligence behind ‘Scale-out Storage’ by combining three layers of traditional storage architectures (File System, Volume and Raid) into one unified software layer and thus creating a single intelligent file system that spans all nodes within a cluster.

Logicworks a hosting company which is working with Isilon provides a different approach to managed hosting and cloud computing by utilizing new technologies when it comes to storage, the results are clearly visible and it shows.  Game changing Isilon solutions are providing not only the redundancy and performance but limitless capabilities when it comes to scaling.

If you are looking for enterprise storage today, you might want to stop at that large refrigerator cabinet looking thing one might call a thing of the past.   Scale with the agility of an Isilon system and move beyond the limitations of enclosures and data closest into a more sophisticated hosted solution with latest technologies in place.

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