Inside System Storage -- by Tony Pearson

Perhaps it was a coincidence that I discussed IBM's storage strategy in my post[Foundations and Flavorings] on January 28, shortly followed by NetApp's announcing V-series gateway [support of Texas Memory Systems' RamSan-500] on February 3. These two events mighthave been the trigger that pushed ChuckH over the edge to put pen to paper, .. finger to keyboard.

Flinging FUD in all directions was ChuckH's not-so-subtle way to remind the world that EMC is the only major storage vendor to not offer a successful storage virtualization product. Withoutfirst-hand experience with well-designed storage virtualization, ChuckH conjectures that a configuration matching intelligent front-ends to reliable back-ends might be more expensive, might be more difficult to manage, or might be harder to support.

(Note: Rest assured, IBM can demonstrate that a modular approach, combining intelligent front-ends to reliableback-ends can help reduce costs, be easier to manage, and be fully supported. Contact yourlocal IBM Business Partner or storage sales rep for details.)

The reaction was notas much a blogfight and more of a [dog pile]. Defending NetApp were[Alex McDonald],[Kostadis Roussos], and [Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat]. On the HDS front, we have [Tony Asaro]. My fellow blogger from IBM took his swing with [How Quickly We Forget].And finally, pointing out EMC's hypocrisy, overall, was [James Or] from Storage Monkeys.

My favorite was from Nigel Poulton's post on[Ruptured Monkey]. Here's an excerpt:

In fact, I'm fairly certain that EMC don't back away from customers who run HP or IBM servers and say "sorry we cant help you here, an end to end HP or IBM solution would be much better for you when it comes to troubleshooting……. putting our storage in would only add extra layers of complexity and make things messy….."

On most other days, ChuckH has well-written, insightful blog posts that show that EMC brings some value to the industry. I could have made a snarky reference to[Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde], or indicate this post proves that nobody at EMC is editing or reviewingChuck's thoughts before they get posted. But it's too late, Chuck already got the message, and added the following to bring the discussion back to civility:

When considering the broad range of storage media service levels available today (flash, FC, SATA, spin-down, etc.) what's the best way to offer these media choices in an array? Is the answer (a) combine smaller arrays from different vendors together behind a virtualization head, or (b) invest the time and effort to build arrays that can directly support all of these media types?

Would anyone like to try a cogent response to the question posed, please?

To address ChuckH's question, Nigel's post gave me the idea to use today's 200th year celebration of [Charles Darwin]. Over millions of years, Charles Darwin argued, evolution results in change in the inherited traits of a population of organisms from one generation to the next.A key component of this is a biological process called [mitosis] that allows a single cell to split and become two cells. In some cases, these individual daughter cells can then specialize to specific functions, such as nerve cells, muscle cells or bone cells. Over time, adaptations that work well carry forward, and thosethat don't get left behind. I find it interesting that before [On the Origin of Species] was published in 1859, works of fiction like Mary Shelley's[Frankenstein] had monsters being"created", and afterward, monsters were the result of mutation or selective adaptation.

Nigel compares EMC's monolithic approach to placing an intelligent front-end with a reliable back-end as "One man band, where one guy is trying playing all the instruments himself" versus the "Philharmonic Orchestra". I would take it one step further, comparing single-cell organisms to multi-cell life forms.

Innovative companies like Google and Amazon can't wait for a completely integrated solution from a major IT vendor to meet their needs. Why should they? There are open standards, and ways to interconnect the best intelligence into a [dynamic infrastructure®.].You don't need to wait another million years to see which way the IT marketplace considers the better approach. Just look at the last 60 years. Back then, computer systems were all integrated, server, storage, and the wires that connected them were all inside a huge container. Then, mitosis happened, and IBM created external tape storage in 1952, and external disk storage in 1956. Open standards for interfaces allowed third party manufacturers like HDS, StorageTek and EMC to offer plug-compatible storage devices.

On the server side, it didn't take long for functionality in mainframes to split off. Mitosis happened again, with front-end UNIX systems processing incoming data, and mainframes handling the back-end data bases and printing. The client-server era replaced dumb terminals with more intelligent desktops and workstations, and these could handle the front-end processing to display information, with the back-end storage and number-crunching being handled by the UNIX and mainframe systems they connected to.Connections between desktops and servers, and from servers to storage, have also evolved. From thousands of direct-attach cables to networks of switches and directors.

Charles Darwin was particularly interested in cases where evolution happened faster or slower than in other cases. While IBM and Microsoft encouraged third-party innovations on the PC side, Apple resisted mitosis, trying to keep its machines pure single-cell, integrated solutions.For the same reasons that you can't fight the laws of nature, Apple ended up having to support I/O ports to external devices. Thanks to open standards like USB and Firewire, you can connect third-party storage to Apple computers. My little Mac Mini at home has more devices hanging off it than any of my Windows or Linux boxes! And Apple's iPod is successful because its iTunes software runs on both Windows and Mac OS operating systems.

Every time mitosis happens in the IT industry, it opens up opportunities to specialize, to innovate, to adapt to a dynamically changing world. When mitosis is suppressed, you get limiting products and frustratedengineers leaving to form their own start-up companies.But when mitosis is encouraged, you get successful products, solutions and partnerships positioned for a smarter planet.

Happy Valentines Day, Chuck!

technorati tags: EMC, Chuck Hollis, frankenstorage, Frankenstein, FUD, IBM, NetApp, TMS, V-series, RamSan-500, storage virtualization, FC, SATA, Charles Darwin, HDS, StorageTek, Microsoft, Apple, UNIX, Linux, Windows, iPod, iTunes, mitosis, Invista, EDL, NX4, Centera, Valentines Day, dynamic infrastructure, smarter planet

We had so much announced, that I will just cover the disk systems today, and deal with tape systems and software tomorrow.

IBM System Storage DS8000 series

IBM continues to invest heavily in its strategic [DS8000 series].For [existing 2107 machines], IBM's new DS8000 microcode supports:

• 1 TB 7200 rpm Serial ATA (SATA) Disk Drives

  Now that IBM XIV has proven that 1TB SATA are safe for high-end tier-1 enterprise class use, we extended DS8000 support to include SATA support also. DS8000 supports RAID-6 and RAID-10 for these.

• Intelligent Write Caching

  IBM Research conducts extensive investigations into improved algorithms for cache management. Intelligent Write Caching boosts performance for both temporal and spatial locality.

• Remote Pair FlashCopy®

  This allows you to FlashCopy volume A to volume B, with Volume B remotely mirrored to Volume C at a secondary location, via Metro Mirror. This allows you to have a consistent copy of your data at both locations.

For[newly ordered 242x models], you get all the features above, plus the following additional support:

• Full Disk Encryption (FDE)

  IBM was the first in the industry to deliver tape-drive encryption, so it makes sense that IBM is also the first in the industry to deliver disk-drive encryption. These are 15K rpm drives in standard 146GB, 300GB and 450GB capacities. As with tape, encrypting at the disk device eliminates the huge overhead from server-based encryption methods.

• Solid State Drive (SSD)

  You can also have Solid State Disk drives in your DS8000, in 73GB and 146GB capacities, protected by RAID-5.If you are wondering what data to put on these much-faster drives, IBM has taken the work and worry out by havingintelligence in DB2 to optimize what gets placed on SSD to get the most performance improvement.

IBM System Storage XIV

Continuing the incredible marketplace excitement over its Cloud-Opimized Storage[XIV series], IBM now has announced[new capacity options]. The IBM XIV R2 that we announced last August 2008 was a fixed 15 module configuration. In thenew configurations, you can start with as little as six modules, representing a 40% partial rack of the originalfull model. Here is a table that shows the details:

Total Modules	6	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Useable Capacity (TB)	27	43	50	54	61	66	73	79
Interface Modules	3	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
Data Modules	3	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
Disk Drives	72	108	120	132	144	156	168	180
Fibre Channel Ports	8	16	16	20	20	24	24	24
iSCSI Ports	0	4	4	6	6	6	6	6
Cache Memory (GB)	48	72	80	88	96	104	112	120

IBM System Storage N series

And last, but not least, we have two new models in IBM's[N6000 series].The [N6060]has model A12 (single controller) and model A22 (dual controller). These are disk-less controllers thatyou can configure in either appliance mode or gateway mode. In appliance mode, you can attachdisk drawers such as the EXN1000, EXN2000 or EXN4000. In gateway mode, you attach external disk systems, suchas the IBM DS8000 or XIV above.

Also, IBM introduces the new [2101 model N42 rack], which has the following features:

• It's ruggedized to handle earthquakes. IBM brings a feature that we've had for a while on other disk systems to the N series with a collection of bolts and anchors to secure the rack from physical tremors.
• It's instrumented for IBM Active Energy Manager, a component of IBM Systems Director. New iPDUs are designed to help measure and monitor energy management components. As companies get more concerned about thefate of the planet, monitoring energy consumption can help reduce carbon footprint.
  
  

I'll cover the rest of the announcements tomorrow!

technorati tags: IBM, DS8000, SATA, SSD, Encryption, SATA, RAID-5, RAID-6, RAID-10, FlashCopy, FDE, COS, XIV, N6060, EXN1000, EXN2000, EXN4000, N42, earthquakes, ruggedized, instrumented, iPDU, carbon footprint

IBM TS7650 and TS7650G ProtecTIER deduplication

In addition to the [TS7650G gateway model] new [Enterprise Edition V2 software], IBM announced four new [TS7650 appliance models] for a complete, integrated solution. The fourconfigurations include the controller and disk:

• 7TB, single controller
• 18TB, single controller
• 36TB, single controller
• 36TB, dual controller in clustered configuration

These disk capacities can have up to 25x times their effective capacity with IBM's HyperFactorin-line deduplication capability. So the smallest 7TB model could be as effective as 175TB of traditionaldisk storage.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) v6

After years and years in development, IBM announces[TSM v6]. Here's a quick summary of the key features:

• DB2 instead of an internal database

  For years, people have complained that IBM used its own internal relational database. This was becausewhen TSM was first launched back in 1993, the DB2 did not have all the features on all of the various server platforms that TSM needed. Today, DB2is the leading relational database on all the key platforms that TSM server runs on, and therefore good enough for use within Tivoli Storage Manager. If you don't already have DB2, it is included for use with TSM v6.1 at no additional charge. Do you have to become a DB2 expert to use TSM? No! The TSM administration commands have been updated to hide all the complexity of DB2 away, behind the scenes. You now just use TSM commands to administer the database,as you did before. IBM will provide conversion utilities to help existing TSM customers migrate to thisnew database environment.

• Better Operational Reporting

  Another big complaint was that TSM had fixed reporting, and administrators that wanted customized reportsoften had to resort to purchasing third party products. With the change over to DB2, TSM now enables youto create your own reports using Eclipse's Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools[BIRT]! If you haven't used BIRT, you can downloada free open source copy and start playing around with its capabilities. This is combined with a revamped GUI that provides a customizable dashboard using IBM's Integrated Solutions Console (ISC)infrastructure.

• Software-based Deduplication

  Lastly, IBM has incorporated deduplication capability within the TSM v6.1 software for its own diskstorage pools. This is done in a post-process manner so as to dedupe all of your legacy backup dataas well, not just the new stuff, without impacting the current TSM server performance.

  At this point, you might be thinking "Wait, what about IBM TS7650 ProtecTIER deduplication?" which is really two questions.

  1. Can I use TSM v6.1 with IBM TS7650 ProtecTIER?

     Yes, however since TSM progressive incremental method is vastly more efficientthan other backup products like Veritas NetBackup or EMC Legato NetWorker, the TS7650 may only get 10x reductionof TSM backups, versus up to 25x with full-backups-every-night backup schemes. TSM only dedupes itsdisk storage pools, so it won't dedupe data directed at tape systems like the TS7650 or othertape libraries. This avoids the "double dedupe" concern.

  2. When should I use TSM's software version versus TS7650's hardware deduplication?

     This is a positioning question. For now, the cut-over point is about 10TB per night backup processing. If youbackup more than 10TB per night, TS7650 hardware may be the better approach. If you are a smaller customer nowhere near that volume of data, then using TSM v6.1 software deduplication may be a morecost-effective solution. If you start small, and grow beyond 10TB per night, it is easy to bring ina TS7650 into an existing TSM environment and migrate the data over.

• Sub-capacity Licensing

  If you run TSM server on a logical partition (LPAR) or virtual guest OS under VMware ESX, Xen or Microsoft'sHyper-V environment, why should you have to license it for the whole box? With TSM v6.1, you nowcan pay for only the amount of processors you use, down to a single core even.If you currently run TSM v5 on z/OS, you can migrate over to TSM v6.1 server for Linux on System z totake advantage of cost savings using IFL engines.

IBM Tivoli Key Lifecycle Manager (TKLM) v1.0

Don't let the "v1.0" scare you, this is the successor to IBM's Encryption Key Manager (EKM) that hasthousands of clients using today with IBM encrypting tape drives. The new TKLM adds support for full disk encryption (FDE) drives--like those for the DS8000 I mentioned in [yesterday's post]--as well as new features to support key rotation for compliance and business controls.

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center

Last, but not least, we have IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center [TSPC]. No, that is not a typo. IBM is renaming IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center to Tivoli Storage Productivity Center toavoid trademark conflicts with the [Professional Golfer's Association].

This is not just renaming existing product. Here some key improvements:

• TSPC brings back together Productivity Center Standard Edition (Disk, Tape, SAN and Data) with Productivity Center for Replication, which were separate at birth a few years ago.
• TSPC adds support for IBM's Storage Enterprise Resource Planner[SERP] from theNovusCG acquisition.
• End-to-end view for EMC storage devices connected to supported servers via EMC Powerpath multipathing driver. As customers switch away from EMC Control Center over to IBM's Productivity Center, IBM can continue to provide support for existing EMC gear.

Of course, IBM will still offer IBM System Storage Productivity Center[SSPC] which is a piece of hardware pre-installed with Productivity Center software.

Hopefully, you can now see why I had to split up all these announcements into separate posts acrossmultiple days!

technorati tags: IBM, TS7650, TS7650G, gateway, appliance, ProtecTIER, HyperFactor, TSM, DB2, BIRT, deduplication, Veritas, NetBackup, EMC, Legato Networker, LPAR, VMware, Xen, Hyper-V, z/OS, Linux, TKLM, TSPC, SSPC, Productivity Center

Gowri, here are your answers:

Q1. Does IBM offer a Pay-as-you-Go [PAYGO] upgrade path for its IBM XIV disk storage system?

The concern was expressed as:

PAYGO also requires the customer to purchase the remaining capacity within 12 months of installation. So it is More of a 12-month installment plan than pay-as-you-grow.

A1. Actually, IBM offers several methods for your convenience:

• With IBM's Capacity on Demand (CoD) plan, you get the full framewith 15 modules installed on your data center floor, but only pay for the first four modules 21 TB, then pay for 5.3TB module increments as you need them over the next 12 months. This is ideal for companies that don't know how fast they will grow, but do not want to wait for new modules to be delivered and installed when needed.
• With IBM's Partial Rack offering, you can get a system with as little as six modules (27TB),and then over time, add more modules as you need. This does not have to be done within 12 months, you can stay at six modules for as long as you like, and you can take as long asyou want to add more modules. When you are ready for more capacity, the drawer or drawerscan be delivered, and installed non-disruptively.

Neither of these are "payment installment plans", but certainly if you want to spread yourcosts into regularly-scheduled monthlypayments across multiple years, IBM Global Financing can probably work something out.

Q2. Does IBM consider the XIV as green storage?

The concern was expressed as:

You are powering (8.4KW) and cooling all 180 drives for the whole duration, whether you're using the capacity or not. is it what you called Greener power usage..?

A2. Yes. IBM considers the IBM XIV as green storage. The 8.4KW per frame is lessthan the 10-plus KW that a comparable 2-frame EMC DMX-950 system would consume. Theenergy savings in IBM XIV comes from delivering FC-like speeds using slower SATA disks that rotate slower, and therefore take less energy to spin.

In the fully-populated or Capacity on Demand configuration, you would spin all 180disks. However, using the partial rack configuration, the 6-module has only 40 percent ofthe disks, and therefore consumes only 40 percent of the energy. If you don't plan to storeat least 20-30 TB, you might consider the DS3000, DS4000, DS5000, or DS8000 disk system instead.

Q3. How do you connect more than 24 host ports to an IBM XIV?

The concern was expressed as:

And finally do not forget my question on 24-FC Ports… Up to 24 Fiber Channel ports offering 4 Gbps, 2Gbps or 1 Gbps multi-mode and single-mode support.Stop.. stop.. how you gonna squeeze existing bunch of FC cables in 24 ports?

A3. Best practices suggest that if you have ten or more physical servers, each with two separate FC ports, then you should use a SAN switch or director in between. If you require four ports per server, then you would need a SAN switch beyond six servers to connect to the IBM XIV. If you consider that 24 FC ports, at 4Gbps, represents nearly 10 GB/sec of bandwidth, you will recognize that this is not a performance bottleneck for the system.

Gowri, I hope this answers your questions!

technorati tags: IBM, XIV, Gowri Ananthan, EMC, BarryB, CoD, partial rack, full rack, FC, SATA, DMX-950, green, disk system, multi-mode, single-mode, best practices