Tony Pearson is a Master Inventor and Senior IT Architect for the IBM Storage product line at the
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IBM Symposium Melbourne Day 2
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Continuing my coverage of the [IBM System x and System Storage Technical Symposium]. Here is a recap of Day 2:
Of course the big news is that U.S. President Barack Obama is here in Australia, with a stop in Canberra (not far from Melbourne), followed by a stop in Darwin on the north side of this country. This is his first official visit to Australia as president.
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Metro Atlanta Chamber - Technology Thursday
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Yesterday, I presented [The Future of Storage] at the [Metro Atlanta Chamber]. The Metro Atlanta Chamber (MAC) is focused on bringing businesses and jobs into the Metro Atalanta area, and to help its members connect with other companies that can help them thrive. The MAC cover the Metropolitan region of Atlanta (5.8 million people) and 28 counties in Georgia. The event was called "Technology Thursday", where the MAC holds a meeting on the third Thursday of every month, to discuss technology issues. The audience was a mix of business owners, sales executives, and managers. The event allowed for people to network with each other, as well as learn something new from a subject matter expert. This was the last one for 2011, to avoid conflicts with upcoming holidays in November and December. I spoke for an hour, then we raffled off two copies of my latest book, ["Inside System Storage: Volume II"]. Special thanks to Catherine Pearson, Nancy Whatley, and Jim Beach from the MAC, and Karen Harrison from IBM for their support of this event!
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October 2011 Announcements - Part 3
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IBM had over a dozen storage-related announcements this week. This is my third and final part in my series to provide a quick overview of the announcements.
Whew! I have already heard from some of my readers to slow down, that this is too much information to deal with all at once. IBM has tried everything from having just a few announcements nearly every Tuesday, to having huge launches every two to three years, and settled in the middle with announcements about four to five times per year.
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Indianapolis - Lunch and Learn - The Future of Storage
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We had our first "Future of IT Storage" Lunch-and-Learn here in Indianapolis, IN. We held it at the [Harry & Izzy's Restaurant], which looks like it has been in business for quite a while, but actually was only started four years ago. It is the sister restaurant for St. Elmo's next door which has been running since 1902, so it maintains a sense of that heritage, but with a bit more casual atmosphere. I presented [The Future of Storage] that I mentioned in my blog post [Infoboom Webinar]. If you missed it, you can check out the [presentation deck and replay]. We had a lively Q&A throughout the presentation, so I am happy about that. Please note that in the wake of Hurricane Irene, the [Burlington, MA (Boston Area) event] has been postponed, probably to October or November. We have already notified all the people who signed up, but in case you planned just to show up, I wanted to let you know here in this blog. Special thanks to Karen Harrison and Kerry Ingram for their help in setting up this event! Also a shout-out to Leanna and Amy, our two waitresses who served us today! 
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#ibmtechu Day 4 IBM Storage University - Storage Free-for-All
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Continuing my coverage of the [IBM System Storage Technical University 2011], I participated in the storage free-for-all, which is a long-time tradition, started at SHARE User Group conference, and carried forward to other IT conferences. The free-for-all is a Q&A Panel of experts to allow anyone to ask any question. These are sometimes called "Birds of a Feather" (BOF). Last year, we had two: one focused on Tivoli Storage software, and the second to cover storage hardware. This year, we had two, one for System x called "Ask the eXperts", and one for System Storage called "Storage Free-for-All". This post covers the latter. (Disclaimer: Do not shoot the messenger! We had a dozen or more experts on the panel, representing System Storage hardware, Tivoli Storage software, and Storage services. I took notes, trying to capture the essence of the questions, and the answers given by the various IBM experts. I have spelled out acronyms and provided links to relevant materials. The answers from individual IBMers may not reflect the official position of IBM management. Where appropriate, my own commentary will be in italics.)  Are there any plans to improve the use of BRMS [Backup Recovery and Media Services for IBM i] with [Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)]?
When will [IBM BladeCenter S] support 2.5-inch drives?
The TSM GUI sucks! Are there any plans to improve it?
Can we run the TSM Admin GUI from a non-Windows host?
As hard disk drives grow larger in capacity, RAID-5 becomes less viable. What is IBM doing to address this?
TPC licensing is outrageous! What is IBM going to do about it?
What is the adoption rate of IBM Easy Tier?
We have an 8-node SVC cluster, should we put 8 SSD drives into a single node-pair, or spread them out?
How well has SVC 6.2 been adopted?
Will IBM offer 600GB FDE drives for the IBM DS8700?
Is there a reason for the feature lag between the Easy Tier capabilities of the DS8000, and that of the SVC/Storwize V7000?
Does it even make sense to have separate storage tiers, especially when you factor in the cost of SVC and TPC to make it manageable?
Are there best practices for combining SVC with DS8000? Can we share one DS8000 system across two or more SVC clusters?
The IBM System Storage Interopability Center (SSIC) site does not seem to be designed well for SAN Volume Controller.
How does the 24-hour learning period work for IBM Easy Tier? We have batch processing that runs from 2am to 8am on Sundays.
Now that NetApp has acquired LSI, is the DS3000 still viable?
If have managed disks from a DS8000 multi-rank extent pool assigned to multiple SVC clusters, won't this affect performance?
Is the IBM [TPC Reporter] a replacement for IBM Tivoli Storage Productivity Center?
We are experiencing lots of stability issues with SDD, SDD-PCM and SDD-DSM multipathing drivers. Are these getting the development attention they deserve?
Is anyone actually thinking of deploying public cloud storage in the near-term?
None of the IBM storage devices seem to have [REST API]. Cloud storage providers are demanding this. What are IBM plans?
If you ask a DB2 specialist, an AIX specialist, and a System Storage specialist, on how to configure System p and System Storage for optimal performance, you get three different answers. Are there any IBMers who are cross-functional that can help?
Both Oracle and Microsoft recommend RAID-10 for their applications.
Resizing SVC source volumes forces ongoing FlashCopy or Metro Mirror relatiohships to be stopped. Does IBM plan to address this?
What ever happened to IBM [Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS)]?
When will I be able to move SVC volumes between I/O groups?
Will XIV ever support the mainframe?
Not a question - Kudos to the TSM and ProtecTIER team in supporting native IP-based replication!
When will IBM offer POWER-based models of the XIV, SVC and other storage devices?
We have both System i and System z, what is IBM doing to address the fact that PowerHA and GDPS are different?
This was a great interactive session. I am glad everyone stayed late Thursday evening to participate in this discussion.
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The Future of Storage - More Details on Indianapolis and Boston
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I am pleased with the turn-out we had attending last week for my Infoboom Webinar on [The Future of Storage]. The 55-minute replay is available on Infoboom, and the slide deck can be downloaded from the [IBM Expert Network]. I mentioned that I was going to Indianapolis and Boston next week to give lectures on this topic. Here are the details:
I will also be in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld (Oct 2-6), Auckland New Zealand (Nov 9-11), and Melbourne Australia (Nov 15-17).
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Next Tuesday - Infoboom Webinar - the Future of Storage
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After the amount of flack Jon Toigo had to endure for not giving advanced notice to his upcoming Webcast, I thought I would better remind people about my own Webinar that is happening next Tuesday, August 23. Fortunately, they do not overlap. Mine is at 1pm EDT, and Jon's Webcast is Part 4 of his Storage Virtualization series, [The Data Protection Imperative: How to Keep Rockin’ and Not Lose Your Assets] is earlier in the morning.
So here's the scoop, next Tuesday I will be presenting [The Future of Storage], August 23, 1pm to 2pm EDT. You can register to attend at the [Infoboom Registration Page]. Infoboom is a social community for business and IT leaders of small and midsize businesses brought to you by IBM. But that's not all! After the webinar, I will then travel to various cities for face-to-face lectures. Here are the first two:
If you are near either of these two locations, contact your local IBM storage specialist or IBM business partner to participate.
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#ibmtechu Day 2 IBM Storage University - Solutions Expo
I gotten several emails expressing worry that I have fallen off the face of th earth. The last two weeks have been educational and eye-opening for me. I can't provide details in my blog, so I will just say that it involved government agencies that IBM refers to as "dark accounts", and that I am now back safely in the USA. Between adjusting to time zone differences, ridiculously long hours, and restricted access to the internet, I was unable to blog lately. 
Instead, I will resume my coverage of the [IBM System Storage Technical University 2011]. The "Solutions Expo" runs Monday evening through Wednesday lunch. This is a chance for people to explore all the solutions that are part of IBM's large "eco-system" for IBM System storage and System x products. There were several sponsors for this event. 
As is often the case at these conferences, the various booths hand out fun items. The hot items this year were tie-dyed tee-shirts from Qlogic, and propeller beanies from the IBM rack and power systems team. Here is Amanda, one of the bartenders showing off the latter. 
After the expo on Tuesday night, my friends at [Texas Memory Systems] held an after-party. Unlike the pens, tee-shirts and keychains at the Expo, these guys had a raffle for real storage products. Here is Erik Eyberg handing out a RamSan PCIe card, valued at $14,000 or so. IBM recently certified the TMS RamSan as External SSD storage for the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC). The SVC can optimize performance using this for automated sub-LUN tiering with the IBM System Storage Easy Tier feature.
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Don't Miss IBM Storage Technical University 2011
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In less than a month, I will be presenting at the annual IBM Storage Technical University, July 18-22, at the Hilton in Orlando, Florida. This is one of my favorite conferences! You can sign up for this at their [Online Registration Page]. I will be covering a variety of topics:
I'll be in Orlando, Florida all week for this conference. I hope you can make it! To learn more, see the [Technical University Event Page].
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IBM March 23 Webcast - Surveys and Recap
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Last's weeks webcast [How to Diagnose and Cure What Ails Your Storage Infrastructure] drew 208 attendees! 
Before we started, we asked the first survey question: "How is storage planning conducted in your shop?" Of the various responses, nearly four out of ten responded "Part of an overall IT infrastructure strategy". Jon Toigo went first, and spent 20 minutes or so laying out the problem as he sees it. Jon travels all over visiting customers struggling with their storage infrastructures, so he gets to hear a lot of this first hand. I then spent 20 minutes or so presenting IBM's vision, strategy and offerings to help solve these problems. I could speak for hours on this topic, but we kept it short for this one-hour webcast. To learn more, request a visit to the Tucson Executive Briefing Center. At the end of my talk, we put out the second survey, asking the audience "What is your number one priority with respect to storage operations today?" Over one fourth of the attendees were focused on reducing storage infrastructure cost of ownership by any means possible. 
I am glad we saved the last 15 minutes for Q&A, as there were a lot of questions. The replay is now available. If you attended the event and want to hear it again, or want to share it with your colleagues, or you missed it and want to hear it, then [Register for the Replay].
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It should be against the law to connect these two together. IBM has no plans to make any further improvements.