Hu's Blog

In order to facilitate convergence, applications and infrastructure we will need to be more transparent with each other in 2012 through open interfaces like APIs, client/providers, and plug-ins.

Until recently, servers and applications had to be managed separately from the storage. The server could see the LUN but could not manage the storage that was on the other side of it. Conversely, the storage could see the LUN but could not see into the file system above it.

While a storage system can thin provision a LUN in the beginning, if the file system deletes files as it starts to grow, the storage would not know this, and would not be able to recover the capacity that was vacated by the deleted files. Recently, Symantec and VMware have begun to provide that information to the storage through a Write same or Unmap command so that a properly enabled storage system can recover the deleted file capacity for use by other allocation requests.

HDS provides Hitachi Command Director software, which gives applications a view into the service level, utilization, and health of the storage infrastructure behind the virtual storage they are using.

Hitachi storage systems support VMware’s vCenter, as well as VASA and VMware Aware Storage APIs, which enables a VMware administrator to manage any vendor’s storage that supports VASA. Hitachi storage systems also support standard SMI-S providers for use by third party management clients.

The industry is coming to the realization that it is better to share and play well with others if we are going to meet the challenges of exploding application and data growth.

For Hu’s other 2012 trends, visit this bit.ly bundle: http://bitly.com/vXGP2T