Should We Ever Talk About JBODs
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@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
Every time in Microsoft documentation they use the word JBOD, it's used correctly that I've seen. It's used to mean one thing, always. It's never used to mean anything other than this: http://dataonstorage.com/dns-jbod-enclosure/dns-2608-4u-32-bay-12gbps-sas-enterprise-jbod-storage-enclosure.html
Is it? So with SS for example, it won't function with actual JBODs, but only JBOD enclosures? There is no way to use it with local disks? How does it know?
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I suppose you could say, "set up your servers internal storage in a JBOD configuration". Or you could say "hook up your server to a JBOD". Or even "I just dropped my JBOD enclosure"
Honestly, all are correct, and I don't see any issue what so ever with any. It doesn't make me any less knowledgeable or show that I can't do my job less well than someone else who avoids the term.
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I guess one of the things for me is, I've never used the term and have not lacked for expressive terminology. And it isn't like I don't have to talk about disks on a regular basis.
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@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
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For example, I don't consider DROBO a disk enclosure, it's an appliance. The device itself applies whatever RAID level I want to the disks, then there is an interface to that storage (either block level or share level).
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@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
Honestly, all are correct, and I don't see any issue what so ever with any. It doesn't make me any less knowledgeable or show that I can't do my job less well than someone else who avoids the term.
The problem is, and we've proven this I feel beyond any doubt, is that if you use the term you are no longer able to reliable convey your meaning to other IT pros. Certainly not ones in this thread, ML, SW or at MS. All of them have differing, conflicting ideas from how you just used it.
The majority of "JBOD discussions" if you will, that I have seen, involve "just a bunch of disks" in a server, not in an enclosure. So the majority that I see would find this conversation very confusing because they are using the accepted Wikipedia definition, not the one that implies an enclosure.
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@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
I've seen it in a requirement sense.
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@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
As just a random phrase with no official product or sponsor, I'm not sure any use is more or less official than any other. Wikipedia would be the closest to official that you could get, or maybe the OED if they covered that sort of thing.
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@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
I've seen it in a requirement sense.
LOL - so the people who required JBOD didn't care about their data I take it?
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@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
I've seen it in a requirement sense.
LOL - so the people who required JBOD didn't care about their data I take it?
Microsoft lists it as a requirement.
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Okay, so I have taken a look at the history of "JBOD" on Wikipedia... take a look at it, just for laughs. Click on the history tab and change edits to 500, then search JBOD.. highlight them if using firefox to find them easier. Look at the bigger edits. To me it's all a joke, now.
The more I look at the meaning of "JBOD" from "word authority" sites like Wikipedia and others, and various IT pros and such, the more I feel that the word "JBOD" is just some randomly made acronym with no real value. It seems to be just a big marketing term, and also a literal term used to mean an actual bunch of disks in the sense that there's some disks not yet in a RAID, and that are shown as pass-through disks if there's a hardware raid card present.
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I got the main idea of how it is used... JBOD enclosure, you need a JBOD attached to a server, etc... I get JBOD configuration to mean disks with pass-through in the presence of a hardware RAID card, or exposed as individual drives.
But I'm going to go ahead and pretend the term or acronym JBOD does not exist from now on.
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@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
I've seen it in a requirement sense.
LOL - so the people who required JBOD didn't care about their data I take it?
Microsoft lists it as a requirement.
Hold on, didn't you say...
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
I've literally never heard any vendor use the term in marketing, white papers, in person... nothing. I've never heard the term outside of SMB IT pros talking about... random things.
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@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
The more I look at the meaning of "JBOD" from "word authority" sites like Wikipedia and others, and various IT pros and such, the more I feel that the word "JBOD" is just some randomly made acronym with no real value. It seems to be just a big marketing term, and also a literal term used to mean an actual bunch of disks in the sense that there's some disks not yet in a RAID, and that are shown as pass-through disks if there's a hardware raid card present.
Yes, that's my thought. Someone started using it to sound cool or something. It's somehow become oddly associated with Microsoft recently, too. My guess is some yahoo inside MS started using it and it became some weird cultural thing.
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@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
I got the main idea of how it is used... JBOD enclosure, you need a JBOD attached to a server, etc... I get JBOD configuration to mean disks with pass-through in the presence of a hardware RAID card, or exposed as individual drives.
But I'm going to go ahead and pretend the term or acronym JBOD does not exist from now on.
That's the conclusion that I had reached that prompted me to start this thread. I saw like five different usages in five posts and none made any sense to me. Then I started trying to closely define JBOD and couldn't come up with how to really do it right.
Someone actually started the thread looking for RAID 10 JBOD. And then wanted RAIN on top of that. About as anti-JBOD as you could imagine.
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@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
I've seen it in a requirement sense.
LOL - so the people who required JBOD didn't care about their data I take it?
Microsoft lists it as a requirement.
Hold on, didn't you say...
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
I've literally never heard any vendor use the term in marketing, white papers, in person... nothing. I've never heard the term outside of SMB IT pros talking about... random things.
Yeah, but check the order of the posts. I saw it only after that.
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@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
I've seen it in a requirement sense.
LOL - so the people who required JBOD didn't care about their data I take it?
Microsoft lists it as a requirement.
Hold on, didn't you say...
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
I've literally never heard any vendor use the term in marketing, white papers, in person... nothing. I've never heard the term outside of SMB IT pros talking about... random things.
Yeah, but check the order of the posts. I saw it only after that.
Oh you saw a MS requirement only after making that post? Where did you see the MS requirement?
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@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Dashrender said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
@Tim_G said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
It's all in the context of which it's being used. I've never seen JBOD used officially, in a context that doesn't imply a JBOD enclosure.
I take that back. I have in a "configuration" sense.
I've seen it in a requirement sense.
LOL - so the people who required JBOD didn't care about their data I take it?
Microsoft lists it as a requirement.
Hold on, didn't you say...
@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
I've literally never heard any vendor use the term in marketing, white papers, in person... nothing. I've never heard the term outside of SMB IT pros talking about... random things.
Yeah, but check the order of the posts. I saw it only after that.
Oh you saw a MS requirement only after making that post? Where did you see the MS requirement?
In one of the links that we had. This is likely where...
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831739(v=ws.11).aspx
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Now that we have concluded that the term or acronym "JBOD" should not be used in any circumstance, we need to document what should be used instead. We can't leave everyone who comes across this hanging...
I would think it depends on the situation and context.
Some starters:
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If you are talking about configuring internal server storage
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If you are referring to a multi-hard disk enclosure such as DAS (even that term can be misleading... a DAS could be a cdrom... but that's another discussion I gather)
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SAM, you see more on forums than I do... you have a list of cases JBOD is used to add?
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Very interesting conversation! I never really thought about the various ways the term could be used.
I have always used JBOD to describe a bunch of disks in an expansion storage cabinet that did not have a hardware based RAID controller built-in.
You could access the drives independently or use software RAID for some, if not all, of them. The logic of controlling them would be external to the cabinet itself, therefore it's a collection of "just a bunch of disks."
Steve
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@scottalanmiller said in Should We Ever Talk About JBODs:
JBOD is an abbreviation for "Just a Bunch Of Disks" and is meant to refer to, well, no one is exactly sure when to use it properly. People often use it to mean "not RAID" or not "hardware RAID" or "not yet RAIDed" but they forget that spanning, RAIN or whatever would make something no longer a JBOD. And some people mean it only to refer to hardware, but RAID is software, as is RAIN. Everything is JBOD at some point and basically nothing is by the time that it is in use.
I'm not clear when we can ever usefully use the term where it doesn't prompt a long and confusing explanation to clear up what is actually intended. I have a feeling that this is a term that simply should not exist as there is just no time that using it is useful.
Does anyone have any idea of a time when it would actually be important to have this term and, if so, how would we use it without further explanation?
Storage pools on Windows Server. You can add disks as needed, and over allocate with thin provisioning. I consider that a straight up JBOD because of over allocation and adding disks as needed. Not much to it other than grabbing disks out of primordial and assigning to a VHD. Also consider it JBOD because though you can choose parity, it is not inherent.
