{"id":6139,"date":"2021-01-07T18:30:36","date_gmt":"2021-01-07T16:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/?p=6139"},"modified":"2021-01-07T18:30:38","modified_gmt":"2021-01-07T16:30:38","slug":"de-risking-enterprise-storage-upgrades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/de-risking-enterprise-storage-upgrades\/","title":{"rendered":"De-Risking Enterprise Storage Upgrades"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 4<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>During the life cycle of an enterprise storage platform, administrators will likely upgrade that platform a number of times.<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>By: Eric Burgener<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In defining upgrades, we&#8217;re specifically discussing within-system upgrades which include issues like firmware and software upgrades, applying software patches, and various types of hardware upgrades where relevant (e.g. controllers, storage devices, etc.).\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For storage platforms that host at least some mission-critical workloads, the ability to perform within-system upgrades non-disruptively is a critical requirement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because it puts IT infrastructure much more in the path to critical business success, the digital transformation that most enterprises are undergoing only enhances the need for higher availability across a variety of different workloads.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>Design decisions as well as feature implementations can significantly minimize upgrade risk (and in some cases remove it entirely), and there are a number of things to look for in a storage system that absolutely must support non-disruptive upgrades.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>IDC has noted a trend towards increasingly dense mixed enterprise workload consolidation as customers refresh their storage infrastructure.\u00a0 While workload consolidation can drive compelling economic and administrative benefits, it also potentially increases the size of the fault domain.\u00a0 This makes high availability a foundational requirement for a workload consolidation system.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> The overall availability of a system is impacted not only by the level of redundancy and the failure recovery routines built into a system but also by how it behaves during routine within-system upgrades.\u00a0 With many enterprise storage vendors claiming to deliver &#8220;five or more nines&#8221; reliability during normal operation, customers also need to look at and understand how upgrades are performed and how those upgrades may impact application services.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.infinidat.com\/sites\/default\/files\/blog-images\/De-Risk%20Guest%20Blogger%20Pull%20Quote%201.png\" alt=\"De-Risking Enterprise Storage Upgrades\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>That said, what should enterprises be looking for in a storage platform that needs to support truly non-disruptive upgrades?&nbsp; Here are some of the key ones with quick discussions of why they&#8217;re important:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>A more current &#8220;clean sheet&#8221; design<\/strong>.\u00a0 Many enterprise storage systems still being sold today were originally designed in the 2000s (or even earlier).\u00a0 Architectural design objectives were very different from what they are now, as were the performance, availability and functionality requirements.\u00a0 Persistent flash was not even on the horizon, in-line storage efficiency technologies didn&#8217;t exist, and primary storage systems were envisioned to support tens of terabytes of capacity and only gigabytes of system bandwidth \u2013 to quote only three examples.\u00a0 As these systems get upgraded to support new media types, the core architectural assumptions can&#8217;t change very much.\u00a0 Twenty years ago few (if any) enterprise storage systems were designed for non-disruptive upgrades \u2013 there was no expectation for it.\u00a0 A &#8220;clean sheet&#8221; approach enables vendors to free themselves from legacy baggage, designing the systems most efficiently to meet today&#8217;s requirements.\u00a0 The subsequent discussion below calls out some of the more modern design approaches that enable support for non-disruptive operations.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Software-defined designs<\/strong>.\u00a0 Many of today&#8217;s established enterprise storage providers&#8217; platforms were architected under a &#8220;hardware-defined&#8221; assumption.\u00a0 A clear trend in enterprise storage over the last decade has been the evolution toward more &#8220;software-defined&#8221; designs.\u00a0 These are preferable because, by moving more functionality into software, they are easier to enhance with new features, support better non-disruptive upgrade capabilities, can better accommodate new and different hardware technologies and device geometries, and offer increased flexibility.\u00a0\u00a0New software releases can offer higher performance and critical new functionality without requiring any hardware upgrades.\u00a0 While some functionality can be moved into software even with older hardware-defined designs, a &#8220;clean sheet&#8221; architecture that starts with a software-defined orientation provides much greater flexibility to support extensive feature innovation through software upgrades.<br>Software-defined approaches enable the virtualization of both the front end and back end of a storage system.\u00a0 This design enables functional updates to each half that do not impose ripple effects on the other, supporting more reliable non-disruptive upgrades.\u00a0 They also enable better fault isolation to minimize the impacts of any given failure while at the same time enabling less complex fault management routines that impact not only failure recovery but also upgrade execution.\u00a0 Software-defined designs have proven these benefits, which is one of the reasons why the industry is moving away from hardware-defined designs to more software-defined ones.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Operating system architecture that places most of the operating system features in user (not kernel) space<\/strong>.&nbsp; Legacy storage operating systems built around monolithic designs were much more prone to failures or other impacts when even a small glitch occurred.&nbsp; These storage operating systems also required comprehensive regression testing when new features were added, and imposed significant risk when making changes.&nbsp; Newer designs restrict core infrastructure plumbing capabilities to the kernel, making it much smaller and more reliable, and run features like data reduction, snapshots, encryption, quality of service, replication and other storage management features in user space.&nbsp; With this approach, any of these features can fail or be upgraded without impacting the kernel, enabling the system as a whole to continue servicing applications.&nbsp; This design approach makes systems more reliable, enables less risky upgrades, and requires less regression testing when changes are made by either vendors or users.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Use of these three design considerations is widespread among enterprise storage array vendors that have architected their systems within the last six or seven years.\u00a0 But Infinidat, an enterprise storage provider who focuses on selling large scale systems that are specifically architected for dense mixed enterprise workload consolidation, has gone beyond these three common approaches with additional innovations that further improve their ability to provide non-disruptive operations.\u00a0 That is the focus of my next blog on the topic of de-risking upgrades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><strong>About Eric Burgener<\/strong><\/p><p><strong>Eric Burgener is Research Vice President\u00a0within IDC&#8217;s Enterprise Infrastructure Practice.\u00a0 Mr. Burgener&#8217;s core research coverage includes Storage Systems, Software and Solutions, quarterly trackers, end-user research as well as advisory services and\u00a0consulting programs. \u00a0 Based on his background coverage enterprise storage, Mr. Burgener&#8217;s research<\/strong> i<strong>ncludes a particular emphasis on flash-optimized arrays, emerging persistent memory technologies, and software-defined storage.\u00a0 He is an active participant in the IT Buyers Research Program at IDC and blogs throughout the year on the topic of Infrastructure and Data Management.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading Time-approximately:<\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> 4<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minutes<\/span><\/span>During the life cycle of an enterprise storage platform, administrators will likely upgrade that platform a number of times. By: Eric Burgener In defining upgrades, we&#8217;re specifically discussing within-system upgrades which include issues like firmware and software upgrades, applying software patches, and various types of hardware upgrades where relevant (e.g. controllers, storage devices, etc.).\u00a0 For storage platforms that host at<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/de-risking-enterprise-storage-upgrades\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,4,30,3,192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computational-storage","category-datacenter-news","category-expert-advise-and-opinion","category-industry-news-and-expert-advise","category-tekmart-partner-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6140,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6139\/revisions\/6140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekmart.co.za\/t-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}