Continuing this week's discussion on IBM announcements, today I'll cover our integrated systems.

The problem with spreading out these announcements across several days' worth of blog posts is that others beat you to the punch. Fellow blogger Richard Swain (IBM) has his post [Move that File], and TechTarget's Dave Raffo has an article titled [ "IBM SONAS gains policy-driven tiering, gateway to IBM XIV Storage System"].

By combining multiple components into a single "integrated system", IBM can offer a blended disk-and-tape storage solutions. This provides the best of both worlds, high speed access using disk, while providing lower costs and more energy efficiency with tape. According to a study by the Clipper Group, tape can be 23 times less expensive than disk over a 5 year total cost of ownership (TCO).

The two we introduced recently were the [IBM Information Archive] and the Scale-Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS). This week, IBM announced some enhancements as SONAS v1.1.1 release. SONAS is the productized version of IBM's Scale-Out File Services (SoFS), which I discussed in my posts [Area Rugs versus Wall-to-Wall Carpeting] and [More details about IBM's Clustered Scalable NAS].

ILM and HSM data movement

I have covered Information Lifecycle Management several times in this post, including my posts [ILM for my iPod], [Times a Million], and [Using ILM to Save Trees], to name a few.

I've also covered Hierarchical Storage Management, such as my post [Seven Tiers of Storage at ABN Amro], and my role as lead architect for DFSMS on z/OS in general, and DFSMShsm in particular.

However, some explanation might be warranted in the use of these two terms in regards to SONAS. In this case, ILM refers to policy-based file placement, movement and expiration on internal disk pools. This is actually a GPFS feature that has existed for some time, and was tested to work in this new configuration. Files can be individually placed on either SAS (15K RPM) or SATA (7200 RPM) drives. Policies can be written to move them from SAS to SATA based on size, age and days non-referenced. HSM is also a form of ILM, in that it moves data from SONAS disk to external storage pools managed by IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. A small stub is left behind in the GPFS file system indicating the file has been "migrated". Any reference to read or update this file will cause the file to be "recalled" back from TSM to SONAS for processing. The external storage pools can be disk, tape or any other media supported by TSM. Some estimate that as much as 60 to 80 percent of files on NAS have low reference and should be stored on tape instead of disk, and now SONAS with HSM makes that possible.

This distinction allows the ILM movement to be done internally, within GPFS, and the HSM movement to be done externally, via TSM. Both ILM and HSM movement take advantage of the GPFS high-speed policy engine, which can process 10 million files per node, run in parallel across all interface nodes. Note that TSM is not required for ILM movement. In effect, SONAS brings the policy-based management features of DFSMS for z/OS mainframe to all the rest of the operating systems that access SONAS.

HTTP and NIS support

In addition to NFS v2, NFS v3, and CIFS, the SONAS v1.1.1 adds the HTTP protocol. Over time, IBM plans to add more protocols in subsequent releases. Let me know which protocols you are interested in, so I can pass that along to the architects designing future releases!

SONAS v1.1.1 also adds support for Network Information Service (NIS), a client/server based model for user administration. In SONAS, NIS is used for netgroup and ID mapping only. Authentication is done via Active Directory, LDAP or Samba PDC.

Asynchronous Replication

SONAS already had synchronous replication, which was limited in distance. Now, SONAS v1.1.1 provides asynchronous replication, using rsync, at the file level. This is done over Wide Area Network (WAN) across to any other SONAS at any distance.

Hardware enhancements

Interface modules can now be configured with either 64GB or 128GB of cache. Storage now supports both 450GB and 600GB SAS (15K RPM) and both 1TB and 2TB SATA (7200 RPM) drives. However, at this time, an entire 60-drive drawer must be either all one type of SAS or all one type of SATA. I have been pushing the architects to allow each 10-pack RAID rank to be independently selectable. For now, a storage pod can have 240 drives, 60 drives of each type of disk, to provide four different tiers of storage. You can have up to 30 storage pods per SONAS, for a total of 7200 drives.

An alternative to internal drawers of disk is a new "Gateway" iRPQ that allows the two storage nodes of a SONAS storage pod to connect via Fibre Channel to one or two XIV disk systems. You cannot mix and match, a storage pod is either all internal disk, or all external XIV. A SONAS gateway combined with external XIV is referred to as a "Smart Business Storage Cloud" (SBSC), which can be configured off premises and managed by third-party personnel so your IT staff can focus on other things.

See the Announcement Letters for the SONAS [hardware] and [software] for more details.

For those who are wondering how this positions against IBM's other NAS solution, the IBM System Storage N series, the rule of thumb is simple. If your capacity needs can be satisfied with a single N series box per location, use that. If not, consider SONAS instead. For those with non-IBM NAS filers that realize now that SONAS is a better approach, IBM offers migration services.

Both the Information Archive and the SONAS can be accessed from z/OS or Linux on System z mainframe, from "IBM i", AIX and Linux on POWER systems, all x86-based operating systems that run on System x servers, as well as any non-IBM server that has a supported NAS client.

technorati tags: , IBM, Announcements, SONAS, SoFS, Information+Archive, Richard Swain, TechTarget, ILM, HSM, storage tiers, GPFS, TSM, HTTP, NIS, TSM, NAS, iRPQ, XIV, SBSC, z/OS, Linux, AIX

Tags:  hsm z/os ibm information+archive http richard+swain sofs irpq aix nis ilm linux sbsc sonas xiv tsm gpfs techtarget storage+tiers announcements

Well, it's Tuesday again, and that means IBM announcements! Right on the heels of our big storage launch on February 9, today IBM announced some exciting options for its modular disk systems. Let's take a look:

2TB SATA-II drives

That's right, you can now DOUBLE your capacity with 2TB SATA type-II drives on the DS3950, DS4200, DS4700, DS5020, DS5100 and DS5300 disk controllers, as well as the DS4000 EXP420, EXP520, EXP810, EXP5000 and EXP5060 expansion drawers. Here are the Announcement Letters for the [HVEC] and [AAS] ordering systems.

300GB Solid State Drives

IBM also announces 300GB solid state drives (SSD) for the DS5100 and DS5300. These are four times larger than the 73GB drives IBM offered last year, for those workloads that need high read IOPS such as Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications. Here is the [Announcement Letter].

New N series model N3400

For customers that need less than the minimum 21TB that our IBM Scale-Out Network Attach Storage (SONAS) can provide, IBM offers the new N3400 unified storage disk system, with support for NFS, CIFS, iSCSI and FCP. This is a 2U high 12 drive model that can be expanded up to 136 drives, basically doubling all the stats from last year's N3300 model. Fellow blogger, Rich Swain (IBM), does a great job recapping the speeds and feeds over on his blog [News and Information about IBM N series].

It also appears that the reports and rumors of the death of the DS6800 are premature. Don't believe misleading statements from competitors, such as those found written by fellow blogger BarryB (EMC), aka "the Storage Anarchist", in his latest post [Bring Out Your Dead] showing a cute little tombstone with "Feb 2010" on the bottom. Actually, if he had bothered to read IBM's [Announcement Letter], he would have realized that IBM plans to continue to sell these until June. Of course, IBM will continue to support both new and existing DS6800 customers for many years to come.

Technically, BarryB does not make any factually incorrect statements for me to correct on his blog. The idea that a product is "dead" is, of course, just opinion, and competitors poke fun at each others' announcements every day. One could argue that the EMC V-Max was "dead" after the ITG whitepaper [Cost/Benefit Case for IBM XIV Storage System - Comparing Costs for IBM XIV and EMC V-Max Systems] demonstrated that the IBM XIV cost 63 percent less than a comparable EMC V-Max over the life of three years total cost of ownership (TCO) back in July 2009. The comparison was made with data from clients in a variety of industries including manufacturing, health care, life sciences, telecommunications, financial services, and the public sector.  This could explain why so many EMC customers are buying or investigating the IBM XIV and the rest of the IBM storage portfolio.

technorati tags: announcements, exp420, exp520, ds5300, exp5060, exp810, ds6800, ds5020, ds3950, ds4200, ds4700, ds5100, ds4000, exp5000, ds6000, DS6800, XIV, EMC, Barry Burke, BarryB, V-Max

Tags:  ds6000 ds4700 exp5060 emc ds5020 ds3950 ds4000 barryb ds6800 exp810 ds4200 exp420 ds5300 xiv ds5100 exp520 barry+burke v-max exp5000 announcements

It's Tuesday, and that means more IBM announcements!

I haven't even finished blogging about all the other stuff that got announced last week, and here we are with more announcements. Since IBM's big [Pulse 2010 Conference] is next week, I thought I would cover this week's announcement on Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) v6.2 release. Here are the highlights:

Client-Side Data Deduplication

This is sometimes referred to as "source-side" deduplication, as storage admins can get confused on which servers are clients in a TSM client-server deployment. The idea is to identify duplicates at the TSM client node, before sending to the TSM server. This is done at the block level, so even files that are similar but not identical, such as slight variations from a master copy, can benefit. The dedupe process is based on a shared index across all clients, and the TSM server, so if you have a file that is similar to a file on a different node, the duplicate blocks that are identical in both would be deduplicated.

This feature is available for both backup and archive data, and can also be useful for archives using the IBM System Storage Archive Manager (SSAM) v6.2 interface.

Simplified management of Server virtualization

TSM 6.2 improves its support of VMware guests by adding auto-discovery. Now, when you spontaneously create a new virtual machine OS guest image, you won't have to tell TSM, it will discover this automatically! TSM's legendary support of VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) now eliminates the manual process of keeping track of guest images.  TSM also added support of the Vstorage API for file level backup and recovery.

While IBM is the #1 reseller of VMware, we also support other forms of server virtualization. In this release, IBM adds support for Microsoft Hyper-V, including support using Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS).

Automated Client Deployment

Do you have clients at all different levels of TSM backup-archive client code deployed all over the place? TSM v6.2 can upgrade these clients up to the latest client level automatically, using push technology, from any client running v5.4 and above. This can be scheduled so that only certain clients are upgraded at a time.

Simultaneous Background Tasks

The TSM server has many background administrative tasks:

• Migration of data from one storage pool to another, based on policies, such as moving backups and archives on a disk pool over to a tape pools to make room for new incoming data.
• Storage pool backup, typically data on a disk pool is copied to a tape pool to be kept off-site.
• Copy active data. In TSM terminology, if you have multiple backup versions, the most recent version is called the active version, and the older versions are called inactive. TSM can copy just the active versions to a separate, smaller disk pool.

In previous releases, these were done one at a time, so it could make for a long service window. With TSM v6.2, these three tasks are now run simultaneously, in parallel, so that they all get done in less time, greatly reducing the server maintenance window, and freeing up tape drives for incoming backup and archive data. Often, the same file on a disk pool is going to be processed by two or more of these scheduled tasks, so it makes sense to read it once and do all the copies and migrations at one time while the data is in buffer memory.

Enhanced Security during Data Transmission

Previous releases of TSM offered secure in-flight transmission of data for Windows and AIX clients. This security uses Secure Socket Layer (SSL) with 256-bit AES encryption. With TSM v6.2, this feature is expanded to support Linux, HP-UX and Solaris.

Improved support for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications

I remember back when we used to call these TDPs (Tivoli Data Protectors). TSM for ERP allows backup of ERP applications, seemlessly integrating with database-specific tools like IBM DB2, Oracle RMAN, and SAP BR*Tools. This allows one-to-many and many-to-one configurations between SAP servers and TSM servers. In other words, you can have one SAP server backup to several TSM servers, or several SAP servers backup to a single TSM server. This is done by splitting up data bases into "sub-database objects", and then process each object separately. This can be extremely helpful if you have databases over 1TB in size. In the event that backing up an object fails and has to be re-started, it does not impact the backup of the other objects.

To learn more, read the [IBM Press Release], attend the Pulse 2010 conference next week, or participate in the [IBM Pulse community]!

technorati tags: , announcements, IBM, Pulse, conference, TSM, Tivoli, SSAM, backup, archive, VMware, VCB, Hyper-V, Microsoft, SSL, AES, encryption, in-flight, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, ERP, DB2, Oracle, RMAN, SAP, BR*Tools, ibm-pulse, pulse2010

Tags:  pulse vcb br*tools hp-ux in-flight pulse2010 vmware rman hyper-v conference linux microsoft ibm archive announcements sap solaris ibm-pulse tivoli encryption ssl oracle ssam aes db2 backup erp tsm

Well, it's Tuesday again, and that means IBM announcements!

We've got a variety of storage-related items today, so here's my quick recap:

DS5020 and EXP520 disk systems

The new [IBM System Storage DS5020] provides the functional replacement for DS4700 disk systems. These are combined controller and 16 drives in a compact 3U package. The EXP520 expansion drawer provides additional 16 drives per 3U drawer. A DS5020 can support upo to six additional EXP520, for a total of 112 drives per system. The DS5020 supports both 8 Gbps FC as well as 1GbE iSCSI.

New Remote Support Manager (DS-RSM model RS2)

The [IBM System Storage DS-RSM Model RS2] supports of up to 50 disk systems, any mix of DS3000, DS4000 and DS5000 series. It includes "call home" support, which is really "email home", sending error alerts to IBM if there are any problems. The RSM also allows IBM to dial-in to perform diagnostics before arrival, reducing the time needed to resolve a problem. The model RS2 is a beefier model with more processing power than the prior generation RS1.

New Ethernet Switches

With the increased interest in iSCSI protocol, and the new upcoming Fibre Channel over Convergence Enhanced Ethernet (FCoCEE), IBM's re-entrance into the ethernet switch market has drawn a lot of interest.

• The [IBM Ethernet Switch r- series] offers 4-slot, 8-slot, 16-slot, and 32-slot models. Each slot can handle either 16 10GbE ports, or 48 1GbE ports. This means up to 1,536 ports.
• The [c-series] now offers a 24-port model. This is either 24 copper and 4 fiber optic, or 24 fiber optic. The "hybrid fiber" SFP fiber optic can handle either single or multi-mode, eliminating the need to commit to one or the other, providing greater data center flexibility.
• The [IBM Ethernet Switch B24X] offers 24 fiber optic (that can handle 10GbE or 1GbE) and 4 copper (10/100/1000 MbE RJ45) ports.

Storage Optimization and Integration Services

[IBM Storage Optimization and Integration Services] are available. IBM service consultants use IBM's own Storage Enterprise Resource Planner (SERP) software to evaluate your environment and provide recommendations on how to improve your information infrastructure. This can be especially helpful if you are looking at deploying server virtualization like VMware or Hyper-V.

As people look towards deploying a dynamic infrastructure, these new offerings can be a smart fit.

technorati tags: IBM, DS5020, EXP520, DS-RSM, iSCSI, FCoE, FCoCEE, B04R, B08R, B16R, B32R, B24C, B24X, GbE, 10GbE, SFP, Hybrid Fiber, SERP, VMware, Hyper-V

Tags:  networking announcements disk

Well, it's Tuesday, and you know what that means? IBM announcements!

Today we had several for the IBM System Storage product line. Here are some of them:

DS8000 gets thinner, leaner and faster

The 4.3 level of microcode for the IBM System Storage DS8000 series disk systems [announced enhancements] for both fixed block architecture (FBA) LUNs and count key data (CKD) volumes.

For FBA LUNs that attach to Linux, UNIX and Windows distributed systems, IBM announced DS8000 Thin Provisioning native support. Of course, many people already had this by putting IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) in front, but now DS8000 clients out there without SVC can also achieve benefits ofthin provisioning. This support also improves quick initialization a whopping 2.6 times faster.

For CKD volumes attached to z/OS on System z mainframes, IBM announced zHPF multitrack support for z/OS 1.9 and above. zHPF provide high performance FICON performance, and can now handle multitrack I/O transfers foreven better performance for zFS, HFS, PDSE, and extended striped data sets.

XIV gets better connected

A lot of XIV[announced enhancements] and preview announcements centered around better connectivity. Here's a run down:

• Better host attachment connectivity by beefing up the interface modules that hold the FCP and iSCSI interface cards. XIV disk arrays have 3 to 6 of these in different configurations, and since they manage both their own disks,as well as receive host I/O requests for other disks, are basically doing double-duty.These interface modules can now be ordered as [Dual-CPU] modules.
• Better infrastructure management by connecting XIV with the industry standard SMI-S interface to IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center. Now, XIV can be part of the single pane of glass console that manages all of your other disk arrays, tape libraries and SAN fabrics.
• Better copy services for backups by connecting XIV with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Advanced Copy Services. TSM for Advanced Copy Services is application aware and can coordinate XIV Snapshots similar to its current support for SVC and DS8000 FlashCopy capabilities.
• Better connectivity to security systems by supporting LDAP credentials. Before, you had individual userid and passwords for each XIV, and these were probably different than all the other userid/password combinations you have for every other box on your data center floor. IBM is working on getting all products to support theLightweight Directory Access Protocol, or [LDAP] so that we can reach the nirvana of "single sign-on",one userid/password per administrator for all IT devices in the company.
• Better support with flexible warranty periods and non-disruptive code load options.
• Better remote copy support by connecting to sites far, far away. IBM previewed that it will provideasynchronous disk mirroring from one XIV to another XIV natively. Before this, XIV's synchronous mirroring was limited to 300km distances. Many of our clients do long distance global mirroring of their XIV today behind an SVC, but again, for those out there that don't yet have an SVC, this can be a reasonable alternative.

TS7650 ProtecTIER data deduplication appliance now offers "no dedupe" option

In what some might consider a surprising move, IBM announced a "no dedupe" licensing option on their premiere deduplication solution, which somewhat reminds me of IBM's NOCOPY option on DS8000 FlashCopy. At first I thought "Are you kidding me?!?!" However, this new license option allows the TS7650 appliance to compete with other virtual tape libraries (VTL) that do not offer deduplication capability on an even playing field. It also allows TS7650 to be used for data that doesn'tdedupe very well, such as seismic recordings, satellite images, or what have you. There are also clients who do not yet feel comfortable to dedupe their financial records for compliance reasons.This option now allows IBM to withdraw from marketing the TS7530 non-dedupe library. Having one technology thatdoes both dedupe and no-dedupe is better than offering two separate libraries based on different technologies.

The ProtecTIER series also announced [IP remote distance replication]. This can be used to replicate virtualtape cartridges in one ProtecTIER over to another ProtecTIER at a remote location. You can decide to replicateall or just a subset of your virtual tapes, and this feature can be used to migrate, merge or split ProtecTIERconfigurations as your needs grow. Before this support, our TS7650G clients replicated the disk repositoryusing native disk array replication technology, such as Global Mirror on the DS8000, but that meant that all data was replicated over to the secondary site. Now, with this new IP replication feature, you can be selective, and replicate only those virtual tapes that are mission critical.

The appliance now supports up to 36TB of disk capacity, and the new "IBM i" operating system on System i servers,formerly known as i5/OS.

GPFS does Windows

IBM's General Parallel File System (GPFS) has the lion's marketshare of file systems used in the [Top 500 Supercomputers]. For a while, it was limited to just Linux and AIX operating system support, but version 3.3 [extends this to Windows 2008 on 64-bit architectures]. GPFS isthe file system used in IBM's Scale-Out File Services, the underlying technology of IBM's Cloud Computing and Storage offerings.

To learn more, here is the IBM[Press Release] and[Webcast].

technorati tags: IBM, DS8000, thin provisioning, Linux, UNIX, Windows, zHPF, z/OS, XIV, SMI-S, asynchronous mirroring, TSM, LDAP, SVC, TS7650, deduplication, dedupe, replication, GPFS, supercomputers, cloud computing, cloud storage, burning man

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Tags:  announcements disk tape

It's Tuesday, which means IBM announcements, and today IBM made some major announcementsthat support a [Dynamic Infrastructure]! I hinted at this yesterday, choosing the week's theme to be all about Cloud Computing and Alternative Sourcing. I will briefly highlight today's announcements related to storage here, and try to go into more detail over the next few weeks.

Ethernet switches and routers

In support of Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage, IBM is now back in theEthernet networking business. This is part of storage as protocols likeiSCSI, CIFS and NFS are gaining prominence. Extending IBM's existing OEMrelationship with Brocade, there are four series:

• [c-series] - "c" for Compact, these are 1U high fixed port switches
• [g-series] - "g" for Pay-as-you-Grow using IronStack stacking technology to allow up to 8 switches to be glommed, glued, er.. "gathered" together as a single virtual chassis.
• [m-series] - "m" for Multiprotocol Label Switching [MPLS] which supports routing between LAN and WAN networks over OC12 and OC48 lines.
• [s-series] - "s" for slots, the B08S has eight slots, and the B16S has sixteen slots, supporting up to 384 ports. These models support Power-over-Ethernet [PoE] that simplifies attaching Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephones and IP-based surveillance cameras.

IBM announced it will strengthen its partnership with Juniper Networks, and continues to consider Cisco a strategic partner as well. To help customer position themselves for Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage,IBM also launches some new services:

• [Network Strategy and Optimization]
• [Network Consolidation and Virtualization]
• [Network Integration Services for Data Center Networks]

IBM System Storage DS5000 disk system

The IBM [DS5000] now supports self-encrypting disk drives, known also as "full-disk encryption" or FDE, for added security, and 8Gbps Fibre Channel (FC) ports for added performance. The DS5300 model in particular now supports up to 448 disk drives for added scalability.

Comprehensive Data Protection Solution

IBM's [Data Protection Solution] shows off IBM's awesome synergy between servers, storage and software. Combining System x servers, Tivoli Storage Manager FastBack software, and DS5000, DS4000 or DS3000 series disk systems. The solution is designed to both Windows-based servers and their applications, offering bare metal restores, and application–level protection for Oracle, SQL, Exchange and SAP.

Tivoli Storage Productivity Center

Last February, IBM previewed the renaming of TotalStorage Productivity Center to its new name,Tivoli Storage Productivity Center. Today, IBM announces [Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v4.1]. Some key changes include:

• Productivity Center for Fabric has been merged into Productivity Center for Disk
• Productivity Center for Replication is now integrated, but remains separately licensed
• Productivity Center can now feed input to IBM's Novus Storage Enterprise Resource Planner [SERP]

TS7650 ProtecTIER Data Deduplication IP-based replication

IBM previews IP-based replication which allows the TS7650 appliance or TS7650G gateway to sendvirtual tape data over to a remote location. This is instead of having the underlying disk systemsperform the replication on its behalf. Having the TS7650 do the replication is preferred, as itcan maintain virtual cartridge integrity, when a virtual tape is unmounted the replication can beginat that point.

This is just a small subset of all the announcements. For more information, see this 28-pagepresentation [Manage the Explosion of Information with IBM Information Infrastructure].

technorati tags: IBM, Dynamic Infrastructure, Ethernet, switches, routers, Cloud Computing, Cloud Storage, Brocade, Juniper Networks, Cisco, IronStack, FCoE, FCoCEE, PoE, DS5000, FC, FDE, TSM, FastBack, TotalStorage, Tivoli, Storage, Productivity Center, Novus, SERP, TS7650, TS77650G, ProtecTIER, Information Infrastructure

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Tags:  announcements disk networking

Well, it is Tuesday, and that means IBM announcements. This week many of my colleagues are attending Storage Networking World [SNW] conference. Normally, the most exciting announcements are reserved for the weeks these conferences are held, but IBM apparently made an exception this week.

New Factory configurations for XIV

The first announcement is for new [factory configurations] for the IBM XIV disk system. In the past, you could only order a partial 6-module or a full 15-module rack. Today, IBM announced that there will also be 9-, 10-, 11-, 12-, 13- and 14-module configurations orderable as well.

Some FUD out in the blogosphere led some to believe that these partial configurations had to be made full 15 modules within 12 months. That is false. You can order any of these partial rack configurations and leave them as is until you need more capacity. There is no obligation to buy more capacity with these partial rack configurations.

IBM N series N6060 configurations

This second announcement indicates that the N6060 supports[672 drives]. The N6060 is the latest midrange model of IBM N series unified storage.

If you are asking "What is a 672 drive?" don't feel stupid. It actuallyrefers to the number of external drives that can be attached to the N6060. Previously, it was mis-reported that the N6060 could support as many as 840 drives, but this was not correct, and this announcement is to fixthat typo.

IBM Passport Advantage Sub-Capacity Licensing

This last announcement today relates to IBM Passport Advantage[sub-capacity licensing].Pricing products is always a challenge. You want to come up with a pricing methodology such that people who get the most use pay the most, and those who get less pay less, in a manner that everyone thinks is fair. With commodities, it is simple to price rice by the pound, or fabric by the yard, but what about IT solutions?

Some of the IBM software is based on number of processors used, so that people who have the software running on multiple machines, or machines with multiple cores, should pay more because they are getting more value. This makes sense if this software is the only thing running on that server, but today you can also have server virtualization and are running many guest operating systems, each with different applications. The solution is to use "sub-capacity" licensing. If you have a quad-core processor server, but have four guest operating systems using 25 percent of this, then each OS should only pay for one processor's worth of licensing. Since different processors have different clock speeds, IBM has standardized the calculations to a mythical "Processor Value Unit" or PVU, with a corresponding IBM License Metric Tool (ILMT).

Initially, this will cover specific versions of Citrix Xen Server, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware, but IBM has made as a "statement of direction" that it will extend this sub-capacity licensing and ILMT support to IBM PowerVM capability for its POWER systems.

I have often heard clients complain that their third party software vendor does not support these hypervisors. Sometimes, this means the third party vendor will not fix or provide assistance if the problem occurs in this environment, and other times, it is that the pricing does not favor this environment, you get charged for all the processors, even if your slice of the processor is much smaller.

If you are at SNW this week, stop by and say "Hi" to my fellow IBM collegues for me.

technorati tags: IBM, SNW09, XIV, N6060, PVU, ILMT, Citrix, Xen, Hyper-V, VMware, ILMT

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Tags:  announcements

Well, it's Tuesday again, and that means more IBM announcements!

Today, IBM announced the enhanced IBM System Storage DS3200 disk system.It is in our DS3000 series, the DS3200 is SAS-attach, DS3300 is iSCSI-attach, and DS3400 is FC-attach. All of them support up to 48 drives, which can be a mix of SAS and SATA drives.

The DS3200 supports the following operating environments (see IBM's [Interop Matrix] for details):

• Microsoft Windows
• Linux (both Linux-x86 and Linux on POWER)
• AIX
• Sun Solaris
• VMware
• Novell NetWare

With today's announcements, the DS3200 can be used to boot from, as well as contain data. This is ideal to combine with IBM BladeCenter. With the IBM BladeCenter you can have 14 blades, either x86 or POWER based processors, attached to a DS3200 via SAS switch modules in the back of the chassis.

Let's take an example of how this can be used for a Scale-Out File Services[SoFS] deployment.

Servers

First, we start with servers. We can have either three [IBM System x3650] servers, but this would use up all six of the direct-attach ports. Instead, we'll choose the [BladeCenter H chassis], with three HS21 blades for SoFS, and that leaves us with eleven empty blade slots we could put in a management node, or other blades to run applications.

SAS connectivity modules

The IBM BladeCenter [SAS Connectivity Module] allows the blade servers to connect to a DS3200. Two of them fit right in the back of the BladeCenter chassis, providing full redundancy without consuming additional rack space.

DS3200 and EXP3000 expansion drawers

We'll have one DS3200 controller with twelve internal drives, and three expansion EXP3000 drawers with twelve drives each, for a total of 48 drives. Using 1TB SATA, this would be 48 TB raw capacity.

The end result? You get a 48TB NAS scalable storage solution, supporting up to 7500 concurrent CIFS and NFS users, with up to 700 MB/sec with large block transfers. By using BladeCenter, you can expand performance by adding more blades to the Chassis, or have some blades running SAP or Oracle RAC have direct read/write access to the SoFS data.

Just another example on how IBM can bring together all the components of a solution to provide customer value!

technorati tags: IBM, DS3200, BladeCenter, Linux, AIX, Windows, Solaris, VMware, NetWare, POWER, SAS, EXP3000, SATA, CIFS, NFS, SoFS

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Tags:  announcements disk linux

Continuing my two-part series on this week's announcements, I presentIBM's latest for tape and storage software.

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

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Tags:  announcements tape linux

Well, it's Tuesday, so that means IBM announcements!

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

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Tags:  announcements green disk

Well, it's Tuesday again, and that means more IBM announcements!

Storage Area Network (SAN)

IBM and Cisco announced [three new blades] for the Cisco MDS 9500 seriesdirectors: 24-port 8 Gbps, 48-port 8 Gbps, and 4/44 blended. The 4/44blended has 4 of the faster 8 Gbps ports, and 44 of the 4 Gpbs ports,so that you can auto-negotiate down to 1 Gbps for your older gear, andstill take advantage of the faster 8 Gbps speeds during the transition.

On the Brocade side, IBM announced the newIBM System Storage Data Center Fabric Manager [DCFM] V10 software. This replaces the products formerly known as BrocadeFabric Manager and McData Enterprise Fabric Connection Manager (EFCM).This software can support up to 24 distinct fabrics, up to 9000 ports,including a mix of FCP, FICON, FCIP and iSCSI protocols.

And if you need help setting up your SAN, IBM has recently renamed itsservices, formerly known as "IBM Implementation Services for SAN fabric components" to ["IBM Storage and Data Product Services - IBM Implementation Services for storage software - SAN fabric components"]. There is no change to the services actually provided, which have been available since 2003, but IBM felt that renaming it would make good press coverage.

(On a related note, I heard that Microsoft is planning to rename "Windows Vista" to "Windows 7" next year! Like we say here in Tucson,if it ends in "-ista" it is going to fail in the marketplace! Perhaps EMC should rename their storage virtualization product to "In-7"?).

IBM System Storage DR550

IBM announced today that it now supports [RAID 6 onthe DR550] compliance and retention storage system.

There are a few RAID-5 based EMC Centera customers out there who have notyet switched over to the IBM DR550, and now this might be just the littlenudge they need. For long-term retention of regulatory compliance data,RAID-5 doesn't cut it, you need an advanced RAID scheme, such as RAID-6, RAID-DP or RAID-X.

The DR550 provides non-erasable, non-rewriteable (NENR) storage supportto keep retention-managed data on disk and tape media. It supports 1 TBSATA disk drives and 1TB tape cartridges to provide high capacity at lowcost and "green" low energy consumption.

IBM System Storage N series

Several of our disk systems got improved and enhanced. Let's start withthe IBM System Storage N series[hardware and software] enhancements. IBM now offers high-speed 450GB 15K RPM drives. These are Fibre Channel (FC) drives for the EXN4000 expansion drawers, and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives for the entry-levelN3300 and N3600 models.

The "gateway" models now support a variety of functions that were formerlyonly available on the appliance models. This includes Advanced Single Instance Storage (A-SIS), Disk Sanitization, and FlexScale.

A-SIS is IBM's "other" deduplication function, and I talked about this in my post [A-SIS Storage Savings Estimator Tool]. Disk Sanitization will physicallywrite ones and zeros over existing data to eliminate it, what IBM sometimes calls "Data Shredding".

The last feature, FlexScale, might be new for many. It is software toenable to use of the "Performance Accelerator Module" (PAM). The PAM isa PCI-Express card with 16GB on-board RAM that acts as a secondary cachebehind main memory of the N series controller. Depending on the model,you can have one to five of these cards fit into the controller itself,boosting random read performance, metadata access, and write block destage.

IBM System Storage DS5000

IBM's latest entry into the DS family has been hugely successful.In addition to Linux, Windows and AIX, the DS5000 now supports [Novell Netware and Sun Solaris] operating systems.

For infrastructure management, IBM has enhanced the Remote Support Manager [RSM]that supports DS3000 and DS4000 has been extended to support DS5000 as well. This software can monitor up to 50 disk systems, will e-mail alerts to IBM when something goes wrong, and allow IBM to dial in via modem to get more diagnostic information to improve service to the client. Also, the IBM System Storage Productivity Center [SSPC]which now supports the DS8000 and SAN Volume Controller (SVC) has been extended to also support the DS5000.

IBM XIV Storage System

In addition to 1-year and 3-year maintenance agreements, IBM now offers[2-year, 4-year and 5-year] software maintenance agreements.

RFID labels for IBM tape media

IBM 3589 (20-pack of LTO cartridges) and IBM 3599 (20-pack of 3592 cartridges for TS1100 series)now offer [RFID labels]. These labels match the volume serial (VOLSER) with a 216-bit unique identifier and 256 bits of user-defined content. This can help with tape inventory,and to prevent people from walking out of the building with a tape cartridge stuffed in their jacket.

32GB memory stick

While not technically part of the IBM System Storage matrix of offerings, Lenovo announced their new[Essential Memory Key] which holds 32GB of memory and workswith both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 protocols.

I wish I could say this is it for the IBM announcements for October, given that this is the last Tuesday of the month, but there are three days left, so there might be just a few more!

technorati tags: IBM, SAN, Cisco, MDS9500, DCFM, BFM, EFCM, FCP, FICON, FCIP, iSCSI, Windows Vista, Windows 7, EMC, Centera, DR550, RAID-6, RAID-DP, RAID-X, NENR, FC, EXN4000, SAS, N3300, N3600, A-SIS, Disk Sanitization, FlexScale, PAM, DS5000, Netware, Solaris, DS3000, DS4000, DS8000, SVC, XIV, RFID, 3589, 3599, LTO, 3592, tape, cartridges, VOLSER

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Tags:  networking announcements tape green disk lifecycle

Well, it's Tuesday again, and that means more announcements from IBM!

In conjunction with IBM's new [System z10 Business Class (BC)] mainframe designed for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB), IBM also announced related storage productenhancements.

DS6000 series

Yes, it's alive! Contrary to the FUD you might have read from our competitors, IBM continues to sell thousands and thousands of IBM System Storage DS6800 disk systems, and now enhances them with the optionfor 450GB 15K RPM drives. What is nice about these 450GB drives is that they are as fast or faster* than 300GBdrives, so the typical trade-off between performance and capacity do not apply.

(* I compared Seagate 15.6K (450GB) with 15.5K (300GB) models.

	450GB drives	300GB drives
Avg Seek time (Read)	3.4ms	3.5 ms
Avg Seek time (Write)	3.9ms	4.0 ms
Full Seek time (Read)	6.43ms	6.7 ms
Full Seek time (Write)	7.12ms	7.4 ms
Sustained Bandwidth	112-171 MB/sec	73-125 MB/sec

This may or may not result in application performance improvements, depending on workload pattern. Your mileage may vary.)

Our clients report back that these are incredibly stable systems that they don't have toworry about. This enhancement applies to both the [511/EX1 models] and [522/EX2 models].

DS8000 series

Understanding that clients want complete solutions from single vendors, IBM offers synergy between System z and the IBM System Storage DS8000 disk systems. The latest R4.1 microcode upgrade offers two key features onthe various models [2107,



2421, 2422, 2423, and 2424].

• zHPF - High Performance FICON for System z. IBM was able to increase the throughput on 4 Gbps links. For OLTP workloads randomly accessing 4KB blocks, IBM internal tests showed zHPF doubled performance from 13,000 IOPSto 26,000 IOPS per channel. For sequential workloads, such as batch processing, zHPF increased performance 50 percent, from 350 MB/sec to 525 MB/sec.

• In February, IBM previewed[IncrementalResync] for z/OS Metro Global Mirror. However, some concepts are better explained with pictures.

  
  One way to set up a 3-site disaster recovery protection is to have your production synchronously mirrored to a second site nearby, and at the same time asynchronously mirrored to a remote location. On the System z, you can have site "A" using synchronous IBM System Storage Metro Mirror over to nearby site "B", and also have site "A" sending data over to site "C" asynchronously using z/OS Global Mirror. This is called "z/OS Metro Global Mirror".

  In the past, if the disk system in site A failed, you would switch over to site B, which would have to resend send all the data again to site C to be resynchronized. This is because site B was not tracking what the System Data Mover (SDM) reader had or had not yet processed.

  With DS8000 4.1, the "incremental resync" function that, along with using IBM HyperSwap, requires site B to only send and resync the data that was in-flight when the outage occurred. When you compare the difference in sending this limited amount of in-flight data with the traditional complete volume of data, you can see how "Incremental Resync" can resynchronize the data 95% faster, and also greatly decrease your bandwidth requirements. This reduces the risk in case a subsequent outage occurs.

TS7700 series

Introduced originally in 1997 as the IBM Virtual Tape Server (VTS), the [IBMSystem Storage TS7700] series supports Grid capabilityto replicate tape image data across locations. Here's a quick recap of today's announcement:

• Existing TS7740 can be upgraded up to 9TB of disk cache. New models can have up to 13TB of disk cache.
• A new "tape-less" TS7720 that has up to 70TB of disk cache.
• Integrate Library Management support. I discussed[IntegratedRemovable Media Manager (IRMM)] before, and this is basically IRMM inside. For those with TS3500 tape libraries,this support eliminates the need for a separate IBM 3953 L05 Library Manager.
• TS1130 back-end tape drive support. These are the fastest 1TB drives in the industry, with support of built-in encryption, and now can be used asthe physical tape back-end for the virtual tape TS7740 repository.

While our competitors might be boarding up their windows in preparation for the economic downturn in the USAeconomy, IBM remains generating solid results. San Jose Mercury News has an article that discusses this titled[IBM's 3Q profit strong on global sales].There has never been a better time to buy from, or invest in, IBM!

technorati tags: IBM, z10 BC, mainframe, SMB, DS6000, DS6800, 450GB, 15K, RPM, FUD, DS8100, DS8300, DS8000, zHPF, FICON, Incremental Resync, z/OS, MGM, HyperSwap, VTS, TS7700, TS7740, TS7720, tape-less, IRMM, TS1130, encryption, Mercury News, 3Q08, profit

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Tags:  disk tape announcements

Lakota Industries made news with the introduction of its [Sarah-Cuda Hunting Bow], named after moose-huntingU.S. Vice President nominee and Governor of Alaska [Sarah Palin]. This has all the same features as their other high-end hunting bows, but is lighter, smaller and available in Pink Camo. This "pink-it-and-shrink-it" move was designed to broaden the market share of hunting bows by reaching out to the needs of women hunters.

Not to be outdone, today, at the Storage Networking World Conference, IBM announced the new IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller Entry Edition [SVC EE].

The new SVC Entry Edition, available in Flamingo Pink* or traditional Raven Black. * RPQ required. Default color is Raven Black.

You might be thinking: "Wait! IBM SVC is already the leading storage virtualization product among SMB clients today,why introduce a less expensive model?" With the global economy in the tank, IBM thought it would be nice to help outour smaller SMB clients with this new option.

This new offering is actually a combination of new software (SVC 4.3.1) and new hardware (2145-8A4). Here are thekey differences:

	SVC Classic	SVC EE
Licensing	by usable capacity managed, up to 8 PB	by number of disk drives, up to 60 drives
Hardware	2145-4F2, 8F2, 8F4, 8G4, 8A4	2145-8A4
Cluster size	1, 2, 3 or 4 node-pairs, depending on performance requirements	only one node-pair needed
Copy Services	FlashCopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror, licensed by subset of capacity used	FlashCopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror, but with simplified licensing

The SVC EE is not a "dumbed-down" version of the SVC Classic. It has all the features and functions of theSVC Classic, including thin provisioning with "Space-efficient volumes", Quality of Service (QoS) performance prioritization for more important applications, point-in-time FlashCopy, and both synchronous and asynchronous disk mirroring (Metro and Global Mirror).

While IBM has not yet have SPC-1 benchmarks published, IBM is positioning the SVC EE as roughly 60 percent of the performance, at 60 percent of the list price, compared to a comparable SVC Classic 2145-8G4 configuration. The SVC Classic is already one of the fastest disk systems in the industry. By comparison, the SVC EE is twice as fast as the original SVC 2145-4F2 introduced five years ago.If you outgrow the SVC EE, no problem! The 2145-8A4 can be used in traditional SVC Classic mode, and the SVC EE software can be converted into the SVC Classic software license for upgrade purposes, protecting your originalinvestment!

For those considering an HP EVA 4400 or EMC CX-4 disk system, you might want to look at combining an SVC EE with [IBM System Storage DS3400] disk. The combination offers more features and capabilities, and helps reduce your IT costs at the same time.

And if you are worried you can't afford it right now, IBM Global Financing is offering a ["Why Wait?" world-wide deferral of interest and payments] for 90 days, so you don't have to make your first payment until 2009, applicable to all IBM System Storage products, including the SVC EE, SVC Classic and DS3400 disk systems.

You can read more details on fellow blogger Barry Whyte's[Storage Virtualization] blog.

technorati tags: IBM, SVC, SVC EE, SVC Classic, Lakota Industries, Sarah-Cuda, Sarah Palin, Flamingo Pink, Raven Black, RPQ, SPC-1, 2145-8A4, DS4300, IBM Global Financing, Why Wait, FlashCopy, Metro Mirror, Global Mirorr, Barry Whyte

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Tags:  disk announcements

Well, it's Tuesday, and more IBM announcements were made today. Many of my colleagues are in Dallas, Texas for the[Storage Networking World conference], and hopefully I will get some feedback from them before the week is over.

Today, IBM made announcements for Storage Area Networking (SAN) gear and disk systems.

8 Gbps Longwave transceivers

IBM now offers 8 Gbps Longwave SFP transceivers on the[IBM System Storage SAN256B and SAN768B] directors, as well as the IBM System Storage SAN24B-4 Express, SAN40B-4, and SAN80B-4 switches (orderable as [machine type models] or [partnumbers] ).These transceivers support single mode fiber up to 10km in distance, comparedto the 50-75 meters supported by the Shortwave SFP transceivers.

Like theShortwave SFP transceivers we already have available, these Longwave transceivers have "N-2" support, which means they can support two generations back: auto-negotiate down to 4 Gbps and 2 Gbps speeds. If you still have 1 Gbps equipment, now is a good time to consider upgrading those, or keep a few 4 Gbps ports available that can auto-negotiate down to 1 Gbps speed.

FICON Accelerator

Mainframe clients that sent data to a remote Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery (BC/DR) location often used "channel extenders", which were special boxes used to minimize performance delays when transmitting FICON across long distances. This was especially helpful for z/OS Global Mirror (what we used to call XRC) as well as electronic vaulting to tape.

Now, this functionality can be part of the directors and routers, eliminating the need for separate equipment.This is available for the SAN768B and SAN256B directors, as well as SAN18B-R and SAN04B-R routers.

Before the merger between Brocade and McDATA, IBM offered SAN18B-R routers from Brocade, and SAN04M-R routers from McDATA. The former had 16 Fibre Channel (FC) ports and two Ethernet ports, and the latter was less expensive with just four ports.Brocade came up with a clever replacement for both. The [IBMSystem Storage SAN04B-R] router comes by default withtwo active FC ports and two Ethernet ports, but also with 14 additional FC ports inactive. A "High Performance Extension" feature activates these additional ports, bringing the SAN04B-R up to the SAN18B-R level, and allows it to support the FICON Accelerator feature above.

So, instead of having specialized channel extenders at both primary and secondary sites, you can havea director with FICON Accelerator at the primary site, sending FICON over Ethernet to a 1U-high router (also running the FICON Accelerator) at the secondary site, whichcan greatly reduce costs. The FICON Accelerator can in some cases double the amount of data transfer throughput,but of course, your mileage may vary.

DS3000 series

On the disk side, the [IBMSystem Storage DS3000 series] disk systems have been enhanced, withsupport for 450GB high-speed 15K RPM SAS drives, RAID-6 double-drive protection, more FlashCopy point-in-time copies,and more partitions.On the DS3000, "storage partitions" is what the rest of the industry calls "LUN masking". A storage partition allowsyou to isolate a set of LUNs to only be seen by a single host server, or host cluster that shares the same set ofLUNs. Some clients felt that the default of four partitions was too low, so now up to 32 partitions can be configured.(This is not to be confused with "Logical Partitions" that isolate processor and cache resources available on theIBM System Storage DS8000 and other high-end storage disk systems.)

IBM also extended the Operating System support.The DS3000 series now supports Solaris, either on x86 or SPARC-based servers. The DS3300 iSCSI support now supportsLinux on POWER. The DS3400 allows support of IBM i (the new name for i5/OS V6R1) through the VIOS feature.

DCS9900

The [IBMSystem Storage DCS9900] is a bigger, faster version of the DCS9550. Like the DCS9550, the DCS9900 is designedfor high performance computing (HPC) workloads. The DCS9550 supported up to 960TB in two frames, with 2.8 GB/sec throughput,and an optional disk spin-down capability.The new DCS9900 can support up to 1.2 PB in two frames, with 5.6 GB/sec throughput, but no spin-down capability.

So whether your data center is filled with System z mainframes, or other open systems, IBM has a solution for you.

technorati tags: IBM, SNW, SAN, disk, storage, system, Shortwave, Longwave, SFP, transceiver, SAN256B, SAN768B, directors, SAN18B-R, SAN04B-R, routers, SAN24B-4, Express, SAN40B-4, SAN80B-4, switches, FICON Accelerator, Brocade, McDATA, Fibre Channel, FC, FCP, FICON, z/OS, XRC, channel extender, DS3000, DS3300, DS3400, Ethernet, iSCSI, SAS, RAID-6, Linux on POWER, Solaris, IBM i, i5/OS, VIOS, DCS9900, DCS9550, HPC

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Tags:  disk announcements networking