Continuing my coverage of the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium], here is a recap of Day 2:
- XIV: Implementation, Migration and Optimization
Special thanks to Anthony Vandewerdt, who sent me his version of this presentation that he planned to present in Australia next week. I "smartened it up" (or whatever the appropriate phrase is the opposite of "dumbed it down") for the technical audience.
- Recovery procedures for single and double drive failures. A double drive failure on an XIV typically involves less recovery effort than traditional RAID5-based disk systems, and in many cases results in no data loss whatsoever. I provided details on this in my blog post [Double Drive Failure Debunked: XIV Two Years Later], so no need to repeat myself here.
- Replacing the Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) non-disruptively. To support either single-phase and triple-phase power sources, the XIV uses an ATS to take two independent power feeds, and distribute this out to the three Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).
- Built-in Migration capability to copy data off other disk systems over to the XIV.
- Configuring Synchronous and Asynchronous mirroring using either the Fibre Channel or Internet Protocol ports.
- Optimizing the use of XIV for VMware, AIX and other operating systems.
The IBM XIV Storage System is quite popular in New Zealand, with four times more boxes sold per capita than the other countries in the Asia Pacific region. I covered both the A14 model as well as the new Gen3 model.
- Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) Update: Lessons, Planning, Solutions
My colleague Vic Peltz from IBM Almaden presented on lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina and various other natural disasters. Unlike tradtional presentations the focus on technology, Vic took a different approach, focusing on people and procedures. I was here last year when the earthquake hit Christchurch on the south island, so I was well aware that BC/DR was top of mind for many of the attendees. Throughout this week, I have felt tremors, and many of the locals told me that these happen all the time.
- Introduction to IBM Storwize V7000
I knew I was in trouble when the request for me to present Storwize sounded like something from [Mission Impossible]:
"Good morning, Mr. Pearson. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves presenting Storwize V7000 in Auckland, New Zealand. You may also present the Storwize V7000 Unified, but it is essential that you not cover the SAN Volume Controller or SONAS products from which they are based upon, as you will not have enough time. The audience is very technical, so be careful. As always, should any questions come up that you cannot answer, the conference coordinators will disavow all knowledge of your actions, nor reimburse your laundry charges. This message will self-destruct in five seconds."
Well, I accomplished my mission in 75 minutes. I was able to cover the block-only version of the IBM Storwize V7000, with support for clustering the control enclosures, expansion drawers and external storage virtualization. I then spent a few minutes on the block-and-file Storwize V7000 Unified, which adds support for CIFS, NFS, HTTPS, FTP and SCP protocols through two new "file modules", with integrated support for backup and anti-virus checking. I covered both IBM Easy Tier for sub-LUN automated tiering between Solid-State Drives (SSD) and spinning disk, as well as Active Cloud Engine for file-based movement between disk and tape.
- SAN Best Practices
Rich Swain presented IBM's best practices for deploying a Storage Area Network. This was an [updated version of the one from Orlando] by Jim Blue from IBM's SAN Central team.
 technorati tags: IBM, System x, Storage Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, XIV, BC/DR, Business Continuity, Disaster Recovery, Storwize V7000, V7000 Unified, SAN, best practices
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This week, I will be in Auckland, New Zealand for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium]. This is a three-day event, with 35 unique sessions and labs. The agenda is organized with a keynote session in the beginning, followed by 12 time slots over three days, each slot offering five different break-out session topics to choose from. Here is a recap of Day 1:
- Keynote Session
The keynote was led by Phil Tasker, IBM Business Unit Executive (BUE) for STG Education Programs in Growth Markets, then Matt Paterson, General Manager for Sales in New Zealand say a few words. IBM is in the Top 10 Training Hall of Fame, and conducts over 40,000 classes worldwide, resulting in over 1.3 million student days of instructions. IBM Systems Lab and Training technical hosts over three dozen conferences like this one every year. This is the first time that System x and Storage Symposium has been run in New Zealand, and based on the incredibly good turn-out, will probably be a regular event.
- Matt Ziegler - HPC
Matt Ziegler, IBM Senior HPC Solutions Architect for the iDataPlex marketing team, gave an introdcution to HPC during the keynote, then provided more details in a break-out session.
In the High Performance Computing (HPC) market, IBM POWER used to be the dominant chipset, with over 200 of the top 500 supercomputers back in June 2001. Today, only about 50 use POWER. Rather, over 350 of the top 500 supercomputers use x86 instead. HPC represents a 6.3 percent growth opportunity for computer, 9.3 percent growth for storage, and 8.6 percent growth for services.
IBM's leadership in energy efficiency applies to HPC as well. In the "Green 500", a ranking based on MFLOPS/Watt, 19 of the top 25 are from IBM. IBM's iDataPlex is the most energy efficient x86 platform, at 401 MFLOPS per Watt.
Overall, x86 is growing. In 2005, x86 had 48 percent of the market, RISC/Itanium had 39 percent, and mainframe had 12 percent. In 2009, x86 grew to 56 percent, RISC/Itanium dropped to 33 percent, and mainframe to 11 percent. By 2014, Matt projects that x86 will be 63 percent, RISC/Itanium will drop to 30 percent, and mainframe to 7 percent.
The most popular form factor for x86 are blades. Growing from 8 percent in 2005, to 20 percent in 2009, and projected to be 33 percent by 2014.
Recently, [IBM announced plans to acquire Platform Computing], a software company that makes a job workload scheduler for HPC environments. HPC and Cloud deployments are quite similar, and will share many technologies. Other newsworthy acquisitions include [Dell's acquisition of Force10 Networks] for Ethernet, and [Mellanox's acquisition of Voltaire] for Infiniband.
- IBM's Storage Strategy in the Era of Smarter Computing
I gave this presentation twice today. It has evolved quite a bit from the version I presented in Orlando last July. Attendees appreciated that my colorful analogies and stories helped them better understand the concepts of Big Data analytics, Workload-Optimized systems, and Cloud Storage offerings.
- SONAS Product Review and Demo
Rich Swain presented IBM's Scale-Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) and provided a live demo connecting to a box here in New Zealand. This is a topic I often present at the Tucson Executive Briefing Center, but it is always good to hear someone else's spin.
- Welcome Reception
Phil Tasker invited everyone to the Welcome Reception after the last sessions. There was food and drink, and prizes! One person won an Xbox-360 game console, and two people won iPads.
technorati tags: IBM, Phil Tasker, Matt Paterson, Matt Ziegler, Rich Swain, HPC, Cloud, SONAS, Storage Strategy, Smarter Computing
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IBM wins lots of awards, but this time is unique: [IBM and Fox Networks Group have jointly won an Engineering Emmy® Award] for Innovation from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. According to the Academy, by improving the ability of media companies to capture, manage and exploit content in digital form, IBM and Fox have fundamentally changed the way that audio and video content is managed and stored. Here's an excerpt from the IBM Press Release:
"By standardizing technologies in this way, Fox can now use open-standard, file-based tape in all aspects of production, post-production and distribution functions – displacing costly proprietary tape formats and/or disk subsystems. This provides media companies with the consumer equivalent of having their entire library of DVDs online and available at any time, and the ability to go to a specific scene, in any one of the movies, in an instant.
In the early stage of the technology initiative, the IBM/Fox team applied IBM-patented technologies invented by IBM Research for high-speed data movement. They also integrated traditional broadcast transport and encoding standards with IT industry open standards. This allowed either Standard Definition (SD) or HD programming to be available in real time for digital recording and repurposing -- with improved economics."
Last year, in my posts [Double the Storage Capacity - Double the Fun!], [Happy E.A.R.T.H day!], [Local IBM Team recognized by Arizona Daily Star], and [On Cirago Docking Stations, IBM RDX and LTFS], I had referred to LTFS by its prior name, the Long Term File System. People keep archives on tape because it is a great medium for long term retention.
Unfortunately, people didn't like the name, but they loved the acronym, so it was renamed to Linear Tape File System. IBM offers LTFS single-drive edition on its LTO-5 and TS1140 tape drives, and LTFS library-edition across all of its tape libraries. Since everyone hates proprietary vendor lock-in, IBM has graciously shared LTFS as an open source standard with the rest of the Linear Tape Open consortium.
(Note: I was not there at the awards ceremony. The pictures were taken by Ed Childers, David Pease and Rainer Richter of each other. Additional photos are available on this [Flicr photo album].)
(1) Rainer Richter, Media Technology Market Partners LLC [MTMP], presenting the Emmy to Steve Canepa, IBM General Manager for Media and Entertainment industry. MTMP is an IBM Business Partner that offers integrated solutions for LTO and LTFS, consulting, services, and technology to the media and entertainment industry…
(2) Ed Childers, IBM manager of the Tape Drive Development team, holding the Emmy. Fellow IBM blogger Steve Hamm credits Ed on coming up with the idea for LTFS seven years ago, in his blog post [Coding and Loading in Las Vegas: How a Team of IBM Researchers Helped Transform the Way Video is Stored]. Ed wanted to make tape storage easier to use and to integrate it into the workflow of networks and studios, and suggested using an indexing system that would allow people to write software that would make video more accessible.
(3) David Pease, IBM Senior Technical Staff Member from the IBM Almaden Research Center, holding the Emmy. Along with Lucas Villa Real (IBM Brazil) and Michael Richmond (IBM Almaden), David and his team were able to come up with a working prototype in just four months. Michael discusses this in his posts [Tape? Does anyone care about Tape anymore?"] and [the Emmy goes to... LTFS].
If David and Ed look familiar, it is because I had their picture on my blog back in May when [LTFS won 2011 NAB Show Pick Hits award]. For more from the IBM Almaden Research team, see their blog post [We won an Emmy!]
Of course, Technology is only worthwhile if you put it to use. Our friends at FOX initially partnered with IBM to develop this video archive solution for the National Football League (NFL). If there is one place that "re-purposes" a lot of video footage, it is sports television. The technology proved so useful that FOX has since expanded it to other types of programming.
technorati tags: IBM, FOX, Emmy, Ed Childers, David Pease, Steve Canepa, Michael Richmond, Rainer Richter, MTMP, Almaden Research Center, LTFS, LTO-5, TS1140, Media and Entertainment, Steve Hamm
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Here are upcoming conferences I will be presenting at for November 2011.
Next week, I will be in Auckland, New Zealand for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium], similar to the one I attended in Orlando, Florida last July. Here are the sessions I will present:
- xST03 - Introduction to IBM Storwize V7000
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An exciting new addition to the IBM storage line, the Storwize V7000 is a very versatile and solid choice as a midrange storage device. This session will cover a technical overview of the controller as well as its positioning within the overall IBM storage line.
- xST04 - XIV Implementation, Migration and Optimization
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Attend this session to learn how to integrate the IBM XIV Storage System in your IT environment. After this session, you should understand where the IBM XIV Storage system fits, and understand how to take full advantage of the performance capabilities of XIV Storage by using the massive parallelism of its grid architecture. You will learn how to migrate data onto the XIV and hear about real world client experiences.
- xST05 - IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era
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Want to understand IBM's storage strategy better? This session will cover the three key themes of IBM's Smarter Computing initiative: Big Data, Optimized Systems, and Cloud. IBM System Storage strategy has been aligned to meet the storage efficiency, data protection and retention required to meet these challenges.
- xST06 - Understanding IBM's Storage Encryption Options
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IBM offers encryption in a variety of ways. Data can be encrypted on the server, in the SAN switch, or on the disk or tape drive. This session will explain how encryption works, and explain the pros and cons with each encryption option.
The week after that, I will be in Melbourne, Australia for the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium]. Here are the sessions I will present:
- sAC01 - IBM Information Archive for email, Files and eDiscovery
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IBM has focused on data protection and retention, and the IBM Information Archive is the ideal product to achieve it. Come to this session to discuss archive solutions, compliance regulations, and support for full-text indexing and eDiscovery to support litigation.
- sGE04 - IBM's Storage Strategy in the Smarter Computing Era
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Want to understand IBM's storage strategy better? This session will cover the three key themes of IBM's Smarter Computing initiative: Big Data, Optimized Systems, and Cloud. IBM System Storage strategy has been aligned to meet the storage efficiency, data protection and retention required to meet these challenges.
- sSM03 - IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center – Overview and Update
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IBM's latest release of IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is v4.2.2, a storage resource management tool that manages both IBM and non-IBM storage devices, including disk systems, tape libraries, and SAN switches. This session will give an overview of the various components of Tivoli Storage Productivity Center and provide an update on what's new in this product.
- sSN06 - SONAS and the Smart Business Storage Cloud (SBSC)
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Confused over IBM's Cloud strategy? Trying to figure out how IBM Storage plays in private, hybrid or public cloud offerings? This session will cover both the SONAS integrated appliance and the Smart Business Storage Cloud customized solution, and will review available storage services on the IBM Cloud.
- sTA01 - Tape Storage Reinvented: What's New and Exciting in the Tape World?
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This very informative session will keep you up to date with the latest tape developments. These include the TS3500 tape library connector Model SC1 (Shuttle). The shuttle enables extreme scalability of over 300,000 tape cartridges in a single library image by interconnecting multiple tape libraries with a unique, high speed transport system. The world's fastest tape drive, the TS1140 3592-E07, will also be presented. The performance and functionality of the new TS1140 as well as the new 4TB tape media will be discussed. Also, the IBM System Storage Linear Tape File System (LTFS), including the Library Edition, will be presented. LTFS allows a disk-like, drag-and-drop interface for tape. This is a not-to-be-missed session for all you tape lovers out there!
In December, I will be going to Gartner's Data Center Conference in Las Vegas, but the agenda has not been finalized, so I will save that for another post.
technorati tags: IBM, Storage Symposium, Auckland, New Zealand, Melbourne, Australia, Storwize V7000, XIV, Storage Strategy, Smarter Computing, Encryption, Information Archive, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, TPC, SONAS, SBSC, TS3500, LTFS
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Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior Managing Consultant for the IBM System Storage product line at the
