Author: David Dale

Ethernet Storage Market Momentum Continues

David Dale Leave a comment

The inexorable growth of the market for Ethernet storage continued in the first half of 2010 – in fact we’re getting very close to Ethernet storage being the majority of networked storage in the Enterprise.

According to IDC’s recent Q2 2010 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, Ethernet Storage (NAS plus iSCSI) revenue market share climbed to 45%, up from 39% in 2009, 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007, as shown below.

2007

2008

2009

Q2 2010

FC SAN

72%

68%

61%

55%

iSCSI SAN

6%

10%

13%

15%

NAS

22%

22%

26%

30%

In terms of capacity market share, we have already see the crossover point, with Ethernet Storage at 52% of the total PB shipped, up from 47% in 2009, 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007, as shown in the following table.

2007

2008

2009

Q2 2010

FC SAN

62%

58%

53%

48%

iSCSI SAN

8%

13%

15%

18%

NAS

29%

29%

32%

34%

Ethernet Storage Market Momentum Continues in First Half of 2010

David Dale Leave a comment

The inexorable growth of the market for Ethernet storage continued in the first half of 2010 – in fact we’re getting very close to Ethernet storage being the majority of networked storage in the Enterprise.

According to IDC’s recent Q2 2010 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, Ethernet Storage (NAS plus iSCSI) revenue market share climbed to 45%, up from 39% in 2009, 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007, as shown below.

2007

2008

2009

Q2 2010

FC SAN

72%

68%

61%

55%

iSCSI SAN

6%

10%

13%

15%

NAS

22%

29%

26%

30%

In terms of capacity market share, we have already see the crossover point, with Ethernet Storage at 52% of the total PB shipped, up from 47% in 2009, 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007, as shown in the following table.

2007

2008

2009

Q2 2010

FC SAN

62%

58%

53%

48%

iSCSI SAN

8%

13%

15%

18%

NAS

29%

29%

32%

34%

Ethernet Storage Market Momentum Continues

David Dale Leave a comment

Earlier this month IDC released their Q1 2010 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, a well-established analysis of revenue and capacity shipments for the quarter. For the purposes of classification, IDC calls networked storage (as opposed to direct-attached storage) “Fabric Attached Storage” – which consists of Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN and NAS.

In Q1, Ethernet Storage (NAS plus iSCSI) revenue market share climbed to 43%, up from 39% in 2009, 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007 – demonstrating continued market momentum. A more detailed breakdown is:

2007

2008

2009

Q1 2010

FC SAN

72%

68%

61%

57%

iSCSI SAN

6%

10%

13%

14%

NAS

22%

29%

26%

29%

In terms of capacity market share, Ethernet Storage was 51% of the total PB shipped, up from 48% in 2009, 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007, as shown in the following table.

2007

2008

2009

Q1 2010

FC SAN

62%

58%

53%

49%

iSCSI SAN

8%

13%

15%

17%

NAS

29%

29%

32%

34%

So, the evidence is that the gains seem in the trough of the recession in 2008 and 2009 are continuing into the recovery. There seem to be three major factors driving this:

· Continuing maturity and acceptance of the technology for enterprise applications

· Companies’ willingness to try something new to reduce costs

· The continued rapid growth of unstructured data driving NAS capacity.

But that’s just my opinion. What’s your take?

Ethernet Storage at Spring SNW

David Dale Leave a comment

Well we’re already into Day 1 of Spring SNW, and the SNIA tutorials educational program is well under way.

I presented to a packed room at 9:20am on the subject of Server and Storage Consolidation with iSCSI Arrays – a great audience for the first session of the day.

Tuesday afternoon’s agenda includes pNFS, Parallel Storage for Grid, Virtualization and Database Computing by Pranoop Erasani (NetApp), and Thursday’s agenda includes two tutorials by Gary Gumanow (Dell) & Jason Blosil (NetApp) — iSCSI SANs: Ideal Applications, Large and Small, and iSCSI: A Lossless Ethernet Fabric with DCB. If you’re at SNW check them out.

If you are not at SNW, you can access the tutorials at http://www.snia.org/education/tutorials/.

Another opportunity to find out about Ethernet Storage is in the IP Storage Hands-on Lab. This program is in its 7th year and continues to go from strength to strength.

Finally, I’m scheduled to do a podcast with Skip Jones (of the Fibre Channel Industry Association) on FCoE, iSCSI and Network Convergence. That should be posted on the Infosmack Podcasts section of Storage Monkeys by Wendesday.

Wow – the Ethernet Storage Forum and the FCIA co-operating! What is the world coming to?

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Ethernet Storage Market Momentum

David Dale Leave a comment

Despite the recession of the past couple of years, the market for Ethernet Storage has shown grown significantly both in terms of equipment shipped and in terms of market share. Last week’s release by IDC of their Q42009 Worldwide Storage Systems Hardware Tracker, gave us an opportunity to see the latest numbers.

For the purposes of classification, IDC calls networked storage (as opposed to direct-attached storage) “Fabric Attached Storage” – which consists of Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN and NAS.

During 2009, Ethernet Storage revenues (NAS plus iSCSI) grew 51% year-over year to $5.372 billion, following a 5% decline in 2008. This compares with 25% revenue growth for the Fabric Attached Storage market as a whole, following a 17% decline in 2008. The revenue market share of Ethernet Storage climbed to 39% in 2009, up from 32% in 2008 and 28% in 2007.

In terms of capacity shipped, the story is even better. During 2009, vendors shipped 2,829 PB of Ethernet Storage – 128% year-over year, following 22% growth in 2008. This compares with 105% capacity growth for the Fabric Attached Storage market as a whole, following 9% growth in 2008. The capacity market share of Ethernet Storage climbed to 47%, up from 42% in 2008 and 37% in 2007.

The highest growth category of the whole sector was iSCSI, as has been the case for the past few years. In 2007 iSCSI SAN revenues grew by 62%; in 2008 we saw 26% growth (despite a recession which caused a 22% decline in FC SAN revenues); and in 2009 we saw 68% growth to $1.807 billion.

So, what’s contributing to the steady growth in tough economic times? My take is that there are probably three factors:
• Continuing maturity and acceptance of the technology
• Companies’ willingness to try something new to reduce costs in tough economic times
• The continued rapid growth of unstructured data driving NAS capacity.

What’s your take?

Wire Speed 10Gb/s iSCSI

David Dale Leave a comment

I spent the past few days wondering what my first post for SNIA on Ethernet Storage should be about, and finally arrived at this – despite the fact that it’s old news…

A couple of months ago Ben Hacker posted a great blog on The Server Room section of Intel’s communities site, talking about Intel and Microsoft’s performance benchmarking work on iSCSI over 10Gb Ethernet. The post is entitled “1,000,000 IOPS with iSCSI – That’s Not a Typo…” – check it out, it’s very enlightening.

Ben’s blog in turn pointed to a joint Microsoft/Intel webcast going into detail about the results. Again, it’s good information.

The thing that stuck me here was not so much that you can get wire speed 10Gb/s iSCSI performance today, or that large virtual server environments can require those performance levels – the thing that struck me was that conventional wisdom is continually challenged by commodity Ethernet advances.

Eight years ago, most people believed that special NICs would be required to overcome the overhead imposed by TCP/IP and iSCSI over Gigabit Ethernet. That turned out to be wrong. Standard on-board Ethernet ports and software iSCSI initiators worked just great. The conventional wisdom today is that special NICs and drivers are required to overcome the overhead imposed by TCP/IP and iSCSI over 10 Gigabit Ethernet. That’s also wrong. The Intel/Microsoft benchmark used standard on-board ports and software iSCSI initiators.

We seem to keep forgetting that Moore’s Law continually delivers more CPU cycles than we expect (exponentials are funny like that), and the huge commodity R&D infrastructure around Ethernet continually finds ways to improve network performance.

Any bets on whether we’ll need special NICs to support iSCSI over 40Gb Ethernet on commodity servers when that emerges as a mainstream host port? I think the answer is obvious…

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