Data Storage - state of third-party vendors support for Microsoft's VDS/VSS architecture?

Author

state of third-party vendors support for Microsoft's VDS/VSS architecture?

Charles Morrall

2005-01-09, 7:45 am

I have from time to time scanned the storage vendors support for VDS and
VSS, more specifically I've been looking for downloadable binaries for VDS
and VSS provider software. So far, the results have been quite slim. A while
ago, HP was quite open and although it wasn't obvious you could find and
download VDS/VSS providers for most of their storage products. When I
recently was checking around for any updates on HP's site the binaries had
been pulled and no real explanation to why and when or if we'd see them
again. I little investigation showed me the binaries were pulled due to
"issues", but were still available (maybe) on a case-by-case basis.

I found this site in my searchings:
http://www.microsoftstoragepartners.com/. Looks like a useful site in these
matters, although a bit thin on information if you're not actually a storage
partner, for obvious reasons. However, I did find out that according to this
site only EMC has any VDS and VSS support in their Symmetrix and Clariion
lines. To me, this was a disappointment and led me to the question whether
there ever will be any broad support for VDS/VSS amongst the storage
vendors. Searching EMC, HDS and STK to a name a few very little comes up,
and what you do find usually involve some NAS product based on Window
Storage Server 2003 which of course has support for VDS/VSS, but not as
hardware provider.

Does anyone here have any practical experience with VDS/VSS and hardware
providers? I've read some documentation and although it appears useful I'm a
bit wary as to putting software in my Windows servers giving them maybe
complete control of my storage systems.
Using VSS for integrating snapshots in storage with backup applications
appeals to me, but am I right in assuming VSS does not integrate metadata
for me? That is, if I use VSS to take a snapshot of a production volume on a
production host, mount it on a backup server (assuming I get the
transportable LUN feature working) will VSS itself handle the metadata for
the VSS requestor or will the requestor (backup application) have to do that
itself. Taking a guess, I'd say the requestor would have to handle the
metadata integration by itself. Which leads to another question, which if
any backup application has this feature today? Or is it the other way
around, to call yourself a VSS requestor worth it's salt, the metadata
integration must be built in.

Many questions on this sunday, any comments appreciated.
/charles

David A.Lethe

2005-01-11, 2:45 am

On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 10:41:44 GMT, "Charles Morrall"
<charles.morrall@telia.com> wrote:

>I have from time to time scanned the storage vendors support for VDS and
>VSS, more specifically I've been looking for downloadable binaries for VDS
>and VSS provider software. So far, the results have been quite slim. A while
>ago, HP was quite open and although it wasn't obvious you could find and
>download VDS/VSS providers for most of their storage products. When I
>recently was checking around for any updates on HP's site the binaries had
>been pulled and no real explanation to why and when or if we'd see them
>again. I little investigation showed me the binaries were pulled due to
>"issues", but were still available (maybe) on a case-by-case basis.
>
>I found this site in my searchings:
>http://www.microsoftstoragepartners.com/. Looks like a useful site in these
>matters, although a bit thin on information if you're not actually a storage
>partner, for obvious reasons. However, I did find out that according to this
>site only EMC has any VDS and VSS support in their Symmetrix and Clariion
>lines. To me, this was a disappointment and led me to the question whether
>there ever will be any broad support for VDS/VSS amongst the storage
>vendors. Searching EMC, HDS and STK to a name a few very little comes up,
>and what you do find usually involve some NAS product based on Window
>Storage Server 2003 which of course has support for VDS/VSS, but not as
>hardware provider.
>
>Does anyone here have any practical experience with VDS/VSS and hardware
>providers? I've read some documentation and although it appears useful I'm a
>bit wary as to putting software in my Windows servers giving them maybe
>complete control of my storage systems.
>Using VSS for integrating snapshots in storage with backup applications
>appeals to me, but am I right in assuming VSS does not integrate metadata
>for me? That is, if I use VSS to take a snapshot of a production volume on a
>production host, mount it on a backup server (assuming I get the
>transportable LUN feature working) will VSS itself handle the metadata for
>the VSS requestor or will the requestor (backup application) have to do that
>itself. Taking a guess, I'd say the requestor would have to handle the
>metadata integration by itself. Which leads to another question, which if
>any backup application has this feature today? Or is it the other way
>around, to call yourself a VSS requestor worth it's salt, the metadata
>integration must be built in.
>
>Many questions on this sunday, any comments appreciated.
>/charles
>
I've done such development. THis information should help you
- MSFT provides the SDKs under non-disclosure agreements only. They
are NOT designed for end-users, or even VARs, they are designed for
use by storage manufacturers, or storage management (typically backup
or snapshot software vendors). You're probably looking at a
six-figure development effort by the time it is all done to write the
provider code. (This assumes your hardware meets the requirements of
VSS and/or VDS in the first place. A lot of hardware won't meet the
requirements of VSS, but VDS is pretty vanilla.

For example, VSS allows for numerous methods of hardware-assisted
snapshots, so safety, ease-of-use, metadata, etc, is implementation
dependent as well as storage hardware dependent.

There are numerous Terms and Conditions that MSFT places on their
deployment. Unfortunately my NDA prevents me from saying more, but I
am aware of several potential legal issues that might cause HP to
remove them from a download site.

If you are trying to get enough information to make a business
decision as to whether or not you should write provider code (and get
it certified), then you really need to get the SDK from Microsoft and
do some reading, or maybe even send somebody to MSFT university to
take a class, or at least go to their WinHEC conference.

Davidatsantool scom

Charles Morrall

2005-01-11, 2:45 am

"David A.Lethe" <davidATsantools.com> skrev i meddelandet
news:5go6u05uc5l3asgsbqmfogs97ankub9tse@
4ax.com...
> On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 10:41:44 GMT, "Charles Morrall"

> If you are trying to get enough information to make a business
> decision as to whether or not you should write provider code (and get
> it certified), then you really need to get the SDK from Microsoft and
> do some reading, or maybe even send somebody to MSFT university to
> take a class, or at least go to their WinHEC conference.
>
> Davidatsantool scom

Thank you for your comments. However, I'm not representing a hardware
vendor, and I'm certainly not in an endevour to actually crete a VDS/VSS
provider. I'm only looking for experience in their practical use in the
field with backup applications and hardware assisted snapshots, but perhaps
what you're saying is indicative of the difficulties and cost each hardware
manufacturer has to commit to to be able to stamp yet another compliance
stamp on their box (SMI-S anyone?

) and therefore there's slow uptake on
Microsoft's initiative.
/charles

David A.Lethe

2005-01-11, 5:48 pm

On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 06:16:49 GMT, "Charles Morrall"
<charles.morrall@telia.com> wrote:

>
>"David A.Lethe" <davidATsantools.com> skrev i meddelandet
> news:5go6u05uc5l3asgsbqmfogs97ankub9tse@
4ax.com...
>
>
>Thank you for your comments. However, I'm not representing a hardware
>vendor, and I'm certainly not in an endevour to actually crete a VDS/VSS
>provider. I'm only looking for experience in their practical use in the
>field with backup applications and hardware assisted snapshots, but perhaps
>what you're saying is indicative of the difficulties and cost each hardware
>manufacturer has to commit to to be able to stamp yet another compliance
>stamp on their box (SMI-S anyone?

) and therefore there's slow uptake on
>Microsoft's initiative.
>/charles
>

Yes, I am referring to relative difficulty & cost from perspective of
a vendor. As your concern is from an end-user perspective, then rest
assured that both VSS & VDS "work", and are just as solid as microsoft
operating systems -- which you can read anyway you want ;)

CA, Legato, and other vendors have add-on software, but that is not
required unless you want add-on features. The real trick is to get
hardware that uses VSS and or VDS. VDS is pretty easy and you'll find
many vendors that have hardware that support this. Heck, your internal
disk drives support VDS.

VSS is another story entirely, as you are going ot pay a premium for
the type of fibre channel host attached external RAID subsystems that
bundle the provider code. Then you also have to consider what kind of
snapshot is appropriate for your dataset. Do you need block or
volume-based snapshot, what policy do you have to deal with files that
are open 100% of the time for write access? How much scratch data do
you need for buffer space to deal with stale data that gets created
during course of backup? What is throughput of your backup.

What I'll offer is that VSS is reliable, safe, and robust. Was there
"slow uptake" -- clearly yes, but that was then and this is now. Just
as SMI-S based storage management software and hardware is available
on all of the Tier-1 and many of the tier-2 hardware vendors. You
have to decide if they are appropriate for your environment, but these
packages are no longer vaporware and are used in the real world, and
are by no means the only options available to you.

Charles Oppermann

2005-01-12, 2:45 am

The microsoft.public.storage newsgroup is a good place to get information
about VSS/VDS storage developments. It's monitored by Microsoft people who
can give you more information about which vendors have implementations, etc.