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Tony Pearson Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Architect for the IBM Storage product line at the IBM Systems Client Experience Center in Tucson Arizona, and featured contributor to IBM's developerWorks. In 2016, Tony celebrates his 30th year anniversary with IBM Storage. He is author of the Inside System Storage series of books. This blog is for the open exchange of ideas relating to storage and storage networking hardware, software and services.
(Short URL for this blog: ibm.co/Pearson )
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My books are available on Lulu.com! Order your copies today!

Featured Redbooks and Redpapers:

  • IBM System Storage Solutions Handbook
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  • IBM Private, Public, and Hybrid Cloud Storage Solutions
  • IBM Spectrum Archive Enterprise Edition V1.2: Installation and Configuration Guide
  • IBM Spectrum Scale and ECM FileNet Content Manager Are a Winning Combination
  • IBM Spectrum Scale in an OpenStack Environment


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Disclaimer

"The postings on this site solely reflect the personal views of each author and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, strategies or opinions of IBM or IBM management."

(c) Copyright Tony Pearson and IBM Corporation. All postings are written by Tony Pearson unless noted otherwise.

Tony Pearson is employed by IBM. Mentions of IBM Products, solutions or services might be deemed as "paid endorsements" or "celebrity endorsements" by the US Federal Trade Commission.

This blog complies with the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines, IBM Social Computing Guidelines, and IBM Social Brand Governance. This blog is admistered by Tony Pearson and Sarochin Tollette.

Safe Harbor Statement: The information on IBM products is intended to outline IBM's general product direction and it should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision. The information on the new products is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into any contract. The information on IBM products is not a commitment, promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for IBM products remains at IBM's sole discretion.

Tony Pearson is a an active participant in local, regional, and industry-specific interests, and does not receive any special payments to mention them on this blog.

Tony Pearson receives part of the revenue proceeds from sales of books he has authored listed in the side panel.

Tony Pearson is not a medical doctor, and this blog does not reference any IBM product or service that is intended for use in the diagnosis, treatment, cure, prevention or monitoring of a disease or medical condition, unless otherwise specified on individual posts.

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Has it been a year already?

| | Comment (1) | Visits (7775)
I can't believe I have been blogging for a year now!

I have Jennifer Jones from IBM to thank for getting this started. She was my predecessor in the job I have now, and she was moving on to bigger and better things, and during the transition for me to take over, she suggested that we start a blog, podcast, or similar. While there are many blogs and podcasts inside the firewall of IBM, I wanted something to be accessible to all of our IBM sales team, IBM Business Partners, existing and prospective clients, and to enable comments, to enable two-waycommunication. Podcasts are very one-way, so we chose a blog instead.Getting it set up took a while, convincing our own management that this was worthwhile, and dealing with our legal department on the IBM blogging guidelines of what we can and cannot write about, we finally got it going last year, launching September 1, just in time for our 50 years of disk systems innovation campaign.

It has been a wild ride, a great learning experience, and has proven quite fulfilling for job satisfaction. Here are some observations and lessons I have learned along the way.

Roller Weblogger

Roller is the open source blog server that drives Sun Microsystem's blogs.sun.com employee blogging site, IBM DeveloperWorks blogs that this blog exists on, thousands of internal blogs at IBM Blog Central, the JRoller Java community site, and hundreds of others world-wide.Whereas there might be fancier blog systems elsewhere that I could have chosen, hosting my blog with IBM Developerworksseemed like a good choice. I can access from any web-browser capable machine, and enter my blog posts in nativeHTML, that I develop in the tool itself, or offline with a standard basic text editor like Microsoft Notepad that I can then cut-and-paste back in.

One lesson I learned the hard way was that Roller generates the Permalink URL for each blog post based on the first five words of the title. For that reason, it is important to chose an appropriate and unique title, avoiding the use of punctuation, quotation marks, or pharmaceutical "enhancement products" that might get rejected by SPAM filters.Once chosen, you can't change the title afterwards as it won't match the Permalink anymore.My blog post "Aperi is (enhancement product) for SMI-S" caused no end of grief to our Press Release team.

Writing blog posts in native HTML is not as hard as it sounds. I am limited to hosting a maximum of 24MB of files, and they can only be jpg, jpeg, gif, png, mp3, pdf or ppt format.So, wherever possible, I point to other websites for content.For those new to blogging, I recommendThe Barebones Guide to HTML.

Roller also generates for me a spreadsheet of all my page views for the week. Tracking blog traffic closely is as crazyas checking your company's stock price every day. These "web-stat" e-mails get filed directly into my Bacn folder on Lotus Notes.

Bloglines

In my earlyadvice to bloggers, I mentioned my choice of Bloglines as my RSS feed reader. When I subscribe to a new blog, I specify Full entries, not Partial,which allows me to scan it quickly, but filters out many of the non-text content like videos. It also allowed meto see what my own blog posts looked like from within a reader, so that I can write them appropriately.

I find if valuable to read other blogs, including those written by employees of our toughest competitors. Evenif you don't blog yourself, following blogs can be extremely valuable. Be careful what you leave as comments onother blogs, they may come back to haunt you later.

Currently, I track 55 blogs, some about storage,marketing, Web 2.0 issues, Second Life, Linux, or other areas of interest. I prefer blogs that make only 1-5 postsper week, so blogs like LifeHacker and LifeRemix are off my Bloglines list, but are excellent resourceswhen I am searching for something specific. If you think 55 is a lot of blogs, consider Timothy Ferriss' post onHow RobertScoble reads 622 RSS feeds each morning.

Wikipedia

I have quite an international readership, so I have to be careful using American idioms and pop cultural references.For example, in my blog post IBM acquires Softek, I mentioned "shotgun weddings" and had various responses asking what exactly did that mean,all from readers outside the USA. I've learned that sometimes you need to link them to an American Slang dictionary,or Wikipedia encyclopedia entry to explain these terms and phrases.

Technorati

Technoraticurrently tracks over 100 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. Getting my blogtracked had some issues. You have to join, thenpost a "claim"on your own blog. My mistake was having a case-sensitive URL with a mix of upper and lower case letters, but Technorati prefers all lower case. IBM worked with Technorati to get this resolved.

Tagging each post involves several lines of HTML, which has been semi-automated with a Technorati tag bookmarklet.

Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

I use Firefox, Safari, Dillo and Internet Explorer web browsers, so it is nice that I have access to allmy bookmarks in the same consistent manner. When I see content on a website that I might like to reference laterin a blog, I tag it with del.icio.us so that I can get to it later.

GTD

Fellow GTD-ers will quickly recognize this acronym, but for the rest of you, it refers to David Allen's book "Getting Things Done®".This is a great book! I learned about it reading other people's blogs, and found it incrediblyuseful helping me organize my time.There are various online tools available to help employ this method. I use Lotus Connections Activitiesfor group projects with co-workers at IBM, and BackPack for projects withmy friends outside of work.



YouTube

Speaking of YouTube, there are some incredible videos to watch, and some incredibly stupid ones as well.I did a recap recently in my blog post Fun with Storage Videos.Like blogging, YouTube can consume a large portion of your day if you let it. You don'twant to turn into the guy in this YouTube Video "Hold All My Calls, I'm too busy blogging".

The success of YouTube encouraged IBM to launch IBM TV, a portal for IBM's video and multimedia assets and make it easier for IBM employees, customers, partners and prospects to access and view IBM multimedia. The plan is to have eight anchor episodes per year, professionally hosted by TV personality, Joe Washington, and point to related offers and other resources for viewers to learn more.

IBM TV has been viewed close to 60,000 times thus far in 2007 and averages about 3,000 views per week. It covers all of the hot IT topics such as SOA, Linux, development innovations like Jazz, IT governance, systems and storage and a lot more.Check out the Main Player, Entitled Player (registration required) or Internal Education Player (for IBMers).

Second Life

Blogging also introduced me to Second Life. I asked around if anyone else within IBM was using Second Life, anddiscovered quite a few. I got invited to join our internal Eightbar group, and participated in various events, including an IBM Holidayparty that I discussed in my blog post"Building a Snowman in Second Life".

In April, we had a launch of our newest products in Second Life, and we plan to have two more Second Life events,September 20 and another in November, staged as "Meet the Experts" question and answer panels.

Facebook

I wrap up with Facebook. Actually, whereas most of my Web 2.0 efforts have been work-related, I have quite a few friends and family who follow my blog. Several were inspired to start their own blogs, such asPassages from Pamand Barry Whyte on Storage Virtualization. Bridging the gap is Facebook, something I can use to keep tabs on my friends, as well as my storage industry-related contacts.

Wow, that's quite a lot in one year. Well, I am done with my meetings down here in Sao Paulo, Brazil. My colleauges and I are returning tonight to enjoy the long Labor Day weekend.

technorati tags: IBM, Jennifer Jones, blogs, podcasts, Sun Microsystems, Roller, 50 years of disk, systems, innovation, guidelines, permalink, bloglines, , secondlife, linux, bacn, lifehacker, liferemix, idioms, pop culture, Wikipedia, Technorati, HTML, Del.icio.us, firefox, GTD, Lotus Connections Activities, BackPack, bookmarklet, YouTube, videos, IBMTV, SOA, Meet the Experts, Facebook,

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Tags:  marketing linux secondlife

Jim Cosentino is Retiring

| | Visits (5149)
(Dilbert cartoon)

August 31 is my good friend Jim Cosentino's retirement day as a full-time employee at IBM. After over 30 years at IBM, in various marketing, sales and consulting roles, he is going to be thinking about happy things instead of working. His last seven years has been at theIBM Poughkeepsie Customer Executive Briefing Center as the lead System Storage presenter.

The past few years, I've traveled with him around the world on various business trips, teaching our IBM sales force and IBM Business Partners about our System Storage offerings, and presenting to clients. He is a class act, always positive, laughing, seeing the bright side of things.

While "spend more time with his family" has become a business cliche, I know Jim will actually enjoy his retirement years, spend more time with his family, take on other pursuits and hobbies, and perhaps do some more traveling.

Jim, if you are reading this, I have one suggestion. I know you have lots of friends within IBM, and count myself as one of them, but may I suggest your first goal is to makeat least three newfriends, to help you in your transition to retirement.

Congratulations Jim! Enjoy your well-deserved retirement!

technorati tags: IBM, friend, Jim Cosentino, retirement, business, cliche, travel, System Storage, Dilbert, spend more time with family

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Tags:  marketing

Integrated Removable Media Manager on System z

| | Comment (1) | Visits (7350)
If you are ever down in Sao Paulo, Brazil, may I suggest not drinking "American amounts" of their "Brazilian Coffee". The coffee here is "robust", to say the least.

Yesterday, my blog focused on IBM iSCSI offerings that were announced in August.Also announced earlier this month, the Integrated Removable Media Manager (IRMM) on System zhas been years in the making.IRMM is a new robust systems management product for Linux® on IBM System z™ that manages open system media in heterogeneous distributed environments and virtualizes physical tape libraries. IRMM combines the capacity of multiple heterogeneous libraries into a single reservoir of tape storage that can be managed from a central point.By providing an integrated solution with the opportunity for both mainframe z/OS DFSMSrmm and distributed Tivoli® Storage Manager™ environments to be managed by IRMM, System z can now be a hub for the management of removable media.

The people who thought the "Mainframe is obsolete", and those that thought "Tape is dead", are both proven wrong again with this announcement. People are looking to deploy robust tape automation for backup and archive, and this convergence with mainframe makes perfect sense by providing business value that extends to other distributed systems.

technorati tags: American, Brazilian, coffee, IBM, iSCSI, announcements, IRMM, RMM, DFSMSrmm, TSM, Tivoli, mainframe, tape, robust, library, automation, DFSMSrmm, backup, archive

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Tags:  announcements tape

Announcements for August 2007

| | Comments (4) | Visits (9223)
The proof-of-concept that IBM Haifa research center developed back in 1998 became what we now call the iSCSI protocol.The book iSCSI: The Universal Storage Connection introduces the history as follows:
In the fall of 1999 IBM and Cisco met to discuss the possibility of combining their SCSI-over-TCP/IP efforts. After Cisco saw IBM's demonstration of SCSI over TCP/IP, the two companies agreed to develop a proposal that would be taken to the IETF for standardization.

There are three ways to introduce iSCSI into your data center:

  • Through a gateway, like the IBM System Storage N series gateway, that allows iSCSI-based servers connect to FC-based storage devices
  • Through a SAN switch or director, a FC-based server can access iSCSI-based storage, an iSCSI-based server accessing FC-based storage, or even iSCSI-based servers attaching to iSCSI-based storage.
  • Directly through the storage controller.

IBM has been delivering the first method with its successful IBM System Storage N series gateway products, buttoday we have announced additional support for the second and third methods.Here's a quick recap.

New SAN director blades

Supporting the second method, IBM TotalStorage SAN256B Director is enhanced to deliver iSCSI functionality with a new M48 iSCSI Blade, which includes 16 ports (8 Fibre Channel ports; and 8 Ethernet ports for iSCSI connectivity). We also announced a new Fibre Channel M48 Blade which provides 10 Gbps Fibre Channel Inter Switch Link (ISL) connectivity between SAN256B Directors.

Entry Level Disk Systems

Supporting the third method, IBM introduces new iSCSI-capabable disk systems, including the IBM System Storage DS3300 model using SAS drives, N3300 A10/A20 models and N3600 A10/A20 models supporting use of FC and SATA drives.The DS3000 Express models include frequently requested options, including appropriate host bus adapters (HBA) and cables. Likewise, we have announced hardware features for our IBM N series , such as TCP offload engine (TOE) network interface cards (NIC), HBA and cables.

With support for Boot-over-iSCSI, diskless rack-optimized and blade servers can boot Windows or Linux over Ethernet,eliminating the management hassles with internal disk.

All of this is part of IBM's overall push into the Small and Medium size Business marketplace, making it easier to shop for and buy from IBM and its many IBM Business Partners, easier to deploy and install storage, and easier tomanage the storage once you have it.

technorati tags: IBM, Cisco, iSCSI, gateways, announcement, DS3300, N3300, N3600, A10, A20, SAS, FC, SATA, HBA, TOE, NIC, cables, SCSI, TCP, boot-over-iSCSI, SMB, Ethernet

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Tags:  disk san announcements

Accessing Data in the Clouds

| | Visits (5682)
In his blog Rough Type, Nick Carr asks Where is my CloudBook?and points to John Markoff's 2-part series in the New York Times on computing in the clouds.(Read it here: Part 1, Part 2)

At first, I thought he meant computing while in an airplane, but instead, he is talking about computing on a laptop or other hand-held device that does not have an internal disk drive, no installedoperating system, no internal data storage. Instead, the idea is that you boot from a CD, accessyour data, and even some of your programs, over the internet. John used an Ubuntu Linux LiveCD in his example.

This week, I am in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and was "in the clouds" for over 10 hours flying from Dallas to here.The one time I am guaranteed "off-line" from the internet is on the plane, and I spend enough time on planesthat I am able to get work done despite being "disconnected".

The same reasons people want to get out of having a disk drive on their laptop, are the reasons data centersare getting out of internal disk on their servers.

  • disks crash, and typically are not protected in any RAID configuration on most laptops
  • operating systems get infected with viruses and malware
  • storage on one server is generally inaccessible to every other server

Booting from CD is especially clever. No more worrying about fixing your Windows registry, viruses,corrupted operating system files, or the cruft that accumulates on your C: drive that slowsyou down. The CD is the sameevery time, so it is like running your system with a freshly installed operating system every day.

The need for central repositories of data harkens back to the years of the IBM mainframe. Of course, whatmade sense back then continues to make sense now. The old 3270 terminals stored no data, and instead merelyprovided keyboard input and display text screen output to the vast amount of data stored on the central system.Today, the inputs are different, using your finger or mouse instead to point to what you want, sliding itacross to make things happen, and the output may now include photos, audio and video, but the concept isstill the same.

I carry my Ubuntu Linux LiveCD with me on every business trip. Combined with externally rewriteable media,such as a USB key, you can get work done even when you are in an airplane, and upload it whenyou are back on the net.

technorati tags: Nick Carr, John Markoff, NYT, Cloudbook, airplane, cruft, Ubuntu, Linux, Brazil, LiveCD, IBM, mainframe, USB key, external, storage

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Tags:  disk linux
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