I finished of the first day of the [IBM System Storage Technical University 2011] by presenting two topics. These were repeated on day 3 for those who missed it today.

IBM Information Archive for email, files and eDiscovery

Not too many people have heard of IBM's Smart Archive strategy and the storage products IBM offers to meet compliance regulations. This session covered the following:

• The differences between backup and archive, including a few of my own personal horror stories helping companies who had foolishly thought that keeping backup copies for years would adequately serve as their archive strategy
• The differences between optical media, Write-Once Read-Many (WORM) media, and Non-Erasable, Non-Rewriteable (NENR) storage options.
• Why putting a [space heater] on your data center floor is a bad idea, driving up power and cooling costs for little business value to the enterprise once the unit is full of rarely accessed read-only data.
• An overview of the [IBM Information Archive], an integrated stack of servers, storage and software that replaces previous offerings such as the IBM System Storage DR550 and the IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS).
• The marketing bundle known as the [Information Archive for Email, Files and eDiscovery] that combines the Information Archive storage appliance with Content Collectors for email and file systems, as well as eDiscovery tools, and implementation services for a solution that can support a small or medium size business, up to 1400 employees.

IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center v4.2 Overview and Update

Many of the concerns raised when I [presented v4.1 at this conference last year] were addressed this year in v4.2, including full performance statistics for IBM XIV storage system, storage resource agent support for HP-UX and Solaris, and a variety of other issues.

I presented this overview in stages:

• "Productivity Center Basic Edition" that comes pre-installed on the IBM System Storage Productivity Center hardware console, that provides discover of devices, basic configuration, and a clever topology viewer of what is connected to what.
• "Productivity Center for Disk" and "Productivity Center for Disk Midrange Edition (MRE)" that provides real-time and historical performance monitoring, asset and capacity reporting.
• "Productivity Center for Replication" which supports monitoring, failover and failback for FlashCopy, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror on the SVC, Storwize V7000, DS8000, DS6000 and ESS 800.
• "Productivity Center for Data" which supports reporting on files, file systems and databases on DAS, SAN and NAS attached storage from a Operating System viewpoint.
• "Productivity Center Standard Edition" which includes all of the above except "Replication", and adds performance monitoring of SAN Fabric gear, and some very clever analytics to improver performance and problem determination.

One of the questions that came up was "How big does my company have to be to consider using Productivity Center?" which I answered as follows:

"If you are a small company, and the "IT Person" has responsibilities outside the IT, and managing the few pieces of kit is just part of his job, then consider just using the web-based GUI through a Firefox or similar browser. If you are a medium sized company with dedicated IT personnel, but mostly run by system admins or database admins that manage storage and networks on the side, you might want to consider the "Storage Control" plug-in for IBM Systems Director. But if you are larger shop, and there are employees with the title "Storage Administrator" and/or "SAN Administrator", then Tivoli Storage Productivity Center is for you."

Tivoli Storage Productivity Center has matured into a fine piece of software that truly can help medium and large sized data centers manage their storage and storage networking infrastructure.

I like speaking the first day of these events. Often people come in just to hear the keynote speakers, and stay the afternoon to hear a few break-out sessions before they leave Tuesday or Wednesday for other meetings.

technorati tags: IBM, IA, DR550, Information Archive, email, files, eDiscovery, WORM, NENR, compliance, CAS, EMC Centera, TPC, Tivoli Storage, Productivity Center, Storage Administrator, Management Tools

Tags:  email compliance ia cas productivity+center tpc emc+centera ediscovery management+tools dr550 tivoli+storage files nenr worm information+archive ibm storage+administator