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Xiotech Unveils Disruptive Storage Technology

Posted by kdawson on from the storage-that's-smarter-than-you-are dept.

Lxy writes "After Xiotech purchased Seagate's Advanced Storage Architecture division, rumors circulated around what they were planning to do with their next-generation SAN. Today at Storage Network World, Xiotech answered the question. The result is quite impressive, a SAN that can practically heal itself, as well as prevent common failures. There's already hype in the media, with much more to come. The official announcement is on Xiotech's site."

32 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Looks like it's next-gen primary disk... by Xaedalus · · Score: 2

    Okay, so at a brief glance it's looking like next-gen primary disk storage. I didn't see any mention of which RAID it is (although I'm thinking they're probably going RAID 10??? Maybe 6?). What's cool though (at least by my opinion) is that it's going to cut down on SAN errors through self-diagnosis. Interesting, will have to check through the white paper.

    --
    Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
    1. Re:Looks like it's next-gen primary disk... by maharg · · Score: 4, Informative
      not only self-diagnosis, but onboard disk remanufacturing ffs

      100 or so engineers involved in the project have replicated Seagate's own processes for drive telemetry monitoring and error detection -- and drive re-manufacturing -- in firmware on the Linux-based ISE. ISE automatically performs preventive and remedial processes. It can reset disks, power cycle disks, implement head-sparing operations, recalibrate and optimize servos and heads, perform reformats on operating drives, and rewrite entire media surfaces if needed. Everything that Seagate would do if you returned a drive for service.
      --

      $ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
      @(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
    2. Re:Looks like it's next-gen primary disk... by hackus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Exactly what we do not need.

      Next generation hardware that is patent encumbered and will require a lawyer and several court proceedings for anyone and everyone to get their data back.

      I mean come on, when is the industry going to figure out we do not need proprietary, closed storage solutions that are a rehash of the old IBM AS/400 days when you could only buy super expensive IBM gear.

      No thanks I will take my open code and commodity hardware and build solutions that will kick this patented solutions arse at 1/100th the cost.

      Besides, if these features are really worth their salt the open source community will provide them sooner or later. Preferably in Europe where these silly patent claims that this product is so unique nobody could possibly figure it out, gimme a lot of money because I am brilliant.

      Not brilliant and not worth the cost in my opinion. (Both in restrictions due to the patents and infrastructure choices this product imposes and the cost in currency).

      -Hack

      --
      Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
  2. Unclarity by Eudial · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The unclarity!

    These are just some of the questions popping into my head:
    What is SAN?
    What does it do?
    How is it disruptive?
    Who does it disrupt?
    What does it store?

    Can't say skimming through TFA makes it a lot clearer either.

    Also, two obscure articles is media buzz?

    --
    GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
    1. Re:Unclarity by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Informative

      What is SAN?
      What does it do?
      How is it disruptive?
      Who does it disrupt?
      What does it store? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_network
      It's remote storage.
      Their new tech saves you the trouble of swapping HDs.
      It disrupts the people offering maintanence contracts.
      It stores whatever you want.

      http://www.xiotech.com/images/Reliability-Pyramid.gif
      My question:
      What is "Failing only one surface"
      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    2. Re:Unclarity by ILuvRamen · · Score: 3, Interesting

      the less they tell you, the more hype it gets regardless of how good it is. Remember Vista? It was supposed to be the end all OS sent straight down from heaven but they didn't release any specifics. And now look what happened. I doubt a magical storage system that can heal itself and never fails or loses data is a bit of an exaggeration too.

      --
      Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
    3. Re:Unclarity by Xaedalus · · Score: 3, Informative

      Assuming you're being literal with your confusion... A SAN is a Storage Area Network that organizations use to back-up up data off their main networks. A lay explanation: think of your normal network and how it's connected. A SAN network (usually composed of fibre channel or SCSI connections) underlays that existing standard network and moves all the data you want to back up to disk or tape, without eating up the bandwidth you have on your normal network. It's usually driven by a back-up server, or sometimes by a normal server (but only if you want to eat up your processing power). What this disrupts (if it's true) is how a SAN network monitors itself. It's basically pro-active monitoring and a different configuration of spinning disks. I'm not sure which RAID array they're using, so it may not be as 'revolutionary' as they're proclaiming it to be. Please note: any network admins, PLEASE feel free to correct me if I'm wrong (because there's nothing worse than giving a layman explanation that's inaccurate).

      --
      Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
    4. Re:Unclarity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just to clarify, SANs generally aren't used primarily for backups - they're just used for server storage to have a centralized and more thoroughly redundant setup than local disks (i.e. put your 40TB document repository on the SAN and connect it over fiber to the server, or have your server boot off the SAN instead of local disks, etc). They're treated like local disks by the OS, but are in a different location connected via fiber or nowadays via iscsi.

      While you can sometimes do some neat tricks with backups and a good SAN infrastructure, it's by no means its primary purpose in life.

    5. Re:Unclarity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Let's see now... ah! I've got it. Here's an exact link for you: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=san

    6. Re:Unclarity by DJProtoss · · Score: 5, Informative

      You could use it for that, but thats not the main use.
      It *is* a network like your ethernet network (with switches, adaptors, etc), but usually its a FC (fibre channel) rather than ethernet. You use a SAN to put your servers disks in another box to the server.
      But why would I do that? heat, consolidation, redundancy.
      A typical setup is to have a few 1u or 2u (rack heights are measured in u, which iirc is about 2") servers attached to a 3u storage controller.
      This is a box with lots (typically 14 in a 3u box) of drives. There will be a small computer controller in there too as well as some raid chips.
      Typically in a 14 drive box you might configure it as a pair of 5+1 raid 5 arrays and a couple of hot spares (5+1 means 5 drives of data and one parity drive). Effectively your 6 drives appear as one with 5x the capacity of 1 of the component drives. You can survive the loss of one drive without losing data. If you do have a drive go offline, the controller should transparantly start rebuilding the failed disk on one of the hot spares (and presumably raise a note via email or snmp that it needs a new disk).
      The controller is then configured to present these arrays (called volumes in storage speak) to specific servers (called hosts).
      The host will see each array as a single drive (/dev/sdX) that it uses as per normal, oblivious to the fact that its in a different box.
      Now to revisit the why we do this:
      1. heat - by putting all the hot bits (drives) together we can concentrate where the cooling goes
      2. reliability - any server using the above setup can have a disk fail and it simply won't notice. With the hot spare setup, you can potentially lose several drives between maintainance (as long as they don't happen at once).
      3. cost - you can buy bigger drives, then partition your array into smaller volumes (just like you partition your desktop machine's drive) and give different chunks to different hosts, reducing per GB cost (which when you are potentially talking about tera and peta bytes worth of disk space is rather important).
      as for what these guys are up to, I've not had a chance to look yet. I might post back.

      --
      "Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
    7. Re:Unclarity by DJProtoss · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ok, Have now rtfa'd. Basically, they have built a shiny controller/enclosure (the enclosure is the frame that contains the drives and the controller the circuit that interfaces, although to be confusing controllers often are built into enclosures (especially on the lower end) and still referred to as a controller)
      This controller is a sealed unit (read: better heat/vibration support, but not a user servicable component) with excess disks inside (multiple hot-spares, so even if several drives fail over time it keeps going), combined with the knowledge san techs across the globe know: most errors are transient, and if you pull the disk out and stick it back in, it will probably work again. They have just built a controller that does that for you automatically. Definately on the evolution rather than revolution side of things, and I have to admit I fail to see the disruption here, although I could well be missing something ( the whitepaper is somewhat light on details shall we say ).

      --
      "Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
    8. Re:Unclarity by gnick · · Score: 4, Funny

      It stores whatever you want. I'd like mine to store beer and bacon. Any idea on the capacity or replication capabilities?
      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
    9. Re:Unclarity by jwgoerlich · · Score: 2, Interesting

      better heat/vibration support, but not a user servicable component

      Heat is key here. Have you ever stood next to a petabyte of storage? Or even a few terabytes? Most Sans kick off a lot of heat from all those disks. When looking San to Hvac, 1 TB to 1 ton is typical.

      Xiotech's ISE mounts the disks on a very large aluminum alloy heat sink. The heat is wicked away from the drives. This makes for better heat dissipation and less heat on the disks, thus improving cooling and extending lifespan.

      Xiotech had a petabyte of storage on the SNW expo floor. I stood right next to it, surrounded by the crowd. The heat? Next to none. There was no additional cooling required for the demo either. It was completely ambient temperature. The cost savings in HVAC must be rather impressive.

      J Wolfgang Goerlich

  3. Disruptive? by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The result is quite impressive, a SAN that can practically heal itself, as well as prevent common failures.

    Maybe I'm missing something. I read their announcement and one of the articles on this new product. As near as I can tell they're selling SAN systems where instead of plugging in individual drives, you plug in a box with two drives in it. They paired this with some nice software for working around failed sectors and rewriting correctable drive problems. I guess I'm just not all that impressed. Is this really "disruptive" technology? It looks like evolutionary improvements and some nice automation to take some of the grunt work out of managing SAN.

    I'm, admittedly, not an expert on network storage. So what do people think? Is this really the best thing since sliced bread or just another slashvertisement someone hyped to sound like news for nerds and rehashing a lot of marketing weasel words?

    1. Re:Disruptive? by kaiser423 · · Score: 5, Informative

      well, RTFA. For mod points, it's disruptive because it runs Linux!

      The second article describes this very well. One big extra is that this system can perform all of the standard drive-repair operations that typically only OEMs can. This helps to keep you from replacing drives that aren't bad, but had a hiccup.

      It's also not just two drives in an ISE, but more like 10-20 (3.5" and 2.5" respectively) with a bunch of Linux software to give each ISE a pretty robust feature-set in itself. Then they also up the block size to 520 bytes, leaving space for data validity checks in order to keep the silent corruption problem from sneaking into the system.

      In the end, it's probably not wholly revolutionary. It does seem like an evolutionary jump though; with great performance, great feature set, and a very well thought out system that brings new technology and ideas to bear.

    2. Re:Disruptive? by timeOday · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So you have one big RAID-like cluster with a big "gas gauge" like dial on the front that tells you how much performance you have left...whatever that means. Whoopdedo.
      I would call that a great thing. I've never understood why I couldn't just have a bank of a dozen drives with another 10 empty slots, and have it move data around automatically to increase performance and maintain redundancy. When enough data is stored or enough drives break that I'm close to losing redundancy, a light turns on, and I pop in another few drives and it keeps chugging.
    3. Re:Disruptive? by mochan_s · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I would call that a great thing. I've never understood why I couldn't just have a bank of a dozen drives with another 10 empty slots, and have it move data around automatically to increase performance and maintain redundancy. When enough data is stored or enough drives break that I'm close to losing redundancy, a light turns on, and I pop in another few drives and it keeps chugging.
      One reason I can think of is because there is a high correlation of drive failures to the power supply and equipment that it's on. I've seen centers that have 1 rack unit where the disks keep failing.
    4. Re:Disruptive? by igjeff · · Score: 2, Informative

      You would think the idea would be to chuck in drives (with some minimum, like 8 or 12) and have the physical data storage be totally abstracted from the user, with N+2 redundancy and hotspare functionality totally guaranteed, and then allow the user to create LUNs without concern for underlying physical storage.

      When you need more space, you add more drives and the system manages the striping, re-striping as necessary for optimum throughput and maximum redundancy, rebuilding failed drives as necessary. There are systems out there that do this sort of thing, but they're *expensive*.

      Take a look at HP's EVA line. They're really quite good at this.

      I'd be careful about using the terms "optimum" and "maximum" in that last paragraph, but they get quite close to that mark.

      Other vendors have equipment that performs about as well...IMO, the HP EVA line is the best at it, however.

      Jeff (only affiliated with HP as a mostly happy customer)
  4. Sweet... by steppin_razor_LA · · Score: 2, Funny

    The disk healing features are very interesting.

    We have a Xiotech Magnitude that we paid ~$150K for in 2003 that is sitting around like a giant paper weight. Any takers? $3,000? $2,000? going once... going twice... :)

    --
    Evolution: love it or leave it
    1. Re:Sweet... by schklerg · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've got 3 collecting dust! And based on my experience with that SAN, I will never entertain the slightest sales pitch from any Xiotech rep. I'm sure they've gotten better, but rebooting after changing the contact info in the system is a bit absurd. Not to mention that the management / configuration was on a single IDE hard drive running MS-DOS. Since a reboot cleared all logs, tech support's stock answer for odd issues was, 'it was in a bad state'. Had it moved to Arkansas? BAH!

      --
      Be Excellent To Each Other
  5. Move along, nothing to see here by Spazmania · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They've integrated the controller and drive into devices that consume 3U of space in a rackmount computer cabinet. So now you can't upgrade a drive, you can only replace a module. Brilliant.

    The only thing this is likely to disrupt is Xiotech's cashflow.

    --
    Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
    1. Re:Move along, nothing to see here by tppublic · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Honestly, there isn't much cash flow to disrupt. This isn't EMC, HP, IBM or Hitachi.

      The purpose of this product isn't to penetrate large data centers... of if Xiotech thinks it is, then they need new marketing employees (and quickly). Large data centers HAVE the expertise on site to do individual disk replacements, and those large enterprise data centers will demand the feature sets that exist in the much larger equipment from the larger vendors named above.

      This is targeted at much smaller data centers, probably those with very simple SANs (think a dozen or two servers), where the data center management skills won't match those in the larger data centers (simply because you have one or two generalists, not a dozen+ specialists). For those smaller sites, the return on investment for a system that requires less maintenance (and also less expertise) may make sense...

      Yes, this is evolutionary from a technical perspective, but it still approaches the solution in an interesting way... and may find its own market niche.

    2. Re:Move along, nothing to see here by Spazmania · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Thing is, I spent the last couple years playing this game. I started with a dozen 36-gig scsi disks that had bad sectors on them. I did thorough tests abandoned the whole gigabyte where the bad sectors were found and software-raid-5'd partitions from multiple drives, skipping those bad parts.

      Guess what? It didn't work out. The bad zones spread and they spread faster than the the raid software could detect the new failure and rebuild onto the spare.

      I quite enjoyed the experiment, but these were on my home servers. I wouldn't dream of doing this in a production environment. When the raid controller kicks the drive for -any- reason, it's back to the manufacturer for warranty replacement. The data is far to valuable to play games with it.

      --
      Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
  6. Tired of overused buzzwords by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why do people keep referring to incremental improvements to existing technology as "disruptive"? It's pretty obvious people don't understand the phrase "disruptive technology".

    My favorite misuse was when a marketing droid referred to Intel moving from a .65nm fab to .45nm as "disruptive". It's not just marketing folks, however - I've heard engineers and even my own college professors (usually if they're trying to turn their research into something commercially advantageous) do this.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Tired of overused buzzwords by melted · · Score: 3, Funny

      >> referred to Intel moving from a .65nm fab to .45nm as "disruptive"

      Disrupted AMD pretty good, from what I can see.

  7. Compellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm not sure why this announcement is really news...somewhat interesting though, is that many of the founders and former employees of Xiotech have left to start a company called Compellent http://www.compellent.com/. Compellent's disk technology, imo, is a lot slicker than Xiotech's, particularly their "automated tiered storage".

    1. Re:Compellent by medelliadegray · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I admin a compellent san, and i find their "automated tiered storage" to be great in concept, marketed superbly, yet highly expensive and highly lacking in configurability.

      If you want data automatically moved down to a slower tier, but it gets touched just once a day. Good luck in getting it to move down automatically.

      I anxiously await the day when the SAN market is acknowledged as the scam it is (a glorified raid controller), and the various SAN companies die off in droves or become an everyday appliance they really are. It's obscene paying a grand for a run of the mill sata disk, and additionally paying about as much or more than the disk in various licenses. All the while gouging you yearly for 'support' contracts which are a sizable fraction of the cost of both hardware/disks/and licenses.

      Hurray for hemorrhaging cash!

      --
      Troll, Troll, go away and flame again some other day
  8. Hypocritical Reluctance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    On the Xiotech site:

    "#1 Lowest cost per disk IOPS
    #1 Lowest cost per MB/sec"

    Looking around, I don't see any quoted prices on the page.

    It's funny how it's always a project in itself to find the price tag for products. When companies run on "the bottom line" why are they so reluctant to tell us what the consumer's "bottom line" is straight forward and upfront?

    It should become law; that to advertise a product, you must post clearly what the price tag (range) is either at the top or bottom. Especially if you are telling people its "cost-effective" without providing the cost. Am I saving $1 or $10,000?

    Captcha: increase

  9. "a SAN that can practically heal itself" by SwashbucklingCowboy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well, no. It's an array that can practically heal itself (at least in theory). BIG difference...

  10. Re:astroturfing by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2, Funny

    How is hot-swapping a drive self healing? The engineer swapping the disks is chained to the unit, has no name, sleeps in a doghouse and was a part of the delivery.
    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  11. This exists, and has for a while by Phishcast · · Score: 2, Informative
    Off the top of my head, all of the following companies have storage arrays which basically do exactly what you're asking for. When you create a LUN it's across all available spindles and data will re-balance across all available disks as you add more, all with RAID redundancy. I'm not sure about N+2 at this point, but RAID-6 is becoming ubiquitous in the storage industry.

    HP (EVA)
    3Par
    Dell/Equallogic
    Compellent
    Pillar
    HDS (USP)

    I'd be shocked if Xiotech doesn't do this today.

  12. Failing only one surface (was: Unclarity) by jwgoerlich · · Score: 2, Informative

    What is "Failing only one surface"

    A hard drive can fail in many ways: sector, track, platter, head. ISE can fail just the one surface -- say, a platter -- and keep writing to the remaining device. The broken platter is removed from service while the remaining disk storage continues to be used until end of life.

    This is all done automatically and transparently. What they are trying to eliminate is the time it takes for someone to physically swap out a disk.

    J Wolfgang Goerlich